FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture References: John 1:1-18

God Became Human – Continued

Jesus’ flesh was our kind of flesh. He got tired, needed rest, sleep, and food. You see Him sitting on the curbing of a well and asking for water. He was tired and thirsty. You find Him sound asleep during a storm at sea when the boat was about to capsize, His head resting on a seaman’s pillow. He had had a hard day and needed rest.

Jesus had our frail and fragile form. Because He was frail, He felt the stresses, strains, and temptations we undergo. Because He was fragile He could be broken as He was in death. There was no beauty or comeliness in Him in His death. He was too broken for that.

When God took upon Himself our human flesh at Christmas, He came down to us. He made Himself little the way we are little. While knowing the weakness of analogies, we may say that He was like a brilliant astronomer who on Christmas morning got down on the floor with his three-year-old boy and played with him. He played with toys and talked about things like Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and the things that appeal to the imagination and fancy of a child’s mind. In some real sense, he became a child again, thinking the thoughts and speaking the language of a child. Yet, as an astronomer he used language, concepts, and mathematical formulas which are difficult for highly trained lay minds to understand. On Christmas Eve night he had talked with a friend about interstellar space, how it takes four and one-half years for light to reach the earth from the nearest star, thirty thousand years for light to reach us from the center of the Milky Way. He had talked about how the most distant star is beyond the reach of our most powerful telescope. The universe is so vast, he said, that it seems to shade off into infinity. We cannot find its boundaries. But on Christmas morning he was a father, not an astronomer. He talked about simple things in a simple way to a little child. In a sense, he became a child again.

Does the father lose stature when he is on the floor with his little boy? No. Maybe he is never so tall. He is in relationship with another human being, his son, and that is more wonderful than the relationships he has with the heavens as an astronomer. The heavens cannot think, respond, or love, but the boy can. There is more mystery in the face of his child than there is in the heavens, more wonder in his eyes than in the light of a star.

Maybe simplicity is the key to greatness. The test of a great man is not how comfortable he is with his peers but how comfortable he is with simple people. The test of a great writer is not how intricate and involved his style but how simple, vivid, and concrete it is. The test of the artist is not how elusive the beauty of his work but how obvious. The test of God is not how great He is but how little He is willing to make Himself in order to save us.

God is more a Father than a cosmic engineer. He loves us and is willing to do whatever is necessary to save us, win our love, and give us life. The test of His greatness is not His power and majesty but His love that enables Him to stoop to our deep need. Never is the God of our universe so great as when He comes to us in something so weak and helpless as a baby.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: John 1:1-18

Most who celebrate Christmas this year, will do so elaborately. Our houses will be brilliantly lighted. We will have Christmas trees, decorations, and adornments of many kinds. We will give and receive expensive gifts beautifully wrapped. We will eat from sumptuous tables where food will not only be good but artistically prepared. We will see moving pageantry and listen to inspiring music. But it wasn’t so with the first Christmas. It was simple and unadorned. There was a manger, an animal feeding trough, as it were, with lowing cattle, a crib of hay, and swaddling clothes.

The first Christmas was as human as it was simple and unadorned. At the center was a baby. The mother was a simple, unsophisticated, very young woman from Nazareth, and her husband was a carpenter giving a supportive presence during the night.

Christmas is about God entering the human situation in a person. Christian faith makes the almost incredible claim that God has come to us at Christmas in something as weak and helpless as a child. In the baby Jesus God took upon Himself our frail and fragile form. God made Himself little. We call this the incarnation which means “in the flesh.” God clothed Himself with our humanity.

None of the Gospels better presents this amazing truth than John’s. He says that the Word, which was God, “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” (John 1:14).

Eternity Entered Time

God had been active in His world. He had spoken to people in historical events, through prophets, and in other ways. But here was a strange, daring, new way of speaking. God came to men and women, clothed in their flesh and speaking their language. The eternal God, eternity itself, entered time. God was no longer only everywhere; He was somewhere. God was no longer just a timeless reality; He entered our time with its calendars, hourglasses, and sundials.

In much of the world where our gospel was first preached, people believed that flesh was evil. It was a prison of the soul, and the ultimate end of life was to be delivered from that prison. But John was saying that God, rather than seeking to escape our flesh, was entering it. He knew that it was not inherently evil. He had created it and pronounced it good.

God Became Human

There was an early effort to accommodate the gospel to the belief that flesh is evil, that the body is corrupt. The gospel would be much more acceptable to so many if it could adjust itself to this philosophy. So there arose a heresy in the church called Docetism that said Jesus was not really human; He just appeared to be. The New Testament vigorously opposed this heresy. John in his first letter wrote: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2-3). John was saying that one of the real tests of Christian faith was to believe in the incarnation, to confess the humanity of Jesus. He was really human. God made Himself human.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: Matthew 2:1-11; Luke 2:8-12

Those Who Seek Jesus

If swaddling clothes, a manger, and a star tell a lot about the child who was sought, they also tell a lot about those who sought Him then, and those who seek Him now. What those things tell about the seekers is this: We bring to Christ what we know, we understand Him in terms of what we experience.

The shepherds knew about swaddling clothes, sheep and shepherds, cattle and mangers. They didn’t borrow from anyone else. They brought what they had and identified the Christ child in terms of their own experience.

The wise men were probably astrologers and rulers from the far east, most likely in the region closest to India. They studied the heavens and the stars, believing that the destinies of people and nations are controlled by the stars. And one night as they scanned the heavens they saw a new star in the western sky. It was so brilliant and lustrous that they may have exclaimed: “A new king has been born!” So they traveled westward until they found the small child, no longer a newborn infant. Just as did the shepherds, they brought what they had. They were astrologers, students of the heavens, and a star from their own knowledge guided them to where the child was.

What if the shepherds had tried to borrow the knowledge of the wise men? What if the wise men had tried to use the simple experience of the shepherds? Their missions would have failed. But both, being true to themselves, their own integrity, and the leading given them, successfully concluded their mission. They found the child.

Just so with us. We bring who we are, what we know, and what we have experienced. We do not have to learn a new language, have some strange experience, or give a password. There is only one requirement: that the vessels of experience, no matter how simple or sophisticated which we bring, carry love, trust, desire for relationships, and openness to a new life.

So we come to this Christmas, this time in our lives. Some of us are simple like the shepherds. Our experience is very bounded and limited. We are very local and parochial in the way we think. Some of us are learned and sophisticated like the wise men. We come talking about rockets, satellites, planets, space, and stars; and Christ looks at what we bring and says a wonderful thing: “It is enough!”

So we come from diverse ways and experiences, discovering the same Christ, whose birth is dated, and whose life is historical, yet who is universal; and the ground at the manger, like that of the cross, is made level. There is room for everyone. The shepherds were natives, the wise men foreigners from the far east. They found no barriers there and they made a common response. They worshiped the Christ child. The shepherds worshipped the baby, the wise men, most likely a toddler; but both parties worshipped Him. That is the best response we can make. Let us heartily worship the God who sent His Son into the world to save us and who demands we bring only that which we have to our Savior.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.