In 1995, a singer named Joan Osborne released a song that became one of the biggest hits of the 1990’s. It was entitled “One of Us.” The chorus of the song poses a question: “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home?”
I have two problems with that question. The first is grammatical. The use of “if” in “What if God was one of us” indicates that you need to use a verb in the subjunctive mood, which makes the proper way of phrasing it, “What if God were one of us?” So, there’s that. But the second problem is theological. It seems to me that singing an entire song in which you ask, “What if God were one of us?” is a bit like singing an entire song that asks, “What if the earth revolved around the sun?” Of course, the earth does revolve around the sun. Why are you saying “what if” about it?
God is one of us. Central to our faith is the doctrine of the incarnation, whereby we proclaim that God the Son, eternally divine, added a human nature to his divine nature, becoming the man Jesus of Nazareth while remaining fully God. But don’t misunderstand: I did not say God was one of us. I said God is one of us. God the Son did not add a human nature to himself and then disregard it once he had ascended back to Heaven. No, the union of deity and humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ is an eternal union. The incarnation is something that will never be undone.
And that is a cause for us to wonder. The eternal triune God, fully complete within himself, needing absolutely nothing outside of himself, has nevertheless chosen to become man so that he might be with us and for us forever. The incarnation is all the proof we need that God doesn’t hold back. When he gives to us, he doesn’t just get rid of his expendables the way we might do when we load up a box for Goodwill. When God gives, he gives us himself. In chapter 14 of John’s Gospel, one of Jesus’ disciples named Philip says to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus replies, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” In one sense, I want to ask, is it really that simple? Can we really know God himself by looking to a man? It would be easier for me to imagine Jesus as a kind of guru who teaches us how to walk our own path to the mysterious God that lies hidden behind him, a wise, experienced teacher who points others to walk the paths toward the divine mystery that he himself has explored. But as John’s Gospel makes clear, Jesus is not a signpost that reads “God: This Way.” He is God himself, clothed in the flesh of humanity. Christmas is the celebration of the day when God gave us himself without reservation.
My hope for us on this Sunday before Christmas is that we might once more be drawn into the wonder of the incarnation, to marvel once more at the grace God has shown us in Christ, and to strengthen our faith in him. There is no better text to draw our minds to this wonderful mystery than John 1:1-18. This prologue is the foyer of John’s Gospel, the place where you enter and begin to get a sense of what the whole work is about, which is to say, it is about Jesus. This passage is arranged according to a pattern that works in and back out again in an A-B-C-D-C-B-A format:
A The Word and God, 1-5
B The Testimony of John, 6-8
C The Word Enters the World: Negative Response, 9-11
D The Benefits of Faith, 12-13
C The Word Enters the World: Positive Response, 14
B The Testimony of John, 15
A The Word and God, 16-18
This is known as a “chiasm.” The main emphasis in a chiasm falls in the middle, in this case at letter D, which is verses 12-13, speaking about the benefits of faith in Christ. By linking the A’s, B’s, and C’s together, I want to note four things that God has done in the incarnation of Jesus Christ that should evoke wonder in us.
First,
Words are central to human personality and relationship. Language, whether spoken, written, or sign language, is the vehicle by which we connect to other people. I believe it was Mark Dever who once said that you may think you have a good relationship with your dog, but imagine walking home one day, and your dog suddenly said to you, “So, how was your day?” I think we can all agree that would take your relationship to the next level.
In light of the centrality of words to human personality, we can begin to make sense of the fact that John refers to Jesus in this passage as “the Word,” or the very self-expression of God. In the Old Testament, the Word of God represents God in action. God creates, redeems, delivers, and triumphs by his Word. Isaiah 55:10-11 is one example of many in the Old Testament that speaks of the power of God’s Word: “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” What John tells us here is that, ultimately, the Word of God is a living Person, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And what does John tell us about the Word in the first and last sections of his prologue? Note seven things. First, he tells us that the Word is eternal. “In the beginning was the Word” (v. 1). Do the words “In the beginning” sound familiar? John deliberately echoes the opening verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” as if to signal to us that before there ever was a creation, the Word was there. The book of Genesis tells the story of creation. John’s Gospel tells us the story of the new creation, and both come from the Word who is mentioned in this text.
