Merry Christmas!
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-5 and 14 (NIV)
This week’s devotional is an excerpt from chapter 10 of my book, The Point: Journey to Life.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas! What comes to mind when you say, hear or read the greeting? When you hear the first Christmas carol of the season, what images fill your mind? Candy canes, Christmas trees, gathering with loved ones near a fire? Is it scenes described in the songs, like images of freshly roasted chestnuts, cold noses, and freshly fallen snow?
When greeted with “Merry Christmas,” some feel happy anticipation thinking about and picking out the perfect gifts for loved ones, and getting the items home, wrapping them and waiting for the joy the gifts will deliver to people they love. For others the words reveal, rather than images, emotions, feelings, warmth hidden deeper in their soul and reveal a longing masked other times of the year. It’s about sharing time with family – stopping the daily grind, stopping the chaos of daily life to share time with loved ones.
All of that is great. I love all that about Christmas. But if we stop there, if we stop with gifts and wishes of good cheer and anticipating time with loved ones, how is Christmas unique? What distinguishes it from Thanksgiving, other holidays or some pagan winter solstice celebration?
I recently bumped into a friend who says she is “not a believer.” She is an amazing person. She is one of those people who is present and who helps people are in need. She will give you the shirt off her back. She described her preparations to have family come to town for Christmas. She was excited about the gifts she was wrapping, busily making plans for the Christmas feast, happily anticipating time with her family, and as she left we exchanged “Merry Christmas!” with one another.
The notion of “Christmas” is woven into our culture, so much so that in some ways it has lost its meaning. In many ways and for many people it has come to have more to do with Santa Claus than Jesus Christ. We say things like “Jesus is the reason for the season” and “we are celebrating Jesus’ birthday.” But those statements easily miss the supernatural awesomeness of what we are celebrating, because those statements could easily be attributed to any mere human walking the planet.
God
“The Word was with God, and the Word was God … the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” When you say, hear or read “Merry Christmas!” I urge you to remember that we are celebrating God coming to earth in fully human form. Jesus is God. He has always been and always will be. While on earth in the flesh, He was fully human, and He also was and is fully God. As a result, we are celebrating one of the most important, most significant, most mind-blowing events in human history.
When you think of God, what comes to mind? No matter what comes to mind, the thought is too small, too limited, and not grand enough because our mind, our knowledge, our experience, our existence are too human to comprehend God. Even our wildest imagination does not come close. God is He whom humans simply cannot fathom.
We say He is holy, divine and pure, but we are unable to comprehend the majesty intended to be communicated by the words because our language and minds are limited and our lens is clouded by sin. We say He has all power, all authority and is the Creator of all things who breathes life into each of us, and who delivers order out of chaos, but each concept is too grand for us to wrap our mind around. He is everywhere all at once. He is unbound by space and time. His vision, thinking, reasoning, judgment and discernment are perfect. His glory is beyond our comprehension.
When He desired to create the universe – including galaxies so far away we measure their distance from earth by the distance light travels in a year multiplied by as much as thirteen billion – He did so by speaking. He is transcendent and intimate – both beyond our comprehension. He knows everything. He knows you and me better than we know ourselves. He is love. He loves each of us unconditionally.
Now consider this: sovereign, all-powerful God came to earth as, not just a human, but a baby human, the most helpless of beings. God is unbound by time and space, and He inserted Himself into His creation. God became fully human, lived on earth, and became bound by time and space. The concept simply does not fit in my brain. I cannot comprehend it.
The Divine, the Pure, the Holy left heaven and came to this place where evil roams and sin permeates souls. Pause to let that sink in. Mankind is fallen. We are sinful and we live in a sinful place. Only God is holy and a chasm separates us from God. In my limited little mind, holiness and sinfulness seem incompatible. They cannot mix. Like light and darkness, if they were to touch, one would be destroyed.
With this image in mind, how could holy God become flesh, how could holy God muck around this sinful place, how could holy God allow Himself to be exposed to mankind’s wickedness? Maybe “how?” is the wrong question because God can do anything and everything. He is sovereign, He has all authority, He is the Creator of all things and He makes the rules. But what kind of God would do that and then, what kind of God would give up Himself for us? What does this tell us about God?
He is love and He loves each and every one of us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Why?
After pondering the awesomeness of God coming to earth in flesh, I have so many questions without answers. With so many questions in mind, I find great comfort in the fact that Jesus tells us why He came, and by doing so He helps us to better understand God. Let’s consider three of Jesus’ statements explaining why He came to earth.
“For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up on the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:38-40
Jesus explains that He came from heaven. He pre-existed His coming to earth. John begins his Gospel writing, “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1). Jesus was not created; He is the Creator; He was in heaven before He came to earth in flesh; and He came on a mission. He came to do the will of the Father, which involves keeping those the Father gives Him, and giving the gift of eternal life to “everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him.”
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10
“I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” John 12:46
Jesus came to give the gift of full life, the gift of life abundant. He came as light transforming the darkness of world.
Jesus is fully God and was fully human. He left heaven, came to earth as a human, and He did so to do the Father’s will, to provide eternal life, to provide full, abundant life, and to serve as light in the darkness. He came offering each of us the most amazing Christmas gift possible, the gift of His light and life.
And this tells us even more about God. He did this for us, for you and me, for every human who has ever been and who ever will be. We often say that God is love, which is true, and that God loves us, which is also true, but this puts tangible meat on the bones.
May you exist fully to the praise of His glory. Merry Christmas!