The Meaning of God's Arrival

The last few weeks we have been starting reflections on Christmas, and I guess it's been in anticipation of Wednesday that we've been thinking through the pronouncements. We read, for example, last week during the carol service of Isaiah 9, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government shall be upon his shoulders. His name will be wonderful counselor. His name will be prince of peace, mighty God."

And we looked as well at Luke in the morning. We looked at the incredible pronouncement of the angel and the declaration of what the angels gave there. And then on this coming Wednesday on Christmas Day, we'll look at Matthew's account, Matthew's account of the Christmas Day or the Christmas event. But today we're going to look at the apostle John's account and I might say perhaps my favourite account, although it doesn't have all the angels and the shepherds and the magi. John's account, John 1's account of the coming of Jesus. The apostle John doesn't write a Christmas time story like Matthew and Luke do.

He doesn't give us the birth time stories about wise men and shepherds. He prefers to draw larger pictures. They're massive lines, these lines that he draws, enormous shapes that if you were to read it with new eyes, you would shake your head and clasp your mouth shut with the amazing truth that is being explained here. Because here at the beginning of his account of the life of Jesus, he begins with this opening proposal: God has come to us.

Just in case you get lost in the beautiful angels and the shepherds that we saw on our carols evening, just in case you got lost with the cuteness of babies, hear this: God came to be among us. Let's read John's account of that event. John chapter 1, verse 1, and we will read through to verse 14. John 1, verse 1. "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.

And the word was God. He, not it, he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through this word, through him. 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. But he was not the light, but came to bear witness about 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. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, He gave the right to become children of God. These children were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor 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 son from the father, full of grace and truth." So far our reading. Christmas, Christmas time is the moment in our Christian calendar where we celebrate something called the incarnation. Incarnation literally means in the flesh.

It is one of the most important aspects of the Christian faith, the Christian message. It's the declaration, it's the belief, it's the doctrine that God has come to earth as a man to show us who He is, to show us that He cares about a relationship with us. In majestic words, the apostle John writes about Jesus as the son of God.

Verse 1 of John 1, he says that Jesus was the word and the word was God. In the ancient Greek context in which John is writing here originally, the Greek philosophy of his time said that this term, the word, which in the Greek was logos, logos was the power, was the force by which all things made sense and held together. It was not a concept, but rather a real thing by which we could understand and experience and know something to be true. But according to Greek philosophy, this logic, that's where we get the word logic from, logos, this reason or logic is an abstract force that brought order and harmony to the universe.

But here is John saying, this logos is not abstract. This logos doesn't sit outside time and space removed from this world. The logic or reason of the world is in fact a person summed up in Christ. That's why he says in verse at the start of verse 2, doesn't it? "It wasn't he, it was from the beginning with God."

He uses the personal pronoun he. This word is a he that was in the beginning with God. But I also need to say this: that Greek philosophy wasn't the main aim of John's opening words here. He grabs, it's true, this philosophical term, but he continues to speak of what arrived with that logos on that Christmas night two thousand years ago. And John explains who this logos is and what he came to do.

In him, verse 4, in him was life. In this logos, in this reason or logic that was God, in him was life and that life was the light of men. The light that shines in the darkness, a darkness that cannot overcome it. Before we get swept up into philosophical concepts of how the world has order and consistency, and it is a really challenging concept for atheistic philosophers to explain how we can understand in the first place.

Before going down that path, John quickly moves to highlight something more ominous behind the logos and the reason the logos has come to us. John suggests that the word that was God had come to earth because there was something dark in the world. God came to earth to provide light in darkness. In him was life and the life was the light of men. And John goes further to sum up the irony of Jesus' entry into this time and space.

Verse 10 says, "He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not know him. The world did not recognize him. He came to his own and his own did not receive him." And again, you just have to go to the account of Matthew to see the incredible reality of this: when Jesus is born as a baby and King Herod finds out that there is a possible usurper to his authority, Herod goes out and he kills every boy under two in the city of Bethlehem.

From day one, the logos that comes into the world is not received, is not welcomed. Darkness pursues him. From the outset, we see Jesus enters a world that hunts him, rejects him and denies him. But John's not done. He goes on in verse 12 and children, verse 13, who were born are not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of a father.

They are born of God. And now we start getting to the pointy end of John's Christmas account. We get to the pointy end of why the logos god had to come. Here is where John answers the question that we often find ourselves asking about everything. So what?

