Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: John 1:14 | Date: December 28, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

John Chapter 1

John chapter 1. For the sake of time, I will just read verses 1 through 5, and then verse 14:

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 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.

And then verse 14:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, as we come again to consider this familiar theme that is so all-important for all of us, we pray that You’ll enlarge our minds to grasp it, enlarge our hearts to revel in it. We pray that You’ll reaffirm our faith in the Lord Jesus through this refreshing theme. We ask in His name, amen.

You may not have thought of it in these kinds of terms, but the Christmas holiday has long become two distinctly different holidays. On the one hand, there’s the holiday that has the pine trees and the snow and the bells and the gift exchanges and the festivities and all of that. And then on the other hand, and presumably lying behind it all, is the original; and that is the event in which we—the day in which we celebrate—the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course, that’s our focus here this morning. And what we want to see is that that event that we have celebrated now over the last couple of weeks is more than that of a baby in a manger. It’s more than shepherds out in the field. It’s more than wise men. And it’s certainly more than bells and festivities and snowy fun times and things like that. It is the central event of all of history, and it is the very hinge of the Christian faith, and I want us to see that again this morning.

The purpose of the message, then, will be to consider what we call Christmas in its largest context, both biblically and theologically. I hope at times to stretch your mind a little bit, stretch your heart, and to hopefully reaffirm our faith in the Lord Jesus. So let’s look at the Christmas event in its big picture. In the story, our text will be primarily verse 14 here, and we will get to that, but we’re going to see it in its largest biblical context as well, and we’ll work through the entire story of the Bible. I’ll assume that I’m preaching to people that are somewhat familiar with their Bible, and so we won’t take time to read all of these passages, but I do want to trace the story of the Bible, picking up on the highlights of it that lead us to what we have here in John chapter one.

The Story Of The Bible

The story, of course, begins in Genesis chapter one, and the first verse of the Bible, of course, is just a remarkable, remarkable statement. We’ve seen this before. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And it’s a remarkable statement because it introduces to us, first of all, not just the origin of the world and the chronological beginning of time and creation and the created order, but it introduces for us, first of all, God, our Creator, who made all that is by a mere spoken word.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In the beginning, God. Already we have some assumptions thrown in: that when the beginning began, at the beginning of this created order, God was already there. And in fact, He is the beginner of it all. He’s the creator of all that is. And we learn from that first verse of the Bible—”In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”—some very important propositions about God. We learn that He is eternal. He was there when the beginning began. And if we say that He was eternal, we also say that He is self-existing, independent of the created order. There’s God and there’s the created order. All of the created order, this natural world that we live in, all of it is the work of His hands. He’s independent of it. It is separate from Him. And there’s this great distinction between the Creator and the creation, and the two can’t be crossed.

God is eternal, God is independent, self-existing, and if He can simply say, “Let there be,” and there was, then we see that He’s all-powerful. And when we see that He says, “Let it be this way,” and “Let it be this way,” and it was that way, we see that He’s not only all-powerful, but He’s all-wise. So we have God, who’s Lord over all creation, bringing all of this into being for His own purposes—whatever they are, we don’t have it stated quite yet in the earliest chapters of Genesis. And so we have God presented as the great Creator over all that is. He’s supreme over it all, and with that, He is the unrivaled Lord. He’s unaffected by His creation. He’s not subject to His created order. He’s Lord over all of it. He’s the only one in His class, and so He is unthreatened, reigning in majesty over all.

In the earliest centuries in particular—theologians still affirm this, but particularly in the earlier centuries of the church—there was a doctrine, an attribute of God that was emphasized in this regard: that God is impassible. Impassible. What that means simply is God is without passions. And I suspect it’s because that is so open to misunderstanding that it has become a little less common to hear about it today. What it’s meant to state is that God cannot suffer. He’s not subject to His created order. There’s nothing in all of the created order that can ever happen or be done that would in any way threaten God, that He would suffer, or that He would somehow be vulnerable to it. He’s God over all. I think in our confession of faith, it’s rendered in the modern version of it: He has unchangeable emotions. So God loves, but God doesn’t fall in love. God never sang, “I can’t help falling in love.” He never sang that. He’s not subject to anything in the created order. He rules over it all.

Now, as God’s self-revelation progresses in the Scriptures, we find that this God is triune. He is one God, three persons. One as to His being and essence, three as to His persons. He’s not one and three in the same sense—that would be nonsense—but as to His being and essence, He is one. And that being and essence is shared equally among three persons: the Father, Son, and the Spirit.

