And we are not going to, this morning, look into the Psalms. We’re gonna interrupt our series on the Psalms, both today and next Sunday, Lord willing. Next Sunday, we’ll pick up a theme for New Year’s. And today, I would like to, since Christmas is still sort of in the air, we’ll pick up on a Christmas theme in John chapter one. Open your Bibles, if you will, to John’s Gospel, chapter one. We look today at one of the deepest, most difficult, and yet most fascinating and glorious themes in all of the Bible, the glory of the incarnation of the Son of God.
John chapter one. I’ll read verses one through 18. “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was, in the beginning, with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness of the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.”
Now, I’ll just pause to mention this here. In our version, the word “begotten” has been dropped. That became fashionable in contemporary translations. Thankfully, we’re moving back to the expression there. The word “son” in the original is not there. It’s just the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me.'” From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made him known.
Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, this passage of Scripture famously brings us immediately to some of the most profound truths that our minds are able to comprehend, and yet the most glorious truths as well. We pray that you will enlarge our minds to understand and enlarge our hearts to adore. As we look at this wonderful theme of our Lord’s condescension, the incarnation of the Son of God to be our savior. Help us, we pray, and strengthen our faith in him through it. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
In The Beginning Was The Word
From the get-go in his gospel, the Apostle John rapidly launches into the deepest of theological waters. And we will take the time to at least look at some of this in the opening verses. Verse one: “In the beginning was the Word.” In the beginning. If you’ve read your Bible much at all, that rings a bell. John is intending to draw our attention back to Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But here he says, “In the beginning was the Word.”
Now the identity of the Word—you know where this is going—it’s Jesus. But the identity of the Word who was in the beginning is not yet stated. He’ll get to that in a minute. But he affirms here right up front that in the beginning the Word was. Not became. But in the beginning the Word already was. And the Word was with God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. In some sense God’s companion. God’s fellow, closely associated with God, in the beginning. As the creation began, when it came to that moment at the opening of time, the Word already was, and he was with God.
So John begins in eternity past, the abode of the eternal God, and with God is this one whom he says he calls the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And then he says, “And the Word was God.” There’s his identity. This one whom John calls the Word is in fact God himself. He was God, and yet, he was with God. From the beginning, at the outset of time, the Word was already there and he was with God. And in fact, he was God.
So right from the outset already, we have the essential rudiments of the doctrine of the Trinity. We have this doctrine that we have all of the Christian churches embraced: that God is one in being, but three in persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. Here he refers to the second person as the Word. And he was with God from the beginning. He was God himself, and yet with God. And so God is one in being and yet three in persons. Not one and three in the same sense. That would be nonsense. He’s one in being, in essence, in what God is. And yet that essence of the glorious God, whatever that is, is shared equally among the three persons. And so he speaks here of the Word was with God—one in being, three in person—who share equally in all that it is to be God.
Verse two, he reaffirms the deity of the second person, the Word, but here by referring again to his eternality. “He was in the beginning with God.” Again, this is a reference back to Genesis chapter one, verse one. In the beginning, at the outset of time, when God created all that is, He was already there. He didn’t come into being there. And so this is important for us to notice here: how John, on the one hand, draws our attention back to Moses, Genesis 1 verse 1, but then at the same time works the other direction.
In Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1, Moses says, “In the beginning, God…” and then he works this way through time. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void. Darkness was on the face of the earth. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God said, “Let it be this way,” and it was that way. And Moses then works his way through time. Starts at the beginning and works his way forward. John draws our attention back to that point. But rather than working this way through time, John works the other direction. In the beginning, the Word was already there. He was with God, and he was himself God. Already there.
And then verse three, he goes further and identifies the Word as the creator. “All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made.” Again, it’s important to notice here the details. All things were made through him. Without him there was nothing made that was made. It’s not just all subsequent things that were made through him, but all that is made was made by this one whom he calls the Word. So he puts the Word in the classification of the uncreated, who created everything that is. So there’s God, and there’s everything else, and all the “everything else” was created by God. There’s God and the creation, and he says it was this one whom he calls the Word who was the creator.
