The Creator Entered Creation (John 1:1-18)
Today we are going to think theologically at what happened at Christmas. We celebrate Christmas every year, so we don’t often think about how odd the thing we are celebrating is. The truth of the matter is that Christmas was the most mindboggling event that I can think of. We always discuss the difficult of understanding the Trinity, but we don’t often think of the strangeness of the Incarnation. J.I. Packer points this out in his excellent book, “Knowing God”.
“The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man—that the second person of the Godhead became the ‘second man’ )1 Corinthians 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative of the human race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as fully divine as He was human.” –J.I. Packer, “Knowing God”, IVP, 1973, p. 46.
That is a staggering thought. It truly is. I can state the facts, but there is great difficulty in understanding what happened here. God the Son took on human flesh in such a way that He was both completely divine and completely human. He is the God-man.
And why would God do such a staggering thing?
We find the answer to that throughout the Scriptures. We have looked over the course of the past few weeks at the tremendous prophecies of the coming Messiah. The Savior would come and bring eternal peace to the entire world (Isaiah 7-11). He would come and set all things right. But we also read of the Messiah who would come and bring forgiveness of sins through the sacrifice of His life (Isaiah 53, Psalm 22).
How would both occur? It just doesn’t seem to make sense.
But when we understand who Jesus is, though there is still some mystery in our minds, everything makes sense.
Jesus is God the Son, who added humanity to Himself and brought eternal life.
Jesus Is God The Son Who Has Always Existed And Created All Things (John 1:1-5)
Our text begins with a phrase that is identical to Genesis 1:1. Both begin with “In the beginning” with the difference coming after that. The similarity is not accidental, it is very much on purpose. John kicks of his gospel before the beginning of time. When John writes “In the beginning” we are in a time before the Earth rotated around the Sun and there was any way to mark a calendar. And the Word existed in that moment.
The Gospel of John opens with a bit of mystery as he discussed “the Word”, but it does not take him long to tell us who “the Word” is. This is Jesus. The Word was made flesh and John the Baptist testified about Him (John 1:14-15). So, everything that we read here is about Jesus. And in rapid fire succession, John tells us a lot about Jesus.
The first thing we notice is that God the Son always existed. “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1a). God the Son was there in the beginning “with God” (John 1:2).As has often been said, “there was never a time when the Son was not”. He has always been. God the Son has always existed.
God the Son has always existed, with God. Here we are discussing the Doctrine of the Trinity. But this part is not difficult to understand. God the Son has always existed with God the Father (Genesis 1:1-2). We believe in only one God. But the One God does exist in three persons (Baptist Faith and Message 2000, II.). And God the Son is the Second Person of the Godhead. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit has always existed in unity.
God the Son has always existed as God (John 1:1). There has never been a time when the Son has not existed. And He has always been God. God the Son is eternal.
And here we also see that God the Son created all things (John 1:4). All plants, animals, humans, the planets, and the Universe itself all owes its existence to God the Son. He has life in Himself and has given life to all of Creation.
God the Son, Jesus Christ, is the light (Genesis 1:5). Light had many connotations at the time this was written. Therefore, you will find no shortage of pontification concerning what is meant by the word “light”. But I tend to think that it is much simpler than a lot of people would lead you to believe. I believe this is a call back to all the Old Testament prophecies about the light that would break through the darkness.
I want you to think back over the last two messages that are found in that prophecy from Isaiah 7-11. The Messiah is portrayed there as the light over and over. The light would come that would destroy the darkness.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:2-6 ESV)
Darkness came and had fallen on the land. But God the Son came to Earth, the Light came, and shattered the darkness. He is that light.
We oftentimes speak of Jesus as King, but we should also speak of Him as God and Creator of all things. This forces us to think through the difficult doctrine of the Trinity as we discuss the difficult doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God, but it is helpful here. God the Son created the whole world and everything in it.