If this is true, so what? So what that God came into the world? So what that God is the light in the darkness? But John is saying this is the promise of what Christmas means. That those who receive God in the flesh, those who believe in the name of Jesus, that they will be given the privilege to be made new creations.

They will be reborn, John says, not as children of men, but children of God, children of a loving father. To all those who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. The early church father, he's got a wicked name, Athanasius. He's gonna name their newborns Athanasius. The early church father Athanasius said of the incarnation, "Christ became what we are, that He might make us what He is."

Mankind can only become children of God because the son of God has made it possible. This new birth is not like anything we really know. It's not the birth of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of our father. John says we are born of God. And friend, whether your physical birth was an accident, was unwanted even, whether that birth was carefully planned, whether your parents were ready to have you or they brought you into a situation that was less than ideal.

This is what Jesus' arrival meant for you. God has all along known and chosen you. It was His will. God is choosing you to become His. And this is the amazing thing that is being said here.

The Greek term that John uses here in the word, in the verb to be born in verse 13 is the same verb used to speak of Jesus in John 3:16. For God so loved the world that He sent His, and in the old English, not say "his one and only son." The old English says "his only begotten son." To beget a son is to have a son, is to desire a son to be born. To become a child of God for John is to have been begotten by God.

Now there's a difference because there is the one and only son, Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. Jesus is God's unique, sinless and perfect son with a capital S. But here is an amazing insinuation. There is a parallel between our being born of God and Jesus being the begotten son of God. To be born of God is to experience something holy and altogether supernatural.

And so when this thought is combined with the statement that we have been given the right to be children of God, which He also adds, to have a right to become children means to have an authority to acknowledge God as father now, not as master, not as creator, not as the one we must give an account to of our life as judge. He is our father. The apostle Paul beautifully sums this up in Galatians 4. He says this: "But when the time had fully come, in perfect timing, God sent His son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law so that we might receive the full rights of sons."

Because Jesus came, as we celebrate Christmas, and because of His work on the cross, which we celebrate at Easter, because Jesus has come, we have been given the right to call God father. And that makes us know God in a wonderfully unique way. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was told some time ago a pastor had said to him, a pastor had said to him, "We shouldn't expect God to do anything for us because God doesn't owe us anything." And in a sense, we hear that and we think that sounds right. If God is creator, He's created our existence.

We have absolutely no right to say, "I demand you make me better than you have. I demand you give me a better lot in life than you have. Give me more talent. Give me more skills. Give me an expression of my life.

Add some colour to my life. Reshape me to be more than I am." If all we have is from, haven't given God anything in order that God should owe us back, then the statement "we shouldn't expect anything from God" sounds about right. But if God has truly become our father through the work of Jesus Christ, He may not owe us anything, but He will give us everything we need, especially because He is called the good father. My friends, none of these things will matter.

None of these things would have mattered if what happened in verse 14 didn't actually happen. And this is perhaps the ultimate thing that we are to remind ourselves of this Christmas. The word has become flesh. In verse 1, John says, "The word was God." Jesus was deity.

He was God. He was powerful. Through Him, everything that is known was created. John says in verse 12 that there is an undeniable clarity that He is God, but then we are also told of the purpose of why He, as the word of God, came to the earth. It was in order to bring people into a father-child relationship with God.

But verse 14 now explains how this was all possible. It was only possible because He came in the flesh. It's no surprise that John goes on to say in that same verse, "We have seen the glory. We have seen His glory." And again, if Jesus was God in flesh, it's not surprising to us to see that word glory used here.

It's not surprising. I mean, that is a glorious concept. God who is bigger than the universe that we, at this stage, don't know the ends of, this God came in the form of a limited body. It's not a surprise to understand John using the word glory here. If Jesus was creator God, took on flesh and dwelt among us, it's no surprise for John to say we have seen His glory.

Who hasn't looked up at a starry sky, seen the thousands upon thousands of stars and witnessed something of glory, a God that powerful? It's little wonder that you will say we looked even in the face of Jesus and we saw glory. But that's not the glory John is alluding to. The glory of Jesus for John is what happened at the cross.

You skip ahead a few pages in John's account of the life of Jesus. We can look at John 12, verse 23. John 12, verse 23. Jesus answered some people who want to see Him, wanted to hear about what Jesus was on about and Jesus answers them, "The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified."

But hang on. Doesn't He already have glory? Isn't He the word who became flesh? Isn't He the creator of everything? No. The son of man has now arrived at the hour where He will be glorified.