Verse four, he speaks in terms of his self-existence. “In him was life.” We call this the doctrine of aseity. God has life in himself. He lives from himself. He’s self-existent. And this is what he affirms then of the Word. He had life in himself and then of course he then is the ground of life for everything else that lives.
Verses five and following, we have the world’s strange response to the Word. When he came, the light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not overcome it. And unless, of course, you have just stopped in from Mars and you’re completely unfamiliar with anything to do with Christianity, you know already he’s talking about Jesus. He came from eternity, from heaven with God, who is God; he came and was rejected. That’s verses 5 and following.
The Word Became Flesh And Dwelt Among Us
And then we come to verse 14, the verse we’ll focus on this morning. This is really the high point of the passage, although the conclusion is stated again in verse 18. Verse 14, the climax of the passage: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
So it’s an astounding turn of events that John quickly brings us to. The Word, this one who was introduced to us back in verses 1 and following as the one who was with God eternally, the one who was God eternally, the one who’s the creator, the one who has life in himself—the Word, verse 14, became flesh. That’s our word “incarnation.” That’s the Latinized term that we like to use to capture this: God becoming flesh. In flesh. The Word became flesh, and flesh obviously means he became human; he became what we are. That’s the way the word is used again in chapter three: that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Which is human is human; it means humanity. But he emphasizes here the weakest category of humanity, which is the flesh, the skin. He became just this, what we are.
And then he says, “He dwelt among us.” A strange word that he uses there—not just lived among us, but he put up a tent among us. He tabernacled among us. An allusion back to the Old Testament tabernacle. “And we beheld his glory.” More echoes of the Old Testament tabernacle. Picture the Old Testament tabernacle, which we’ve read about in the book of Exodus and so on. When God came to his particular manifestation of his presence in the tabernacle, there was that glory cloud. Or when he came to his presence among his people, there’s that glory cloud. And you get this picture of a cloud bursting out on all sides with glory. And John says, “That’s what we saw.” God, the all-glorious one, has now been seen by men. The apostle John says, “We saw in Jesus the very glory of God.”
And then he defines it further: “The glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” And what’s so significant about that term, “only begotten,” is that it expresses the relations of these three persons. If we have one God who subsists in three persons, what then is the distinction among them if there’s only one God? How do we distinguish among them? The only distinction there is is their relations to one another. The one is begetting, the other is begotten, and the other proceeds from both the Father and the Son. It’s their relations, and that’s his term: “begotten.”
We find this often in the New Testament. It’s, again, some of the deepest waters of the New Testament. But you find this: the second person who is equal in glory and power with God, equal in eternality. He’s always been God. There’s no beginning to him. And yet he’s spoken of as from the Father, begotten by the Father.
The early theologians in the church in the early centuries had to capture this somehow, and they coined the phrase, “eternal generation.” It’s almost an oxymoron because if something’s generated, it implies a beginning. You can’t say that because he’s eternal, and so we have to come up with the phrase, “eternally generated.” He is from the Father, but it’s always been that way. See, that was other language in the New Testament—that he’s the Son from the Father. He’s the outshining, the brightness of the Father’s glory. He’s the image of the Father. There’s always this “from-ness” of the second person.
That’s the idea then in verse 18: this one who is the Word. “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” He’s the one revealing God. So verse 14 then: the Word of God, who from eternity is begotten from the Father, who from eternity is with God, who from all eternity is himself God, became flesh.
