Now in Flesh Appearing
Notes
Transcript
INTRO
What we think about God matters.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
The gospel of John opens in this weird way that is unfamiliar to us but quite familiar to his target audience. The Word in this passage is a loaded term. In Jewish circles, it was another title for God. In Greek circles, the word stood for reason or wisdom. There are a lot of philosophical connotations to the word, and John’s audience was familiar with this term and its usage. The idea that a message, or reason, or wisdom could become a person was a strange idea.
Before we even know that John is speaking of Christ, we know that John is personifying this word because verse two says he was in the beginning with God. So before we leave Christmas in 2024 and step into a new year, let us once more revisit the baby born in Bethlehem and affirm some key truths about who he is and what it means for us.
Christ is God.
Christ is God.
Christ is God. This truth is asserted in the first two verses where John claims the Word was God and he was in the beginning with God. The usage of the phrase “in the beginning” draws our minds back to Genesis 1:1, where we find the first three words of scripture are the same. In the beginning is not an ancient way of saying “Once upon a time” like a fairy tale, but a marker of time, like before everything. Before the earth, before time, before space, before the first moment, there was God and this Word was there too. We get a glimpse of the trinitarian concept of God.
The Word, who we know as Jesus Christ is God. He is not a representative or messenger of God, he is God himself. For the most part, when you and I speak of God or Christ, we are speaking of the same being. However, there is also distinction between God the Father and God the Son. So much so, that as Jesus prays to God, we would not say that Jesus prays to himself. Yet Jesus is as eternal as God himself because he is God. How this works is a mystery. God is three distinct persons, Father, Son and Spirit, yet of a singular essence. He is still one being. My hope is that in eternity this will somehow make sense.
Jesus did not become the Son of God at Mary’s conception. He already was. He did not become God as some believe when the Spirit descended on him like a dove at his baptism. He already was. There is no time in eternity past in which Jesus was not God. He is as eternal as God himself. Anything less is a heresy and must be refuted and discarded. If Christ is not eternal, he is created, but that goes against the next characteristic.
The Bible reveals Christ as eternal, but also as creator. Verse three says all things came into being through him. If Jesus is a creation, not the Creator, then this verse is a lie. But this verse is true, meaning that the baby born in a manger is the very same being who spoke the world into existence in Genesis 1. Some theologians say that God the Son is the agent by which God the Father creates. We don’t really know how this works. Did God the Father speak the commands of Genesis 1 and God the Son used his “hands” to make the things God was speaking? We don’t know! We do know that the Bible plainly teaches that Jesus is the Creator God of the Old Testament. The Bible doesn’t explain the intricacies of the inner workings of the Trinity. We don’t have to fully understand God to believe he exists and believe the work he has done. The Bible is crystal clear on the fact that Jesus is God himself.
Since we are still talking about the baby born in Bethlehem, I will quote Joy Williams, who wrote one of my favorite Christmas songs, Here With Us:
It's still a mystery to me
That the hands of God could be so small
How tiny fingers reaching in the night
Were the very hands that measured the sky
However God created, Jesus was an integral part in its success. So much so, that without him there would be no creation. If Jesus is not the eternal creator God, then creation itself would not exist, and we wouldn not be here to debate it!
Christ is the eternal Creator God. It can be no other way. If Christ is not God, then salvation is not possible. For our salvation to be secure, the sacrifice made would have to be perfect. The Bible teaches us that Christ was sinless.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
If Jesus sinned in any way, he was ineligible to make the sacrifice.
Jesus also had to be human. Humanity sinned in the garden of Eden and therefore humanity must pay the price. The animal sacrifices in the Old Testament were a picture of God’s justice system and a foreshadowing of a sacrifice that would come that would be greater than the animals and final. No other sacrifice would be needed.
Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins;
but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God,
waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.
For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws upon their heart,
And on their mind I will write them,”
He then says,
“And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.”
Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.
For Jesus to cover the sins of the world for all time as Hebrews states, he has to be eternal. Since the first man sinned, the sacrifice would need to cover the sins of the first man. This is impossible if Jesus began to exist at the moment of his conception. Jesus needed to exist before Adam to qualify as the right sacrifice. So John 1 teaches us that Jesus is in fact eternal. As such, his sacrifice can cover the sins of every human being.
