THE CHRISTMAS STORY ACCORDING TO JOHN’S GOSPEL
Everyone who knows me, knows that I I-o-v-e Christmas – come and see my apartment – it’s a winter wonderland! (That is an open invitation by the way!)
I do love all the innocent traditions of Christmas from around the world, but most of all I love the real message and meaning of Christmas.
I preached the Christmas message from many different viewpoints for forty years and never came to the end of it! It’s like a perfectly cut diamond sparkling with beauty when you shine a light on it from different angles.
Matthew and Luke give us two views of the first Christmas and although they only take up four chapters of the New Testament, they give us very different but comprehensive views of those fantastic events.
Mark does not tell us about the birth of Jesus but instead jumps straight into the start of His ministry and John does a similar thing. But, before doing that, he gives us his own version of the Christmas story from an eternal perspective…
IN THE BEGINNING
John 1:1 echoes the words of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning – God created the heavens and the earth.” But actually, John takes us back before that moment: “In the beginning was the Word.” This is a glimpse of God before creation. “The Word was with God” - the self-existent God is dwelling before time and creation with the eternal Word who Himself is God. “He was with God in the beginning.” John is showing us just who this Person who came that first Christmas, is…
OUR SAVIOUR IS THE CREATOR
Wonder of wonders when God made each aspect of creation, he did it with a WORD: “And God SAID let there be…” (Genesis 1:3,6,9,11,14,20,24,26). When God created, He did it through the One who IS the WORD. This is a revelation which is declared not only here by John, but in other parts of the New Testament
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Ephesians 3:9: “God who created all things through Jesus Christ”
Colossians 1:16: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him”
Revelation 3:14: “These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God.”
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If Jesus is not the Creator, He would not be God. The total Godhead was involved in creation – God the Holy Spirit was moving across the face of the waters in Genesis 1:2, and God the Father delegated the work of creation to God the Son who is the WORD:
“Through Him all things were made: without Him NOTHING was made that has been made” (John 1:3).
When God created the universe and planet earth, the crown of His creation was mankind, created in His image (Genesis 1:26). Having His image essentially means that humans have freewill (like God has), logical thinking, intelligence, speech, creativity, a capacity to love and so on.
In giving mankind freewill, God knew what we would do to mar that image and that we would love darkness rather than light (John 3:19), but in His great love, the Creator took responsibility and was willing to come into this world to turn everything back to His original plan - which was to have a forever family who would love Him - of their own freewill.
THE WORD BECAME FLESH
The glory and wonder of the Christmas story for John (and for us) is that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem it truly was God who arrived on planet earth to save us.
The practical way that happened is described for us by Luke in his gospel. When the angel Gabriel who, 500 years before - had revealed to Daniel when the Messiah - the Anointed One would come (Daniel 9:25-26), arrived in Nazareth he announced to Mary that she had been chosen to give birth to the “Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:31-32).
This unique earth-shattering conversation continued with Mary asking: “How will this be since I am a virgin?” It was not a question of doubt - but of practicality, in modern terms - a biological question and Gabriel gladly explained that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her - in other words it would be a virgin conception. Every conception is a miracle in the sense that we all begin as one cell which contains all the information to produce a fully developed human being with trillions of cells of different kinds – skin cells, hair, nails, bones, muscles etc., etc. But this conception was a miracle of miracles never to be repeated – the fusion of the divine with the human – Son of God and Son of Man in one person.
Gabriel was speaking in the future tense – this was not a done deal until Mary consented to it. God respected Mary’s freewill as He does with all of us, and she could have turned him down, but she consented when she said…
“Let it be to me according to your WORD.”
THAT is the moment (I believe) that
the WORD BECAME FLESH (John 1:14)
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That is the moment when the Holy Spirit came upon her and the virgin conception took place!
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The child that was born was truly GOD made flesh. As Paul says to Timothy: “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh.” 1 Tim 3:16
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Jehovah Witnesses do not believe that Jesus is God and very interestingly they resolutely refuse to celebrate Christmas! But I believe that unconsciously (or maybe even deliberately on the part of those who formulated JW doctrine) they do not believe that God became flesh. In fact they deliberately changed John 1:1 in their corrupted New World “translation” from “The Word was with God and the Word was God” to: “The Word was A god” which is theologically impossible since they believe there is only ONE GOD (but not in three Persons) – so how can there be God plus a demi-god next to Him who in their translation: “Was in the beginning with God.”
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In order to justify not celebrating Christmas they use the excuse that the December celebration comes from a Christianisation of ancient pagan festivals. We know that too, so when can we celebrate the birth of Christ? Surely when pagans were converted to Christianity it was good that they converted their culture too! December is as good a time as any to celebrate the birthday of Jesus – the incarnation of God Himself!
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I rejoice that we are still having birthday parties for Jesus 2000 years later! No one else in all of history gets that level of celebration- and rightly so.
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The Christmas story according to John’s gospel – is what we are celebrating again this year - because God becoming flesh and dwelling among us was the most earth-shattering event of all time – on a par with the beginning of creation itself!
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This Christmas may we, with John say and proclaim to others:
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“We beheld His glory,
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the glory as of the
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only begotten of the Father,
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full of grace and truth.”
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