The only distinction between the three is not their attributes. The only distinction between them is their relations, one to the other. The Father begets, the Son is begotten. The Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and they’re distinguished by these relations, but they share equally in all that it is to be God. Uncreated, eternal, self-existing, all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, eternal in every way, shared equally by all three of the persons.

Westminster Shorter Catechism states it this way, the fourth question: “What is God? God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being, His wisdom, His power, in every way. And this is true equally of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

The Father is infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being. The Son is infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being. The Spirit is infinite, eternal, unchanging in His being. And the same for His wisdom and His power and His holiness and justice and goodness and truth. This is the God who reigns over all.

In Genesis chapter one, then, we read at the end of chapter one, this God creates man and woman, humanity’s first parents. They are made in His image, they are made to reflect Him in certain ways, they’re made with the capacity of fellowship with God, and they’re given a role. As God’s image bearers, they are to reflect God’s rule in the earth and extend His dominion over all the earth. In Genesis chapter two, a man is placed into a garden; the woman is created to be with him. They’re given certain directives and one prohibition: don’t eat from that one tree.

And then Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter 3, it seems all to fall apart entirely. At first, man rebels against God and his created role that God has given him. And because of man’s rebellion, Adam and Eve and all of humanity fall under a curse. The only suitable punishment: death. Condemnation. And so now man, by his humanity, by its disobedience to God, is alienated from God and has fallen under a condemnation, a judgment of condemnation. And that now is the status of this newly created humanity. And it seems that this project has fallen all apart already.

In pronouncing judgment, God then addresses the tempter as well, who brought all of this into… comes to pass. And God pronounces judgment on the tempter. And He says that the woman will have an offspring, a male offspring, a “He.” He will come and He’ll be a champion and He will crush the tempter’s head. Now, it’ll come at some cost to Himself because the tempter will crush His heel. But still, the utter defeat of the tempter is promised.

And so we have at the outset of humanity, the outset of history, this note of hope that shapes all the rest of history that will come. This promise will be reversed. Man’s rebellion has brought us into a state of alienation from God. We are under condemnation from God. But God promises that the one who brought all of this to pass will be judged. He’ll be destroyed. He’ll crawl on his belly and eat dirt. And that by the work of a champion, who at some cost to himself, will defeat the tempter.

And so there’s the story of history as it unfolds. And here, by the way, we have a glimpse, a hint of God’s purpose in creating the world. Why did God create the world? He created the world to glorify Himself in the redemption of sinful humanity. And that’s the story of history as it unfolds.

Now, as history unfolds, humanity only deepens its rebellion against God. And we come to Genesis chapters six through nine, and so corrupt has humanity become that God determines it must be wiped out entirely, except for eight souls: Noah and his family. Special place is given to Noah’s son, Shem. God will be the God of Shem. We’re not told yet how that will play out, but He’s the God of Shem. So we’re to watch that. A few chapters later, we’re introduced to a descendant of Shem, Abraham. And God makes a promise to Abraham. He says to Abraham, “I’ll make a nation through you. And through that nation, a seed will come, an offspring will come, who will bless all the families of the world.” And so this hope theme continues.

We come to Exodus, and God now forms that nation that He had promised to Abraham. He redeems them out of Egypt where they’d been slaves. He takes them to Mount Sinai. He gives them their law, their constitution that will form them as their people, as a separate, distinct people among all the nations of the earth. He gives them these laws that will preserve them as a distinct people through whom that seed will come.

Along the way, finally, we come to the book of Samuel, where Israel’s given a king. And now, like the other nations, they have a king ruling over them. That first king is a complete failure. He’s an apostate, Saul. God chooses another man by the name of David. And God, just like He did with Abraham, God enters into covenant promise with David and says, “I’m gonna give you a son.” So this theme of the offspring, it continues.

Genesis chapter three, it’s going to be the offspring of a woman, a male descendant of humanity. In Genesis chapter 12, it’s a male descendant of Abraham. And now in 2 Samuel chapter seven, it’s going to be a son of David who will come. And God says, “I’ll make him a king and he will establish your throne forever. He’ll rule the world over in peace and in righteousness.” And He makes the wonderful promise, “He’ll be a son to Me. I’ll be his father. Your son will be My son. And I’ll establish his rule the world over.”