That’s just stunning. John states it here in a simple, straightforward way. But it’s just staggering. God, the unseen spirit, makes his appearance in human flesh and is seen by men. The creator becomes the creature. This one who is eternal steps into time. This one who, in the language of the Westminster Confession, famously says he’s infinite and unchangeable in his being and wisdom and power and holiness now experiences the limitations of humanity. Or to use the words of the book of Hebrews: this one who upholds all things by the word of his power now is a helpless baby who needs to be tended, he needs to be fed, he needs to be changed, he needs to be protected. This one who from all eternity shares in the glory of undiminished deity now veils that glory in human flesh. This one whom angels worship now appears in no significance at all, just another human baby. Or in the words of the early verses of this chapter that we’ve seen: this one who has life in himself, this one on whom all other life depends, now helplessly feeds from his mother just like the rest of us.
It’s absolutely staggering what he tells us here. The Word who is eternal with God and who was God, the creator, became flesh. The eternal God, veiled in frail humanity. And we get to chapter three in the Gospel of John, we find Jesus saying, “No one has ever ascended up into heaven except he who first descended.” So before the ascension, which we read about later, there was a descension. He came down from heaven.
Theologians for centuries have tried to capture this. How do you say this? And so we’ve adopted language like not just his “descension,” but his “condescension.” That the glorious eternal Son stooped to become what we are. We’re taught to think in terms of the states of the Son of God: the state of his glory, the state of his humiliation. The incarnate Son of God. However we say it, words seem scarcely adequate to convey the wonder of what we’re reading here. God the Son became us. The infinite, eternal God, now in human flesh. One person, the eternal Son, but now in two natures: God and human. Two natures, one person.
The Deity And Humanity Of Christ
Well, we find this in the Gospels. One of the fascinating studies of the Gospels—I’m sure that will go on forever before we exhaust it all—is to contrast the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. The Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Called “synoptic” because synoptic means “seeing together,” because Matthew, Mark, and Luke tend to present Jesus in the same kind of way. They each have their individual themes and their individual angles of emphasizing about Jesus, but they track out the life of Jesus in similar ways. The viewpoint is similar.
The Gospel of John, on the other hand, is unique. It’s not like the others. The Gospel of John is well known for its emphasis on the deity of Christ. We have that at the outset here in chapter 1: that he came from heaven, he was eternally God, became flesh. And that theme is sustained throughout the Gospel of John. We see it over and over again. Jesus hints of it, as I say, in chapter 3: “He who ascended first descended. I came down from the Father.” We find it in chapter 5, where Jesus, again, himself says that everyone must honor the Son as they honor the Father. And if you don’t honor the Son, you don’t honor the Father. We find it again in chapter eight: “Before Abraham was, I am.” We find it again in chapter 10: “I and the Father are one,” and they all couldn’t stand this. He’s making himself equal with God; they want to kill him for blasphemy. We find it again in chapter 17 when he prays to the Father of the glory. He mentions the glory that I had with you before the foundation of the world. And all of that comes to climax in John chapter 20, verse 28, when Thomas, who had doubted, sees the resurrected Christ and says, “My Lord and my God.”
And so John is noted for this sustained emphasis on the deity of Christ. But we find the same kind of emphasis in many ways in the synoptic Gospels as well. In Matthew chapter 11, we find a statement from Jesus that is not surpassed by anything in the Gospel of John. Jesus says, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” It’s been called a “thunderbolt out of the Gospel of John” in the Gospel of Matthew. And all through the synoptic Gospels, all through all four Gospels, we find Jesus exercising the prerogatives of deity—even forgiving sin, receiving worship, encouraging worship. We find all of that in really all of the Gospels.
But the viewpoint is different. In the Synoptic Gospels, we start on the human level. There’s a manger, there’s a genealogy, whatever, but it begins on this human plane. And then along the way, we’re taught to look up and see that this man is more than any other man. He’s God. In John’s Gospel, the viewpoint is the opposite. He starts in heaven, starts in eternity past, and the viewpoint is downward. He comes down, he’s one of us. He, the Word, who is eternal, was made flesh, became one of us. Verse 18: he made God known. This is God revealing himself.