Second, he tells us that the Word stands in relationship to God: “and the Word was with God” (v. 1). Verse 18 elaborates by calling him “the only God, who is at the Father’s side.” To be “at the Father’s side” is to be pictured sitting immediately to his right at a banqueting table. So the Word is someone who has known God the Father intimately from eternity past.
Third, John tells us that the Word is God: “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (v. 1). Grammatically, that is quite a conundrum. How can someone be with someone and also be someone at the same time? John 1:1 is one verse among many in the New Testament that led the church to affirm what we now know as the doctrine of the Trinity. This is the teaching that God is three Persons who share the same divine nature. In other words, God is three who’s but one what. Because there is nothing in creation that has the same kind of Trinitarian characteristic, this is a mystery beyond our ability to fathom. But it is the clear teaching of Scripture, which enables us to say that John’s teaching here, while mysterious, is not incoherent. The Word was not only with God, but the Word was God from eternity.
Fourth, John tells us that the Word is the Creator of all things: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (v. 3). Echoing the teaching of Genesis 1 that God created by speaking words, John tells us that the agent of creation is none other than the one we know as Jesus Christ.
Fifth, John tells us that the Word is the source of life and light: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (vv. 4-5). Continuing his allusions to Genesis 1, where God says, “Let there be light,” and then when God subsequently creates various forms of life on earth, John notes here that the source of both light and life is the Word about whom he has been writing. Jesus is the source of life: as Creator he gives life to all living things; as redeemer he gives spiritual life to his people. And that life is, consequently, the light of a sin-darkened world. By its very nature, light dispels darkness. Darkness never overcomes light. Even though the unbelieving world stands against him, the darkness cannot overcome the light of Christ.
Skipping down to verses 16-18, John tells us, sixth, that the Word incarnate is the fullest revelation of God’s grace to us: “And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (vv. 16-17). It is as if John is saying, “Yes, there was grace in the law covenant that God made with Israel. But we only really understand the magnitude of God’s grace when we see it in Jesus Christ.” And John says he is “full of grace and truth,” echoing the Old Testament revelation of God’s very name to Moses as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness [another way of saying ‘grace and truth’].”
And seventh, John tells us in verse 18 that the Word is God made visible: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Everything John has said about the Word to this point has prepared him to make this statement. For who is qualified to reveal God to us except God himself?
One exercise I like to do with some of my classes is to draw a vertical line on a board and write on one side “God” and on the other side “everything else.” And then I ask the students to tell me about each category that makes them different. I often expect that some will say that God is spiritual and everything else is physical, but that’s not true. Angels are not God, and yet they are spiritual beings. So the distinction has to be something else. The answer I guide them to is this: God alone is uncreated, and everything else is created. And between the two there is an infinite divide. God is not just a bigger version of us. He is a different kind of being altogether. So here’s a question for you: on which side of the board does Jesus belong? On the “uncreated” side or on the “created” side? Of course, he is fully God, so he goes on the “uncreated” side. But think about what the implications would be if we put him on the other side, as many false teachers throughout history have done. What if Jesus were a created being? Then he would be more like us than like God. He would belong to our side of the board. How in the world could he ever reveal God to us? If our Savior is a created being and not fully God, then we don’t really know God at all. God remains hidden in mystery, shut up within himself, and forever cut off from us. But thanks be to God! Our Savior is none other than God himself, the one who truly can bridge the divide between God and man. So let your heart be filled with wonder that God didn’t send us a middleman to reveal himself to us; he came to us himself in the Person of his Son.
But what else has God done in the incarnation of Jesus Christ? Second,
Luke’s Gospel gives us an account of Jesus’ resurrection appearance to two disciples who are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus. After Jesus opens their minds to understand the Scriptures, demonstrating that the death and the resurrection of the Messiah were events that God had planned from long, long ago, the disciples said to one another, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened the Scriptures to us?” Does your heart burn when you see new insights into Scripture, new connections that you didn’t know were there before, new horizons that reveal in more intricate depth the way Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of it all?
The point here is that it is important for us to recognize that the incarnation takes his place in the context of a story, with a long history of prophetic preparation. Jesus didn’t just show up on the scene one day out of nowhere. He didn’t come proclaiming a message that was absolutely new, utterly disconnected from everything that came before. No, he came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. And John the author of this Gospel shows us in these verses that the last of these prophets was the one sent to be the immediate forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptist. The major idea that the author John associates with John the Baptist is the role of a witness. Standing in the long line of biblical prophets who foretold of the coming of the Messiah, John the Baptist gave his testimony to Jesus.