The creation of the world, then, was an affair of the entire Triune God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were at work in the creation of the world. And that is what we see in Genesis 1:1-2 and the further testimony of the New Testament. There God created the Heavens and the Earth and the “Spirit of God” hovered over the face of that mass before God formed the Universe out of it. And it is God the Son whose handiwork we see all around us. This may be oversimplifying the event a bit, but the idea put forward here is that God the Son created all things.
Jesus is God and He is to be worshipped and honored as such. We owe the very fact that we even exist to Jesus.
I am going to use the illustration of an author and his relationship to the characters in his story throughout this message today. So, hold on to this idea. J.R.R. Tolkein wrote the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. He created an entire world with its own languages. He created Middle Earth. Everything that happened in Middle Earth originated within the mind of Tolkein. All of creation originated in the mind of God, and God the Son carried out the creation.
“When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and reported that he had not found God. C.S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking for Shakespeare. If there is a God, He wouldn’t be another object in the Universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in His play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about Himself in the play.”—Tim Keller, “The Reason for God”, p. 122.
This is important to grasp because the text moves on from here to state that Jesus has life in Himself. Everything owes its existence to Him. Everything owes its life to Him. And was, as we will see, all those who have eternal life owe that to Him as well, He has life in Himself.
Jesus Is God The Son Who Is The Light And Brought Life (John 1:6-13)
The relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist helps to shine some light on who Jesus is. It is not as if John is writing something random here and getting off track. There is something that he is attempting to tell us in the story of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist testified concerning Jesus. John the Baptist was a messenger of the Light and the Life. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets and fulfilled passages like Isaiah 40:3-5, Malachi 3:1, Malachi 4:5 as he witnessed to Christ. And the reason for John the Baptist’s work was not to exalt himself, but that “all might believe through Him” (John 1:7). Through all of that preaching and teaching he was working to point people to Christ.
John was doing the same thing that believers are called to do today. Life is found in Christ, not in us. So we have that same message. We have the same calling upon our lives. We are to testify to the Savior, Jesus Christ. In Him is life found. And in Him is eternal life found.
And then, John moves to what might be the most astounding part of all this. The Creator became part of Creation (John 1:9-10).
If we go back to the illustration of an author it might be helpful. The author of the story, the one through whom the entire world was created, put Himself into the story. The One who created all things now stepped into the storyline of the world that He created. He did this by adding to Himself humanity and walking among us.
This was not well received by many in Jesus’s day. John states that Jesus was rejected by His own people (Isaiah 1:11). But that was not the only response. Those people who did trust Him became God’s children (John 1:12). They were supernaturally born again (Isaiah 1:13). This is not something that was done because of their family lineage, natural desire, their own personal desires, but was something done by God Himself. These people were born of God and brought into eternal life.
This is the gospel message. God the Son took on human flesh and dwelt among us to bring us eternal life. He lived a perfect life on behalf of sinners and died on the cross as the punishment for sin. The thing we are discussing right now is the good news. The thing we celebrate at Christmas is the coming of salvation. Christ died to bring us to God. And in order to die, He had to be born. And it is those who trust in Him that have eternal life.
The Book of John confronts us time and time again with a question of where you stand. Read the Gospel of John and you find that most of the stories end in a way that should lead us to ask which group we belong to. And here is no different. You read that phrase and you are left asking the question, which group do I belong to?
Which group do you belong to? Are you among those who name the name of Christ and have eternal life?
But how did He do this? How did He enter Creation? And what is it that we celebrate at Christmas time?
God The Son Took On Human Flesh And Lived Among Us (John 1:14-18)
This is what we celebrate at Christmas time. God the Son “dwelt among us” (John 1:14). This is what we’re singing about when we sing “Silent Night” or “Away in a Manger”. This is what we think of, when we think of Christmas.
“σκηνόω” is the word used here that we translate as “dwelt among us”. And, I believe this is an okay translation. It is a rather unique word, and so, to translate it literally might cause some interpretive issues. The word means “to tent” or “encamp” and it was a word that is most often used in Scripture to describe the placement of the tabernacle among the people.