Skip ahead another few pages and we go to John 17, verse 1. Night before Jesus goes to the cross, He prays this high priestly prayer, this magnificent prayer, but this is how He begins. When Jesus had spoken these words, verse 1, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your son that the son may glorify You." In as much as there is glory in the fact that Jesus was the word of God, the word of God who created with power the heavens and the earth, in as much as there is glory in the majesty of the night sky, the glory that John witnessed, that he says we have seen, is the glory not of creation but of salvation.

Majesty of Christmas that God has shown is that He has revealed His hand to us. He's at the poker table and He has shown us the royal flush. And that reveal is this: He loves us astoundingly. The power of the incarnation that we will remember again this week is that it shows us God's love in a way that we can understand. I read a story this week of a guy that writes a blog and he was reflecting on Christmas as well.

His name is Charles E Moore. He's a pastor and author in New York. And he tells a story of the moment his dad's love, his dad's love became real for him. And I'm sure as you listen to this, you'll understand this happening at some point for you as well.

Your mum's love or your dad's love becoming real to you. This is what he writes: "The day my father pulled me aside into his den and told me that my 15 year old sister had left home to live somewhere else, that she had run away. That was the day I was awakened to my father's love. Up to that point, dad had been bigger than life.

He had everything in control. He had all the answers. But as he struggled to tell me why my younger sister would have left, how she had shattered every trust, his eyes filled with tears of helplessness. At that moment for the first time, dad entered my world. My confusing, bewildering, charged world of adolescence.

And for the first time, I knew my father's love, not just for me, but for us as a family, for his family. He and I were now the same. Saw then as I hadn't seen before, the man in my father, and I was changed." This is the surprising, life altering power of the incarnation: vulnerability. Our world doesn't appreciate vulnerability.

We don't get it. Neediness is rejected as incompetence. We want a deity who is invincible. We want a deity who will destroy evil in a flash with a wave of His hand, a click of His fingers. We want a God who stands outside our nightmares and will beam us up to a world free from trouble.

But this is the type of god we create to glory in, the God somehow that we can attain and soar to, the one that we can move up towards, but the incarnation from the manger to the cross is the very opposite of these wishes. It defies our logic. It exposes our self righteousness, thinking that we can somehow soar to God.

It reveals how obsessed we are with ourselves. The incarnation says only God is able to bridge the gulf between me and Him. Only God. Only He can bridge that gap that is between how things are and how things ought to be. And here's the kicker: the distance between us and God isn't displayed by a show of power.

It's displayed in the embarrassing journey of Him climbing down, climbing down to us. There is no way that we could ascend. There's no way that we could make that work even though there's something in us that desires that God. It is God the creator taking on the vulnerability of flesh that is the miracle of Christmas because in Christ, God goes hungry.

In Christ, God laughs belly laughs. In Christ, God cries real tears. It's because of the incarnation that now for the first time we can truly understand God's love. He and I have somehow become the same. Can you see the glory?

Can you see that glory? He would not step back from the weight of the cross. He wouldn't step back from the weight of that punishment. The one who knew no sin did not step back from absorbing the sins of the world. John says we have seen His glory because we have seen His work on the cross.

And this glory is the glory that His saved children will be singing about for all eternity. It will have no end. Read Revelation. Around the throne, myriads upon myriads singing, "Behold the lamb who was slain. To Him, honour and glory and power."

It's not enough for us at Christmas to remember that Christ has come, and it's not enough for us to know that He was born a king in humble circumstances. Christmas is meaningless unless you and I have personally discovered, personally felt for ourselves that Christ is the God who needed to come for my sin. Christmas means nothing to you if you don't know that you needed His forgiveness, that you needed His death, and that you needed His victory in His resurrection. Friends, you will live a life unmoved and unchanged even if you call yourself a Christian if you don't come to grips with the enormity of the incarnation and His grace. It is because the word became flesh that we can truly understand just how much God loves us.

And so this Christmas, I want to encourage us to remember that because of the incarnation, we can see His glory. The glory of the one and only son of the father who came to us full of grace, full of truth. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that we have been given the rights and the authority to be children of You and co-heirs with Jesus. We know this is only possible because You sent Him to us.

And we thank You, Jesus, that You did not consider glory with the father as something to be jealously guarded, but that You poured Yourself out to become a human being on Christmas Day. Thank You that even though You are a king, You offer us a share in Your kingdom. We thank You that every victory You win, therefore, is for the kingdom and therefore is for us too. God, we thank You that today we can remember that we are sons and daughters of God our father because Jesus Christ came to offer us new lives as Your sons and daughters. We thank You through Jesus' powerful ministry and in His precious name. Amen.