His testimony is recorded in verse 15, where he is quoted as saying that the one who comes after him (Jesus) ranks above him because he was before him. It is interesting to note (as we know from Luke’s Gospel) that John the Baptist was actually six months older than Jesus. And yet he testified that Jesus was actually “before” him, showing that John the Baptist understood something about the fact that Jesus existed before he was born into the world as a man. And so in these first recorded words of John the Baptist in this Gospel, we see him doing what he will always do when he speaks: point away from himself and to Jesus. His last recorded words in this Gospel are in 3:30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
God did not send his Son but leave it to us to figure that out for ourselves. He has testified through his prophetic Word, and in the incarnation has brought that Word to fulfillment. The prophets, culminating in John the Baptist, give united testimony to the hope of a coming Messiah, and Jesus is that Messiah. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.”
So let Christmas remind us that God has made himself known and has fulfilled his prophetic word. Third,
Twice in this passage, in verses 9 and 14, John makes the point that the Word who was with God and who was God has come into the world. The first time he says so he focuses on the negative response of unbelief to his coming. Verse 9 reads, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” The verb “enlightens” does not refer to an inward work, but rather refers to shining the light on, or exposing, everyone. John’s point is that the coming of Jesus has brought every heart under the light of truth and has created a distinction between those who love the light and those who don’t. Every person has to decide what he will do with Jesus. Those who believe in him are revealed to be those who love the light; those who refuse to believe are exposed as those who love the deeds of darkness.
And John’s emphasis here is that the majority of humanity falls into the category of unbelief. Verse 10 tells us, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” Throughout John’s Gospel, the word “world” usually means the world in rebellion against God. The world did not even recognize its own creator. But even more stunning, verse 11 says, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” This narrows the focus down to Israel. Jesus Christ came as the Jewish Messiah. How many long years had they been waiting for the Messiah who would come and set them free? And yet, when he did, they did not receive him. Jesus of Nazareth didn’t fit the job description they had formulated for Messiah.
But in making this point, John notes that not everyone rejected Jesus. In verse 14 he writes, “And the Word 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.” This is the summary of John’s version of the Christmas story. The word became “flesh.” He who was eternally with God, who was and is God himself, who created and sustains all things, entered into this world in frail humanity. He did not, therefore, cease to be God. He added to his divine nature a human nature, joining God and man together in order to bring man to God. When John says the Word “dwelt” among us, the Greek verb suggests the image of pitching a tent. The background of this idea is the tabernacle, which was a tent that Israel carried around through the desert, a tent that represented the presence of God with them. It was at this tent that the glory of the Lord appeared in visible form as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. But the glory John and the early Christians beheld was a glory that far surpassed the glory of the tabernacle. This was the glory of the very Son of God made flesh, the glory that is demonstrated as he stoops down to wash the feet of his disciples, as he initiates a conversation with an outcast Samaritan woman, as he goes to the cross to die for the sins of the world.
God himself entered the world in the incarnation, and the world was clueless. And so it remains to this day. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. That God would be revealed in the humble life and shameful death of a man from Galilee makes no sense to them. As followers of Jesus, we have to be accustomed to being outside the mainstream. But it is well worth it to be outside the mainstream because we have seen by faith the glory of God revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ. Like the man who found a treasure buried in a field, and then went and sold all that he had so he could buy that field, let us willingly lose everything this world has to offer us if that is what is required for us to follow Christ. If we have a spiritual capacity to see the glory of God in Christ, we will have the assurance that he is worth losing everything for.
And so we come finally to the middle section of the text and the point of greatest emphasis.
Jesus came to his own people, Israel, and his own people did not receive him. Verse 12 says, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” The many reject him, but the few who receive him by believing in his name are brought into the family of God as his children. They are granted the privilege of sharing in his sonship. What that means for you, if you are a believer in Christ, is that the love of the Father for the Son, the greatest love imaginable, is now directed toward you because you are in Christ. His destiny is also your destiny.