Well, the stage then is set. Everything’s in place for God to fulfill His promise. We have a nation that He’s promised. We have a kingly line. All we’re waiting for at this point, then, is that greater Son of David to come to fulfill God’s promise to him.

Well, and then as history unfolds, the promise again seems to collapse, seems to be a total failure. The nation is not faithful. David’s son, after David’s son, after David’s son… they’re not faithful. They rebel against God. The kingdom is split early on. In the north, there’s never a faithful king. In the south, there are a couple. But overall, they become unfaithful.

God mercifully reaffirms His promise. He looked through the prophets, He looked through the Psalms, and we find God promising a day when He will intervene in a great way. He’ll establish His kingdom, David’s son will come, David will rule over His people. Along with that, though, in the prophets especially, there is this warning. When God gave His people Israel their law on Mount Sinai, accompanying with the promise of blessing, the warning of the covenant curses: “If you are not faithful, you’ll be judged.” Even with the promise to David’s son—”I’ll be his father, he’ll be My son, he’ll rule in your place”—but if he is not faithful, I will punish him with the rod of men.

So we have this tension in the storyline as it works its way through. We have the promise of God doing good and keeping His promise that He’d made to Abraham and to David. And at the same time, a warning that if they blow it, then they’ll be cursed. But still, we have the reaffirmation after reaffirmation that God will keep His promise. He promises in the prophets this famous Day of the Lord. Earth has had its day, God will have His day. And in God’s day, in the Day of the Lord, He will break into history, He’ll defeat His enemies, He’ll bring final vindication to His people.

The Psalms and the prophets, we find that God will not only break into history Himself, but He will establish David’s son. David’s king, David’s kingly son will rule. God’s king will rule over His people. We find the king himself described, particularly in the Psalms, but also in the prophets, that this king will embody all of the ideals of a faithful king. In terms of Psalm 1, he won’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful. His delight will be in the law of the Lord.

Psalm 72: He’ll not only defeat all of his enemies and not only will all the world bring tribute to him, but he will have particular compassion to the outcasts, the disadvantaged in society. Psalm 2: Even if the nations of the world collectively rage against him, God has resolved; He set His king on Zion and the king will inherit all the nations.

Come to the prophets. We find, as we’ve seen in our Sunday night series, that God will send His servant. That’s Isaiah’s term for him. His servant will come. He’ll bring Jacob back. And he’ll establish justice in the earth. And this promise goes on and on.

And not only will this king embody all the ideals of a faithful king, the kingdom itself is described in just the most glorious of terms. We find it described in Isaiah as Jerusalem exalted above the rest of the earth and all the nations of the world pouring into it, learning from this king, learning justice and peace reigning through the earth through the rule of this king; and through all of these kinds of promises that hope is reassured and reaffirmed and reaffirmed again.

One outstanding aspect of that promise—and it’s rather puzzling, and we’ve looked at it here many times before—and that is there seems to be two tracks of promise that run through both the Psalms and the prophets. On the one hand, God Himself will come. This will be His day. He breaks into history. He will shepherd His people. He will defeat His enemies. He will vindicate His people. And on the other hand, we have this other track: that there’ll be a Davidic son, a son of Abraham, a son of David, who will come and he will reign and he will defeat God’s enemies and he will bring safety to God’s people.

And then sometimes you find where those two tracks come somewhat together. And that king, that Davidic son, is described in just the most outstanding terms. Psalm 45, for example, he’s addressed as God: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” This is the Davidic son addressed as God. In Isaiah chapter seven, he’s given a name, Immanuel, God with us. In Isaiah chapter nine, his name is the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.

And we find passages like Micah chapter 5. He’ll be born in Bethlehem. Okay, that’s the city of David. He’s a royal son. I’ll have more to say about that in a minute. Okay, he’s born in Bethlehem. He’s a son of Abraham, son of David. But at the same time, his goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. He hails from Bethlehem. He hails from eternity. Both of them come together in this one figure. It’s not explained for us—it must have been puzzling at the time—it comes together later as we’ll see.

But in all of this, we have this hope reaffirmed in this glorious figure who will come. He’s the offspring of the woman who will bring triumph over Satan, he’s the offspring of Abraham who will bring blessing to the nations, he’s the son of David who will rule over God’s kingdom, and yet he’s God Himself who will come in His day, overthrow all rebellion, and bring final vindication to all of His people.