It’s as if to say at the prologue here, verses one to 18 in John’s gospel, John is setting us up to read the rest of the gospel, and he’s saying in so many words: if you are going to understand this man, Jesus, you must understand at the outset that he is God making himself known. In Jesus, God is revealing himself, and as you work your way through the gospel, you keep that in mind. This is God making himself known. Verse 18: he is God on display.
And yet, he’s a man. With all the limitations that are bound up with humanity. We find the Gospels present us not just this God who has become man, but his manhood is a real manhood—a real humanity, a real human being and what all that is. Some of the most striking ones are like in Luke chapter 2 where we read that Jesus grew in wisdom. He learned. He grew in stature as he grew physically. He grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and with men.
We get this picture of a developing human Jesus who at age five was not a 30-year-old in disguise. He’s an age five little boy, but at age five, he’s all that a five-year-old boy should be. And at age 10, he’s still not a 30-year-old in disguise. He’s a 10-year-old, but he’s growing and he’s learning. He’s more than he was at age five. He’s learned and he’s grown in wisdom. We find in Matthew chapter 24 where Jesus himself acknowledges ignorance: “I don’t know the day. I don’t know the hour.” He’s a real man with all the limitations of humanity. And of course throughout the Gospels we see him hungry, thirsty, growing weary, put to death. It’s a real humanity, subject to all of the limitations of what it is to be human.
What the gospel writers present to us is a savior who is both, as we like to say, who is both David’s son—he’s downline from David—and yet he’s David’s Lord, David’s maker. We should have expected to see that from the Old Testament prophets. We’ve seen that in our Sunday evening studies of messianic prophecy. We see where the Davidic son will be born of a virgin; his name will be called Immanuel, God with us. We see in Isaiah chapter nine that the Davidic son, whose name will be called the wonderful counselor, the everlasting father, the mighty God. Find it in Micah chapter five: this one who hails from Bethlehem is one whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
And one of my favorite, and evidently one of Jesus’ particularly favorite ones, is Psalm 110, where David writes—and it’s important to notice that, as Jesus points it out—David writes, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'” Jesus picked that up one day, Matthew chapter 22, speaking to the religious leaders of his day who were opposing him. They’d ask him questions, trying to trick him up. And Jesus said, “I wanna ask you a question. You’ve heard of Messiah. Whose son is he?” And you can almost see their chest puffing out: “Oh, that’s an easy one. He’s David’s son.” And Jesus says, “Yeah, that’s right. But how then”—and he goes back to Psalm 110—”how then does David in the spirit call him Lord?” “The Lord said to my Lord.” And the only answer to that, of course, is an answer they’re unable to give and unwilling to give: that the Messiah is both David’s son and David’s Lord.
Pick this up, of course, in the New Testament and other famous passages like Philippians chapter two: he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant, humbled himself, emptied himself, or as the older translation, “he made himself of no reputation,” took the form of a servant and humbled himself, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. We have it again in Colossians chapter two where Paul tells us of Jesus that “in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”
One person, two natures. How is he both? How is he both God and man? Well, if the Trinity is the leading mystery of the Christian faith, then surely this is the second leading mystery of the Christian faith: that Jesus is both God and man. He is God in human flesh. Two natures in one person.
Now, notice that it is not human flesh merely that the Word has become. The eternal Word or the eternal Son has not only taken human flesh, he’s taken all that is entailed in human nature. He becomes all that we are. He’s one person, he’s not two. But in his one person, two natures unite. He took on all the limitations of humanity, but he never for a moment lacked any of the attributes and qualities of deity. So that in and through his human nature, the eternal Son now will be and experience all that it is to be human.
It’s fascinating. One person, the eternal Son, now in two natures, so that as to his human nature, he’s weak, he’s dependent, he becomes hungry, thirsty, suffers, he learns, he grows. But as to his divine nature, his eternal divine nature, he upholds all things by the word of his power always.