One of the richest blessings of our understanding of God as Trinity is the realization that God has always been a Father. Think about this for a minute: God has not always been a creator and ruler. He is Creator and Ruler of all that he has made, but that is not at the heart of his identity. It is entirely possible that he might not have created anything, in which case he would still be who he is without being Creator and Ruler. If we were to think otherwise, we would have to say that God needs creation to be who he is. He would depend on us for his identity! But the doctrine of the Trinity helps us understand that while God freely chose to become Creator and Ruler of the world, fatherhood is an essential part of his identity. For there was never a time when he did not exist as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that means there was never a time when the Father didn’t lavish his fatherly love upon the Son. And that means, in turn, that in making us his children, God doesn’t have to learn how to be a father, as though he has entered into a new role. In making us his children, God is simply expressing to us who he always been: the Father of the Son. Adoption into the family of God, therefore, seems to be the image of salvation in the Bible that brings us nearest to the heart of God.
But John switches from the idea of adoption in verse 12 to the idea of a supernatural birth that makes us God’s children in verse 13. If verse 12 focuses on our faith, verse 13 gets behind our faith to show us the work of God that makes our faith possible. It speaks of believers as those “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” We cannot be born naturally into God’s family. John is so emphatic on that point that he makes it in three different ways. When he writes “not of blood,” John has in mind bloodlines of Jewish descent. Being a descendant of Abraham does not make you automatically a child of God. In speaking of “the will of the flesh,” John speaks of human decision in the realm of the natural world. And in speaking of “the will of man,” he likely has in mind the will of a husband in initiating the act that impregnates his wife. The point in all three expressions is that being born into God’s family is a supernatural work. We call this “regeneration,” the act by which God makes us into new creatures, giving us new hearts, opening our eyes to see his glory in the face of Christ. The distinction between those who are God’s children and those who are not ultimately depends on God’s will and saving action. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ today, it is not because you are smarter, or more clear-headed, or in any other way better than those who are unbelievers. It is because God in his grace has opened your eyes to the truth. The grace of God alone has made the difference. Give thanks to God that he did not leave you blind to the truth, as he very well could have.
Although John doesn’t mention it here, we know from Matthew and Luke that Jesus was conceived and born of a virgin. Isn’t that entirely fitting? By sending his Son outside the natural means of human generation, God shows us that our salvation is entirely his work. Our response should be deep gratitude, profound humility, and awestruck wonder at the reach of God’s grace.
Have you seen the glory of God revealed in the incarnation and redemptive work of Jesus Christ? Has the vision of his divine glory moved you to give up living for yourself so that you might become his disciple? If not, I want to warn you that the wrath of God hangs over your head. John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” The text specifically says God’s wrath remains on the one who does not obey the Son. It can only remain if it is already there to begin with. And though you may not feel the danger because you have lived your entire life without seeing the real consequences of your sin, I want to assure you: Scripture declares that you belong to the world that is in rebellion against God, and one day, his patience with you will run out. The Scripture is clear that a day of judgment is coming, and all who have not sought forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ will be condemned to Hell away from the presence of God, isolated from all that is good, forever. And there you will see before you the long ages of endless torment, where you will remain, utterly alone, and yet even after the passing of thousands and thousands of ages, eternity will remain undiminished before you. The only possible response to such a destiny is utter despair, for Hell indeed is a place of absolute hopelessness.
But the good news is that God’s mercy is extended to you now. The Son of God who became a man and was born in Bethlehem of Judea did not remain a baby. He grew up, and as he did, he obeyed God the Father in absolutely everything. But it was God’s plan for him to lay down his life, not for himself, but for his people. And so he gave himself up to torture and death on a cross, where he bore penalty of the sins of all who would believe in him. He suffered the torments of Hell so that we would not have to. On the third day, God delivered him from death by raising him up, and he now sits at God’s right hand, waiting for the day when he will return to rule on earth. So in this time between his comings, he offers you an amnesty: turn away from your sins, turn away from living for yourself, and seek forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Confess your faith by being baptized, as an indication that you have died to sin and now live to God. If you do so, you have the promise of eternal life that escapes the judgment to come.
If you are a baptized believer who is a member in good standing with a church, first, give thanks to God that you who belong in Hell will never see it. And you won’t see it because God has not held back for you. I invite you to come with thanksgiving to the Lord’s Supper, where we express once more our faith in the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for our sins. Let us eat and drink with the assurance that God was and still is, indeed, one of us.