So there’s the hope. And yet, we get toward the end of the Old Testament scriptures, and what we find is that the nation is unfaithful, David’s sons are unfaithful, one after another, after another, until finally the Davidic dynasty collapses altogether. The nation is carried away, the kingly line ends—in fact it ends with a curse, Coniah. It seems all to have failed.

In fact, there’s a hint of that in the Micah prophecy. I alluded to that a moment ago. In the Micah prophecy, in Micah chapter 5, he’ll be born in Bethlehem. This royal son will be born in Bethlehem. Now, you hear that and you think, well, of course, that’s the city of David. Okay, it’s echoing the David theme. But why would he be born in Bethlehem? He’s a royal son. Why wouldn’t he be born in Jerusalem? The answer, of course, is that Micah foresaw, even if it’s just stated cryptically there, he foresaw the collapse of the Davidic dynasty.

In Isaiah’s language, the stump of Jesse had been cut down, the tree of Jesse cut down to a stump. It seems to be over. Now, as promised, God brings deliverance from their exile in Babylon and He brings them back. They’re just a shadow of what they were and there’s no Davidic king ruling there. There they are. Promises being reaffirmed and reaffirmed, but it seems to have fallen. We’ve seen some time ago in our exposition of Psalm 89, the entire psalm given to that lament: “God, You’ve promised wonderful things to David, but now look at us. It seems all to have collapsed and Your promise seems to have fallen through.”

Well, that’s the Old Testament. He’s coming, God will keep His promise, but it sure doesn’t look like He will. And then, there’s silence. 400 years, not a prophet speaks. Will God keep His promise? And then suddenly, a new prophet, John the Baptist, bursts on the scene: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” God’s promised kingdom will come to pass. God will keep His promise, and He’s here. And he introduces Jesus to Israel. And this is the distinction of John the Baptist, greater than all the prophets, because he did not foretell merely the coming of Jesus; he actually introduces Jesus to the world. The kingdom of heaven is here. Promise kept: the arrival of Jesus.

And then we have the gospel writers, particularly Matthew and Luke, where they present Jesus against the backdrop of all of these ancient promises. Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, opens our New Testament with the otherwise really boring words: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” You’ll never read a biography that starts like that. And yet Matthew begins, very importantly, establishing at the outset the genealogical credentials of this messianic king.

In Luke chapter 1, the angel appears to Mary and says to her, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son. You will call his name Jesus, and he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And then in Luke chapter 2: “Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.” Now all of this is significant. Mary herself is a direct descendant of David through his son Nathan. Joseph, Jesus’ legal father, is a direct descendant of David through David’s son Solomon. He’s a direct descendant of the royal line, and yet he’s not in Jerusalem reigning in a palace. He’s a carpenter, a construction worker, a builder. The Davidic line has fallen.

Jesus is born in Bethlehem as the prophet had foretold. He comes out of Bethlehem. The Davidic dynasty now is being restored by this promised son. And then in Luke chapter 2, Jesus is brought for this dedication into the temple and both Simeon and Anna pick him up and they acknowledge the same theme: God here in this baby has come good on His promise.

The Word Became Flesh

And all of that then brings us to John chapter 1. John tells us the Christmas story, but in a very different way. There’s no manger, there’s no virgin mother, there are no shepherds, no wise men. He informs us more deeply and brings together those otherwise puzzling strands of prophecy.

Verse one: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And there, right there, is volumes of Christian theology. “In the beginning.” Remember that? That’s Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning, when it all began, God—self-existing, eternal—created. Now he affirms the same of this one that he calls the Word. “And the Word was with God,” so there’s some sense he’s distinct from Him, and yet, “the Word was God.” He’s one with Him. These are the basic elements of the doctrine of the Trinity.

So here we have the second person, the Son, whom he calls here the Word: eternal, the Creator, forever, all that God is—all-knowing, all-powerful, unable to suffer—all of those things. In the words of Hebrews chapter 1, He upholds all things by the word of His power. Sovereign, all-glorious, reigning over all as the second person of the triune Godhead.