Here’s where it’s gonna stretch your minds. We can say he came to earth. Jesus uses language similar to that. He came down from heaven. We can say that he came down to earth in that he became one of us. But we must never for a moment think that he left heaven. I think sometimes when we sing Christmas carols, we lower our standards a little. One of them actually implies heresy: “Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown when thou camest to earth for me.” I understand what he’s trying to say. He’s trying to emphasize his condescension. The language is wrong. Terribly wrong. He came down, yes. He never for a moment left his throne or his kingly crown. For all of eternity and all of eternity future, he upholds all things by the word of his power.
If you read your words carefully in our hymnals, you might have—and I hope you do by the way—you might have noticed in the Trinity Hymnal: the editors of the Trinity Hymnal were a little bit more astute theologically than most editors of hymnals, and they weren’t gonna let that slip by. When we sing this in our Trinity Hymnal, we don’t sing, “Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown.” What we sing is, “Thou dost reign on high with a kingly crown, but thou camest to earth for me.”
John Calvin tries to capture this. “Here’s something marvelous,” he says. “The Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that without leaving heaven, he willed to be born in the Virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, to hang upon the cross, yet he continuously filled the world, even as he had done from the beginning.” Feel like your mind is being stretched?
The Mystery Of The Incarnation
How do we put all this together? Well, as you can imagine, Christian theologians from the earliest centuries have struggled to—how do we explain this? How do we comprehend this? How do we put it in words and explain it? And as you can imagine, there have been confusions on all sides of this and heresies on all sides of this. From the earliest century, the early church had to work on these things and say, “No, it’s this, it’s not that.” Misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of Jesus.
Interestingly, the first heresy to come into the Christian church—it’s reflected in the New Testament; the apostle John had to deal with it—the first heresy to come into the Christian church was they affirmed his deity at the expense of his humanity. It’s called Docetism. He seemed to be human, but he wasn’t really. He appeared to be human, but he wasn’t really human. And here was that first generation: they had seen Jesus and they had heard him and they’d seen the miracles that he did. They saw everything. It was no trouble for them to affirm his deity. It was understanding how he could be human that was difficult for them. And so John says, “We have to affirm, we must affirm that he has come in the flesh.”
Others, they affirm his humanity at the expense of his deity. And then we’ve had others in the early centuries of the church who came up with a third kind of being: he’s greater than man, much more than man, but he’s not quite what God is. And then you have others who look at God in a Unitarian way: he’s one person; sometimes he acts in the role of the Father, sometimes he acts in the role of the Son, acts in the role of the Spirit, but it’s just one person acting in these three different roles. Modalism, that one’s called.
We have all of these confusions, and then we have controversies in the history of the church, and then councils had to be convened to deal with these things and very carefully hammer out the statements: “No, Jesus is this, he’s not that,” and there’s this negative theology that’s important in those early creeds—he’s not that, he’s this; not that, this; not that.
When we come to the fifth century, we have the Chalcedonian definition of the person of Christ, which has stood for all of the church since, and it is a very important statement. We don’t have time to unpack it, but let me read it to you. You won’t catch it all in one reading, but it’s an important statement that has served the church well for all of these centuries:
“We all with one consent teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in Godhead, also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man. Consubstantial”—that’s the Greek word that some of you are familiar with, homoousios, of the same nature—”Consubstantial with the Father, according to the Godhead. Consubstantial with us, according to the manhood. He’s to be acknowledged in two natures. And these two natures are to be without confusion or change. They don’t mix and become something else. They’re not divided, and yet they’re inseparable in the one person. The distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Well, as I say, we don’t have time to unpack all of that, but those kinds of careful statements are needed for us to understand, rightly comprehend who Jesus is. And it is vitally important as those statements are; they’ve served the church so well ever since. Vitally important as those statements are, at the end of it all, we’re still left with mystery. We need those careful statements to aid our understanding as far as it can go to keep us from error. And it is vitally important for us as Christians to recognize rightly who Jesus is. If we do not recognize rightly who Jesus is, our worship will become blasphemy. It is incumbent upon preachers, teachers, always to push us, to stretch our minds, to try as far as we’re able to comprehend this that at the end of the day is still mystery.
