TEXT: John 1:1-14

SUBJECT: He Came

Christmas is about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The eleventh verse of John’s Gospel, Chapter 1 says—

The words are in the middle of a paragraph, and refer to Someone named earlier. It is The Word who came. This is not a proper name, of course. His parents did not name Him that, and no one ever called Him The Word. It doesn’t tell us who He is, but rather, what He is.

The first readers of John’s Gospel were Jews living late in the First Century. To them, the word, Word, struck a sense of reverence. Other than the Lord Himself, there was nothing holier than His Word. In fact, the Lord and His Word were so tightly bound up that, for fear of taking His Name in vain, they would sometimes call God, The Word.

They were right to do so; John does it as well. This Word, He says, is an uncreated and eternal word, and nothing is uncreated and eternal, but the Lord. Everything else was made in time, lives in time, and will perish in time. But not God and not His Word.

This Word, He says, was—

The word, beginning, can be understood in two ways. It can mean ‘at the start of time’. That’s what in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth refers to. It can also mean ‘at the bottom of things, like a foundation’. How is John using it in his Gospel? I think He’s using it in both ways. The Word predates time and upholds everything that exists in time. To borrow from other New Testament writers—

No one dozed off while reading the verses or hearing them read in church. They are packed with sacred associations. They made the first readers tingle with anticipation, and God forgive us if they don’t have the same effect on us!

This Word was not only in the beginning, but it was in the beginning—

The Word has a relationship with God. The Greek reads—The Word was toward God, or you might say, it was facing God.

This has a rich history. No man can see My face and live, the Lord told Moses who wanted to, but could not. Even the mightiest angels are unable to look Him in the eye. Isaiah saw the Seraphim, heavenly creatures made of fire, no less, averting their gaze in God’s Presence.

But the Word does not look away. He doesn’t feel unfit to make eye contact with God and hold it. Whatever the Word is, it must be magnificent! The Catechism says it is—

This Word created all things, another way of linking it to God, for—

And, to come closer to home,

The Word that made everything is also the Life of everything. Go back to Genesis 1, and you’ll find the world—

Cold, wet, dark, and dead. Until God speaks His Word, and the rock springs to life!

The life created things have is only a rough copy of the Life He has. His Life shines into the darkness of the world and bring light to men—and not to one or two enlightened men—but to every kind of man in every place and time and condition. A bit later, this same Word is called—

Which, alas, the world did not want. In my Bible, v.6 says—

This is one way of translating the word, but there is a better way, a way that fits this passage of John’s theology far better than comprehend. It is overcome. Light came into the world—John says—and the darkness tried to overcome it—but it could not prevail! This may have been in Martin Luther’s mind when he wrote—

The powers of darkness gathered around the Word to snuff out its Light, but it was the darkness that was put out! Again to quote Luther—

This is Who came: The Word who was and is God.

His coming was not a timeless or mystical thing. He came to a real place at a real time. John doesn’t give us the date He came, but he tells us He arrived just after another well-known man showed up—

This is John the Baptist. He burst onto the scene around 25 AD. Thousands flocked to hear him in the wilderness and many of them confessed their sins and were washed clean by his baptism. Some took John for the Savior, but he said he was somebody else--

At the time he said this, he didn’t know who the Savior was. Until one day God told him to look for the Holy Spirit to descend on a Man and stay there. This is the Savior. A man came to him for baptism one day, but this man—unlike the rest of us—had no sins to confess or wash away. But, insisting on baptism, John did Him the honor, and—wouldn’t you know it? When He came out of the water, the Spirit came down on Him in the form of a dove and stayed there.

The next day, John saw the Man, and met his destiny by saying in a loud voice—

The Man he called, ‘the Lamb of God’ is also ‘the Word of God’. We know Him by another name, and I’ll get to that soon.

Could John have been mistaken? Well, he was a prophet, and they don’t get much wrong. But, near the end of his life, John wondered if he had missed something—not gotten it wrong, but left something out. He wondered if this sinless Man was also the Savior. He sent some friends to ask him, and they came back wondering no more—

The Lamb and Word of God entered the world of space and time, meeting John at the Jordan River in the mid-20’s AD, and born about thirty years earlier in the city of Bethlehem.

The One who came was not born in Israel by accident. He was born there because they were His people—

Influenced by pagans, some Jews took Israel for a nation. It wasn’t a nation (as we use that word). It was a family! Every Jew was cousin to every other Jew because every one of them was a son or daughter of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were a people connected by blood and history and promise.

The One who came was a member of this family. He should have been welcomed into the family the way any child is—with joy and thanksgiving.

But He wasn’t! He came to His own—

Jews took in the work of hospitality with their mothers’ milk. Everyone admired it and people were often judged by how often and how well they received guests into their home.

Most guests were welcome. But not this one—and He’s in the family! When He came to His own, His own slammed the door in His face! His birth was a kind of prophecy, for even that day—

If most people turned Him away, a few were glad to have Him. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him—

The few who welcomed Him were not the ones we would have expected. They were not the priests or the rabbis, the scribes or the Pharisees. For the most part, they were the irreligious, the immoral, the unclean. They were happy to have Him because—unlike the others—they needed Him.

In truth, everyone needs Him—the priest no less than the prostitute. But not everyone feels his need for Him. But those who do thank God He has come and welcome Him from the bottom of their hearts!

How come the losers were happy to have Him and the winners weren’t? I gave you part of the reasons: the losers needed Him. But this is not the whole answer, and not the one John provides in his Gospel. He says those who received Him were—

People welcome Him into their hearts because they are born of God.

In a lifetime of going to church, I’ve heard a great many sermons preached on the New Birth and most of them did more harm than good. The problem with the sermons is they were focused on the mechanics of the New Birth.

As if even a natural birth can be explained this way. A doctor can tell you ‘where babies come from’ in the most scientific way. But when his wife has a baby, it feels like the gift of God.

If this is true of natural births, let us shut our mouths when it comes to explaining Spiritual Birth! Our Lord Himself said to a highly educated man, no less—

Why does someone receive Christ? Why does he believe? Without ruling out second causes, the First Cause is God! We believe because we’re born again and we’re born again because God wants us to be born again—

John ends his paragraph by telling us two last things about the Word of God—

The ‘Word became flesh’ means He assumed a human nature. He didn’t impersonate a man—as some heretics said—He was and is a man, no less human than you and I.

In this completely human Man, the full glory of God was seen. The Apostles saw it with their own eyeballs, at the Mount of Transfiguration, for example, in His healings, and especially, in His Resurrection.

We cannot see Him with our eyes as they did—and thank God we can’t, for if we did we would die. For the Lord, while still human, is no longer veiled with the life of this world. Now, He’s invested with the Full Life of Heaven.

Which we can see. By faith. I urge you to look at Christ as He is revealed in His Word, and in doing it, to see and feel the glory of His grace and truth.

What the shepherds celebrated 2,000 years ago, we celebrate today. Only more so, because—unlike them—God permitted us to hear the rest of the story.

It is the story of Christ risen from the dead, seated in glory, and His believing People united to Him and sharing His Life. Now and forever!