And then with that in mind, verses 1 and following, we come to the stunning statement of verse 14: “The Word became flesh.” That’s our word, incarnation. God in human flesh. Verses one and following: from all eternity, He’s always been all that God is. But now something new has happened. He takes on human flesh. God incarnate. The word Paul uses in Philippians chapter 2: He emptied Himself. He emptied Himself by taking to Himself a human nature and all that humanity is. And he emphasizes here in verse 14 the weakest—it’s a striking thing—the weakest aspect of humanity: flesh. This one who from all eternity was God, the Creator of the world, the Creator of this stuff, flesh, now becomes flesh.

This is the significance of the Virgin Birth. This is the means by which God now has become man. In one sense, it’s the birth like any other baby. He’s born of a woman. But in another level, it’s entirely different because there’s no man involved. God created in her womb this child who now is come—God, man. So on one level this baby is like any other baby: he’s born of a woman, he’s helpless. And yet unlike any other baby, his birth does not mark the beginning of his existence; his birth marks the beginning of his human existence. And that accounts for Micah’s prophecy, doesn’t it? He hails from Bethlehem, and he hails from eternity.

God become man. So we have in this one baby, this one person, now two natures. Fully divine, fully human. Or as the language that the church has inherited: very God and very man. Theological language, we call this the hypostatic union—the union of two natures in one person. He’s God the Son, and as God the Son, He is and always has been and always will be all that God is. Infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His very being. Infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His wisdom and in His power. In all that it is to be God. He’s all-knowing, He’s all-powerful, He’s everywhere present. Again, in the words of Hebrews chapter 1, He upholds all things by the word of His power. He’s all-glorious in every respect as God. He’s God the Son.

But now, through His human nature now taken, He learns. He grows. He grows in favor with God and with men. This one who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being now experiences what it is to be finite through His human nature. He is finite. He’s limited in knowledge, limited by time, limited by space. With all of the limitations of humanity, He experiences them now. He suffers, He becomes thirsty, weary, hungry. All of this through His human nature.

Heresies Of The Incarnation

We can say all of this and it becomes mind-bending at some point. And you can imagine that in the early centuries of the church in particular, this spawned several different kinds of heresies that the church had to address and condemn. On the one hand—and this was the first heresy to come into the Christian church, you find the Apostle Paul in particular, or the Apostle John in particular, addressing it—the first heresy was a denial of His humanity. They saw who Jesus was, and they saw what he did and what he was like, and it wasn’t difficult for them to understand, this is God come to us. What’s difficult to grasp is how he could be man. They had legends about him that he’d walk on the sand and wouldn’t leave footprints because he wasn’t a real man, things like that. He seemed to be man. And so John has to affirm, to be a Christian you must affirm that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

And then some time later you have the other end of the spectrum, and you have them denying His deity. He’s something greater than man, but he’s not quite all that God is. The church had to deal with that. In between you have others. Well, he’s God and he’s man, and what that means is he’s two separate persons. No, he’s one person. Two natures in one person. Some will say that he’s one person, but this deity of his has so swallowed up his humanity that it’s become a third kind of being. No, his humanity is just like our humanity that was necessary for him to be our Redeemer. His humanity remains just like ours, and yet he is God as well.

In more recent times, late 19th, early 20th centuries, a heresy called Kenoticism: God emptied Himself, and what they mean by that is that God the Son was fully divine, but in His incarnate state He was not. Or they would define it in terms of He has surrendered various aspects of His deity during His incarnate state, so now He’s not omniscient, He’s not all-powerful, He’s limited in those ways.

Still today, because of the complexity of this kind of thing, we often state it mistakenly. One of the well-worn Christmas songs that we sing—I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled on myself forgetting the words; I think I have it now—we sing, “Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown when thou camest to earth for me.” And of course what we’re trying to emphasize when we sing that, and what the author of the song surely was trying to accomplish, was to emphasize the infinite depth of condescension that God the Son endured in His incarnation. But “leave thy throne and thy kingly crown when thou camest to earth for me”? The problem with that is He came from heaven, sure enough. He came to earth, sure enough. But He never for a moment abandoned His throne or His crown. There was never a disruption in the Trinity, but God the Son, as to His divine nature, as to His deity, remains God on His throne forever. Never abandon His throne or His kingly crown. And so in our Trinity hymnals, editors of the hymnal caught that—they’re more astute than most—and so, “Thou didst reign on high with a kingly crown, yet Thou camest to earth for me.”