And even then, after we’ve hammered out the statements, we’ve said he’s this and he’s not that, he’s one person, two natures, and these two natures are never confused, but there’s distinct natures in the one—after we’ve hammered all of that out, at that point we back up, we resort to the language of devotion, doxology, to express the wonder of it all.
My favorite Christmas carol—maybe we can sing it after the sermon. My favorite Christmas carol: “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” “Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord.” I love this phrase: “Late in time, behold him come. Offspring of a virgin’s womb. Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell. Jesus our Emmanuel. God with us.” That’s Charles Wesley.
Closer to our own time, you’ll find this kind of teaching just quickly mentioned in a way that we can sing over it without really recognizing the import of it. Philip Bliss’s famous hymn: “Man of Sorrows. What a name for the Son of God who came.” Or again, Charles Wesley: “‘Tis mystery all, the immortal, the immortal dies. Who can explore his strange design? In vain the firstborn seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine. ‘Tis mercy all. Let earth adore, let angel minds inquire no more.”
Absolutely the most amazing event conceivable. It’s intellectually staggering, and yet it’s the ground of our highest praise and most heartfelt devotion. One of the most fundamental axioms of Christian theology is the creator-creature distinction. God is God, and then there’s his creation. The two are not to be confused, and do not mix. We are not pantheists. There’s God who made everything else that is. There’s God all alone, and then God who made everything else. And all this everything else is what he made. And he is not it, and it is not him. He’s transcendent, he’s exalted above it all. And yet, that infinite gulf between creator and creature was crossed when God the Son took human flesh to himself. This is the heart of what we call Christmas. Amazing, the most amazing event imaginable.
God To The Rescue
Christmas Eve has always been the big time for celebration in the Zaspel home, back at least a few generations that I know of. Christmas Eve is when you get together and you exchange your gifts and all of that. And I don’t mind at all. I know preachers like to preach against these things, but I don’t mind at all all of the cultural accoutrements that have come to Christmas. The chestnuts and the open fire and the Christmas trees. And I don’t care if you have a Santa in your house. I don’t care about those things. When it comes down to it, this is what we remember.
2013, Halloween, our daughter died. And we learned quickly by Thanksgiving that at any festive occasion, any happy moments, Gina shows up missing. You know, you have your happy times and you’re festive and you laugh and immediately there’s this reflex: you wanna share it with someone you love and she’s not there. By Thanksgiving, we’d learned that. And so Christmas Eve came 2013. I said, “Let’s start a different tradition rather than getting together Christmas Eve. Why don’t we go to a Christmas Eve service?” That sounded like a good idea. We don’t have a Christmas Eve service at RBC. I think that’s a good idea; let families have their times together, it’s fine. I think it’s a good idea. But in our circumstances, let’s go find a Christmas Eve service to go to.
So for a few years we did that. And it didn’t prove to be a good idea. We’d go to visit our way around for a few years. One was so highbrow, formal, beautiful, professionally done music—choir singing in Latin, which I didn’t really get a lot out of. And others were—I have to characterize it as just trite, frivolous, light. Others were so sentimental, it was just sappy. And it wasn’t quite “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” or “I’ll be home for Christmas,” but not what you’d expect such an event for a church to celebrate.