Without these truths, Jesus can be a great teacher, but the sacrifice means nothing in the end if Jesus is not God. Only an eternally existent, perfect human being could make the kind of sacrifice that would satisfy the wrath of God. We celebrate Christmas as a celebration of that gift’s arrival.
Christ is the life.
Christ is the life.
I both love and hate studying philosophy. It is a difficult field of study and there are about as many opinions in it as there are people. While my brain struggles to grasp many of the philosophical arguments out there, one of my favorite things to look into is the nature of human beings. In short, I like learning what makes us, us. One thing that scientists and philosophers have never figured out is where consciousness comes from. Don’t worry. I’m not about to try to solve the problem for you. But have you ever thought about that? Where does consciousness come from? It’s one of those things we have never been able to replicate. We are unable to create consciousness.
While the world debates the answers to such questions, we have the answer sitting right in front of us. Consciousness exists because God put it there. Jesus is the Creator God. There is no life outside of the existence of God. We have never observed life coming from non-life, but we have experienced probably trillions of times life coming from other life. You and I are products of that!
As the author of Creation, Jesus is the author of life. Nothing lives if there is no Christ. But he is also more than that. It is true as Paul says in Acts 17:28 that in him we live and move and have our being. But the intent behind verse four is also that in Christ is the only source for everlasting life.
Jesus calls himself the resurrection and the life in John 11:25 and the way, the truth, and the life in John 14:6. Jesus is more than the author of life; he is the only source of life eternal. There is no way to the Father but through him. If you want to live forever, Christ is the way to get there.
How fascinating it must have been to see the author of life, the king of heaven, emerge into this world as a baby. The God who spoke his creation into existence entered into the world he created to live as one of us. When Mary held her baby, she saw the face of God.
You shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. Forgiveness of sin is such a blessing because without it there is no hope of eternal life. Jesus is the life.
Christ is light.
Christ is light.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. The word comprehend can be difficult to translate. The Greek word used there means to grasp or lay hold of. Other translations will use the word overcome or overpower. Darkness and light is a major theme in the book of John. God is light, and evil is darkness. Because of sin’s effects on God’s creation, the world is shrouded in darkness. And when things are dark, we can’t see it for what it truly is.
But here is the thing. Darkness isn’t all that powerful. Darkness makes things hard to see. But if you want to see your surroundings, all you have to do is shine a little light. It is not as if there is a war going on in the room you are sitting in where darkness and light are fighting for dominance. As long as there is light, the darkness is driven out. But if the light goes out, darkness will simply fill the space the light previously occupied. Light and darkness don’t occupy the same space at the same time. It reminds me of a quote from a man named Abraham Hamilton III, who has a radio program on American Family Radio, who says, “Darkness is not an affirmative force. It simply reoccupies the space vacated by the light.”
Jesus came into the world and shone light on the true nature of man. We are a wicked people at our core. Sure, we all know plenty of moral people who don’t believe in God, but I would argue that moral goodness is only known because God has already revealed to us what moral goodness is. Imagine for a moment if the last time humanity heard from God was when he covered Adam and Eve after sinning in the garden, pronounced his curses on creation, then left. How much do you think we would really know about true good and evil? I venture to guess we wouldn’t.
Jesus is the reason we see the world for what it truly is. In the midst of darkness, the light shines. Jesus, the light of the world, showed us who we really are and showed us who God really is. Jesus punched a fat hole in the darkness of our lives to not only show us the truth of the state we were living in, but to show us a hope for a way out.
The light of a lighthouse is hope for sailors coming in from the sea at night. Sunlight penetrating the darkness is hope for those who might be trapped underground because of a collapsed mine or cave. The light of a sunrise is hope for a weary parent who didn’t get much sleep the night before. Jesus is the light of the world who showed us not only our sinfulness, but showed us himself as the hope for an escape from the darkness.
Christmas has passed. The holiday has come and gone. But may we never forget the Christ of Christmas is always with us. He is here with us in our waiting, in our wonder, in our weakness, and in our worship.
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John writes as an eyewitness to the things he records in his gospel. Abd while you and I have yet to lay eyes on Christ physically, we have seen his glory nonetheless. We have seen his glory in our worship. We have seen his glory as he intervenes in our weakness. We have seen his glory in the wonder of his work in our lives. We have seen his glory in the waiting for our ultimate hope: deliverance from the darkness.
Close by singing O Come All Ye Faithful
The Word became flesh and that is good news of great joy!