This doctrine, in an interesting kind of way, ended up dividing the two branches of the Protestant Reformation: Lutheranism and the Reformed branch. They would have agreed on these terms formally, in terms of the incarnation itself, but when it came to defining the Lord’s Supper, this became a difficult issue. Both the Lutheran and the Reformed agreed that Roman Catholics had it wrong with their doctrine of transubstantiation, where when a priest says his hocus pocus, hoc es corpus meum (this is my body), when he says that, a miracle happens, and this actually becomes the real body and blood of Jesus in the elements. And both the Reformed and the Lutherans said, “No, no, no, no, we can’t have that,” because now we have a re-offering of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, and it becomes a blasphemous doctrine at heart, strikes at the heart of the gospel; we can’t have that.

Luther couldn’t move far enough away from that. And so he said, when we say hoc es corpus meum, what we mean is that God’s body, Christ’s body, His real physical body, is in and with these elements when we distribute them. And the Reformed looked at that and they said, “No, you can’t have that.” Because if this is Christ’s real body in and with the elements when they’re distributed, now you have Christ omnipresent in His humanity. And if He’s omnipresent in His humanity, that’s a different humanity from all of ours and we don’t have one like us. And so the Lutherans give a dirty name to the Reformed and they call this doctrine the extra calvinisticum: Christ’s body exists extra, outside and beyond… His deity exists outside and beyond His humanity. And of course the Reformed take the term aggressively and enthusiastically.

Coming to grips with the implications of this is just a mind-bending thing. Here in one person, now living in a dual kind of way through His divine and human natures, in His divine nature always, always, always all that God is, and now through His human nature experiencing all of the limitations and all of the weaknesses of frail humanity.

Promise Kept

And so God the Son, He never left His throne, He never left His kingly crown when He came to earth. And that, and nothing less, is the significance of that Christmas event. Yes, there was a virgin mother, and yes, there were shepherds, and there were wise men, and there were gifts that were given, and all of those things have their own significance. But the stunning marvel of what we call Christmas is the identity of that baby. Here, the Creator crosses that infinite gulf, that infinite chasm, and becomes the creature. Here the unseen God makes His appearance in a scene of men. This one who shares the glory of undiminished deity with the Father and the Spirit equally now veils that glory in humble human flesh.

This one who is—what was the Westminster catechism description?—this one who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His very being, now experiences the limitations of humanity. In the words of Hebrews, this one who upholds all things by the word of His power, now is a helpless baby who needs tending, he needs feeding, needs changing, needs protecting. This one who has life in himself, this one who is self-existing and independent of anything else, now becomes a helpless baby who feeds from his mother.

Language of Hebrews chapter 1 again: this one whom angels worship and have worshipped since before the foundation of the world, now becomes of no obvious significance at all; just another human baby. And this is the focus of the best, the best of the Christmas songs. It’s certainly not the bells and the snow and the sleighs and things like that. But the best of the Christmas songs focus on this. We sang several of them this morning. It focuses on the marvelous truth that God has become man. Real God, real man, two natures in one person. “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel, God with us.”

This is God’s promise kept. Since the garden, this is the hinge of the Christian gospel. Bethlehem’s baby is no other than God Himself come to the rescue of sinful humanity. God Himself now become the offspring of the woman to defeat the tempter. God Himself now come as the offspring of Abraham to bless all the families of the world. God Himself, now the son of David—David’s son, yet David’s Lord—come to reign over God’s kingdom in the earth.

Paul’s words in Galatians chapter four: he’s born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law. God the Son, incarnate, comes, lives as a man under the law, keeps the law perfectly, then offers himself to God in sacrifice for the sins of his people. We sing about that: “‘Tis mystery all. Let earth adore, let angel minds inquire no more. Amazing love, how can it be? That thou, my God, shouldst die for me.”

In his death, he conquers sin, he removes all that separates us from God, restores us to God, destroys the grip that Satan had on humanity, destroys his rule, establishes God’s kingdom. God raises him from the dead, exalts him to the throne of heaven where he awaits only his return when he will bring his kingdom to its final grand consummation. This is not only promise kept, this is the ground of hope of every sinner. There is no gospel without it. It is the answer to the fall. It’s the answer to humanity’s deepest and greatest problem. God Himself come to the rescue of sinners, born of a man, born of a woman, to die as a man in place of sinners.

And here’s the Christian hope. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father, what an amazing thing this is to consider that our great God has gone to such lengths to become one of us, to rescue us who have sinned against Him. We praise You for it. We thank You for Jesus. In His name, amen.