One of them, there was no sermon at all. And another one, the pastor tried to make some clever connection between “I’ll be home for Christmas” and coming home to God for Christmas. And I appreciated the intent to be evangelistic and all of that, but there was no real exposition of the gospel as such. And another one, the pastor got up after all the singing was over—a young fellow, you can tell he works hard at being what we call today “relevant.” And he walks up to the pulpit and he has a baby blanket over his shoulder, just like Linus. And in fact, he wanted us to think of Linus. And he spent several minutes, the first several minutes of his sermon, talking about Linus. And then what that blanket symbolizes—it’s a security blanket. Linus was lonely or he had burdens or whatever, and now it’s your burdens. And at a dramatic moment in the sermon, the blanket falls off and you recognize that in Jesus, you feel better.
And you know, it’s not that any of that is wrong. But I went away from those things thinking: when I decided to come and go to these Christmas Eve services, what I was looking for was not something light. Not something trite or frivolous. I certainly didn’t want sappy sentimentalism. What I wanted was something big. Something massive, something weighty. Remind me, in the words of Paul, that God was manifest in the flesh. Remind me that God has come to redeem a world that’s broken by sin. Remind me that Jesus is an all-sufficient Savior, that he has come, God in the flesh, as my stand-in. And he assumed every one of my obligations and every one of my responsibilities. And he went to the cross, answering for my sin, and God raised him from the dead as our forerunner into glory. Remind me that Jesus really is what his name says: He is God to the rescue.
And that’s the reason for the incarnation. And John tells us that in verse 14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We’ve seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of”—I can just insert the word here—”full of saving grace and truth.” There’s so much here in verse 14, the end of the verse, that I would like to expand on that will have to be next year, I guess. We can’t do it today.
But verse 14 then tells us that in Jesus, God came in a glorious revelation of divine saving grace. He’s full of grace and truth. He is a God of such grace that he stoops to become one of us, so that, as one of us, he can do for us what only God can do. We find this everywhere in the New Testament. Matthew records for us the words of the angel in Matthew chapter 1 verses 20 and 21: “His name will be Emmanuel, God with us. You’ll call his name Jesus,” Yeshua, the Lord saves, “for he shall save his people from their sins.” The words of Paul: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Or the wonderful passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 8: “He who was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.”
That’s John 1:14. He came in a full revelation of saving grace. It’s verse 18: Jesus, the eternal Word incarnate, has made God known. If we would know what God is like—how do you know what God is like? John tells us, if you wanna know what God’s like, look at Jesus. If you wanna know what God is like, yes, look at the created order and you’ll see his magnificent greatness and his transcendence, his eternality and his self-sufficiency and independence and all of that. And if you want to know what God is like, certainly read his Word and see what he says about himself in his Word.
But don’t miss this: if you’d know what God is like, look at a manger and then look to a cross where God himself stooped to become one of us and went the distance to bear in our place the penalty of our sin. And this is what distinguishes Christianity from all other religions. Jesus is not just another great religious figure. He’s in a class all by himself. He is God in human flesh come to accomplish what only God can do.
This is why the death of Christ has such a great saving significance. As a man, He stands in as one of us, taking our place. And as God, that sacrifice that he offered is of infinite value. This is the ground of Christian exclusivism. Jesus is the only way. And the reason he’s the only way is that he’s the only one so qualified. This is Christianity’s trump card, if you will.
Here in the incarnation of the eternal Son, all the hard questions are answered. What makes Jesus so important? What makes him unique? What makes him superior? Well, here we have it. He is the eternal Word made flesh. He is God come as one of us to rescue us from our sin. God and all of his undiminished qualities as God stands in our place, stoops to become one of us, takes upon himself all of the limitations of humanity so that he really is one of us. And standing in our place, he answers for all of our sins against him.
This is the great event of history. This is the hinge of Christianity. This is the hinge of history. Without this doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God, there would be no Christianity, there would be no gospel, there would be no means of salvation, no way of addressing the problem of human sin. Without this, the incarnation of the divine Son, there would be no kingdom of God, no people of God—just a lost, broken, condemned humanity. But John writes to tell us here in God, the Son incarnate, the Word made flesh, we have just the Savior you need. Here is one perfectly equipped to save any of us. Amen.