This is significant because the tabernacle was where God was said to reside in a special way. The best way to translate this phrase into English would probably be “tabernacled”. God the Son came to Earth and tabernacled among us. His glory now rested upon Earth like the clouds that rested upon the tabernacle.
God the Son tabernacled among us by being born of the Virgin Mary. God the Son was not conceived naturally. And any person that believes that Mary had this baby by natural means is lost and dead in their sins. This was supernatural. This was how God would become enfleshed and tabernacle among us. And His name was Jesus.
He came to Earth, born of the Virgin Mary and saved people from their sins. As a man He could represent us before God. He was fully human; therefore He could accomplish everything that we should have accomplished before God. He could keep the Law on our behalf. He could love as we should love. He could walk in righteousness as we should walk in righteousness. And He could accomplish everything we should have accomplished. And He could also die. He could now be killed. He could now pay the punishment for sin in our place as our perfect substitute.
And so, it is no wonder that this ends with saying that “For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16 ESV). We received our physical life from Christ. And in God’s kindness, He revealed His Law to us. It was a revelation of Himself to mankind. But it is a revelation of God’s morality and how we do not measure up. It is a kindness that does, however, condemn. We are all left guilty before God’s holy law. None of us measure up (Romans 3:23). But Christ has accomplished forgiveness of sins. So, the One who created us also saves us. It truly is “grace upon grace” that has been shown to us by Jesus Christ.
There is one more thing that John stated that God the Son accomplished while on Earth. He exegeted the Father and that is part of this “grace upon grace” that Jesus gave to us. The word ἐξηγήσατο means “to explain”. I try to exegete a passage of Scripture. It is to uncover something, or to reveal something. And in His coming, Jesus uncovered or explained the Father. He came to save and to further reveal the Father to us.
The giving of the Law was a gracious act that revealed to us who God is and His glorious nature and character. But it also left us standing guilty before Him. And God the son took on human flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on a cross in place of sinners for the forgiveness of sins. In Christ there is grace upon grace shown to us. In Christ, there is salvation from condemnation. In Christ we are brought into perfect fellowship with God.
Do you trust in the One who has come? Will you trust in Him?
Conclusion
Jesus is God the Son, who added humanity to Himself and brought eternal life. This helps us to understand the difficulties that we see in the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah being both a suffering servant and a conquering king. These are speaking of the first and second coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. God the Son came to earth and tabernacled among us. He lived that perfect life and accomplished all righteousness on behalf of sinful people. He then died on the cross and paid the punishment for sin and rose from the grave three days later. Then He left. He ascended into Heaven where He is seated at the right hand of the Father. But that is not the end of our story.
That is what happened when God the Son came the first time. He came as the Suffering Servant that we read about over and over in the New Testament. But He is coming again. And He will come again to accomplish the glorious peace that we’ve discussed over the course of the past few weeks. At that time Jesus will return to conquer and to damn. And all those who have rejected Him will find their selves paying for their own sins in the outer darkness in a place called Hell.
At Christmas we celebrate the coming of the Savior. We celebrate God the Son adding to Himself human nature to accomplish forgiveness of sins. We celebrate God the Son making Himself killable so that He could one day go to the cross and die for our sins.
That is why we sing,
“Good Christian men rejoice
With heart and soul and voice!
Now ye need not fear the grave:
Peace! Peace! Jesus Christ was born to save!
Calls you one and calls you all
to gain His everlasting hall.
Christ was born to save!
Christ was born to save!”
(From the hymn, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”)
And it’s also why we sing,
“Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Risen with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! The herald angels sin,
“Glory to the new-born King.”
(From “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”)
It is what we celebrate this time every year! Therefore, we greet each other with “Merry Christmas!” and give gifts to each other. We celebrate the abundant grace that has been poured out on us in Christ.
R. Dwain Minor