THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"The Majesty and the Glory of Incarnation”
Rev.
|
prca.orgDear radio friends,
While
in seminary, we were required to take a course called New Testament Greek
Reading. The professor chose for
us fledgling translators the gospel of John because John, of the four gospel
narratives, is the simplest in the choice of words and sentence
construction.
We began in John 1. After three weeks, we had covered only the
first fourteen verses. This was not
because of the inability to translate.
It was because the professor and students could not get over the profound
richness of what was being said. That is
the gospel of John—so deceptively simple and yet unfathomably profound. You may put a new believer on John chapter 1
and he will get it. And you can put a
theologian on John chapter 1 and he will never be able to exhaust it.
The four gospel
narratives (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are like four galleries in a
museum—each filled with a verbal portrait of Jesus Christ. They are word pictures, inspired word
pictures, of Jesus Christ. God has given
us no physical description of Jesus Christ.
That is rather striking. We have
a bust of Julius Caesar. We have
likenesses of the Greek philosophers.
But we have no physical record of Jesus Christ—whether He was 5’ 7” or
6’ 4,” whether He was stocky, lean, or lanky—we do not know. But God has given us four inspired pictures
in which He sets forth in words what is essential for us to know and to believe
about Jesus Christ, that we might have salvation in Him.
Only in Matthew and
in Luke do we have some account of the birth of Jesus Christ. Mark begins his gospel narrative with Jesus
as a man in His thirties, assuming and beginning His ministry.
It is in the gospel
according to John that we are given the most profound truths about our Lord
Jesus Christ (chapter 1). John, more
fully, more simply, tells us who Jesus is, how He was born, and why He was
born. Jesus is God’s eternal Son in the
flesh. He was born in order to die for
us sinners who hated God, that we might have life eternal in Him.
I have chosen today
to speak for a few moments on John
1:1-4, 14, 29 because no other passage of Scripture tells us more about
Jesus whom we celebrate at this time of the year. And I chose this passage in order that we
might treasure Jesus and embrace Him and delight in Him and know Him—that we
might treasure Him for who He is.
Today the question
is asked: Who is going to heaven? And the response of religious pluralism
is: “Well, everyone. The way to heaven, or to God, is like
climbing a mountain. It matters only that
you get to the top. There are various
ways to ascend the mountain. The Hindu,
the Moslem, whoever—all are going to heaven.”
The answer of the Christian gospel is:
Jesus Christ is the way, the only way. There is no salvation, save the salvation in
the Jesus Christ revealed in the Holy Scriptures. If one is to be saved, he must know Jesus
Christ for who He is—as the eternal Son of God in flesh. There is no other salvation, save in His
name.
So I want to
explain to the best of my ability these words today in order that, by God’s
grace through faith, we might embrace the Word made flesh, embrace the Savior,
and stand on this Savior for life and for all eternity.
First of all, we
learn the majesty and the glory of who Jesus is. Who is Jesus?
John tells us that Jesus existed as God eternally and was with God as
the second person of the Trinity before He was born on earth. We read in verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.”
John is drawing a parallel to the first book of the Bible, the book of
Genesis. Genesis
1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In Genesis
1:1 the first words of the Bible tell us the birth of time. Now John tells us the birth of God’s
Son. Genesis goes forward into
time. God created the heavens and the
earth. But John does not go
forward. When he uses the words “In the
beginning was the Word,” John goes back.
He goes in reverse to what was before time. “In the beginning was the Word.” Before the beginning; before the world began;
before time started—before all that was the Word that was made flesh. The Word, says John, was God, and was with
God. The Babe of Bethlehem, Jesus
Christ, existed before His birth. Always
was He with God, and He was God.
Let me make it
plain. Children, do you exist before you
are born? Do you have a conscious
existence before you were born? Yes, I
know God said He would make you, but did you have a conscious existence? No, not before you were born. There is no footprint, nothing of you before
you are born. Not so, with Jesus. He was before He was born.
John emphasizes it
in verse 2: “The same was in the
beginning with God.” Before time, He
was. And thus, He is the eternal God,
for it is God alone who is without beginning, who existed before the beginning,
who has no beginning and no end. There
never was a time when the Word was not.
You may think and you may go back and back and back to the vanishing
point, when you think your mind will break—there never was a time when Jesus
Christ, the eternal Word, was not.
In Proverbs
8 Jesus says that when God made the world, “I was there, I was with
Him.” If we were with the shepherds on
the night in which Jesus was born, and if we made our way to Bethlehem, we
would gaze upon Him who ever was and is and shall be the eternal God.
Now notice that
John opens this up a bit. He tells us at
least three things. First, the Word had
existence distinct from God, and yet He was God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the word
was with God, and the word was God.”
He was with God and He was God.
Some will say that you cannot have it both ways. If He is God, how can He be with
God? The Word was toward the face of God
and was God. How can He be God and at
the same time toward God? If I am me, I
cannot be alongside me. Which is
it? Was He God or was He with God? we would ask John.
And John responds: Both! He is God, He was God, and He was with
God. What is the explanation?
Go to verse
18. “No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
him.” John is saying that Jesus Christ
is a distinct person within the being of God, yet He is God. He was God.
He possessed all of the stuff of deity.
And He was with God—that is, He was a distinct person who stood in a
relationship within the being of God, within the blessed Trinity. He is the Word, the second person, the only
begotten Son. He is the Word. That is, in Him everything that God will say
about Himself is seen in this one, Jesus Christ. Hebrews
1:3 declares that He is the brightness of His glory and the express image
of His person. He is God and with
God. He is the second person, God the
Son, of the eternal Trinity. That is who
He is.
Still more, John
tells us that He created everything and was Himself uncreated. We read in verse 3, “All things were made by
him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” John writes very intentionally. Already heresies existed in the days of John
that were plaguing the church—that Christ was a created son, that there was a
time when He was not. John says, “No. Everything was made by Him. And without Him nothing was made that was
made.” This means that He was not
made. If all things were made by
Him, then He is not made. He is
uncreated. You were made by Him. If there is a made thing in the universe,
Jesus made it. Is there a thing in
existence? Jesus made it—babies,
fingernails, galaxies, grass, planets, rocks.
He made them all. He is God.
He is
uncreated. All else was made by
Him. Hebrews
1:3: “Upholding all things by the
word of his power.” Jesus did not come
into being. He came into flesh, but He
never came into being. He was never
given existence as Himself the second person of the Trinity. But He gave existence to all things.
The third thing
that John tells us is that Jesus was life and light (v. 4). “In him was life; and the life was the light
of men.” What does that mean? There it is again, very simple in the words
of John. But how do you ever get to the
bottom of that? The life was the light
of men.
Well, you meditate
upon that and you begin to look up the words “life,” and “light,” and you pray
and you meditate upon the Scriptures. I
believe the idea is this: As sinners we
are dead and blind. Apart from Him, we
are dead and blind. Jesus is the life,
the life of God. He is come to give us
life through His death and resurrection.
And as the life, He is the light.
When we are made alive, we see.
He gives us life. When He makes
us alive, we see. As dead sinners we
could not see Him for who He is. But by
grace He gives us to see Him—His value, His beauty, His glory. He gives you to see Him a million times more
in all of His glory. This is who He
is—the one in the manger of
He does not call us
to His manger, to come with some sentiment before the manger and say, “How
touching.” You must come before that
manger to bow down and to worship in wonder and in praise. Do you know who is born for you? Eternal God, Word, Son, Creator, Lord of life
and light.
But
why? Let us follow John in what
he has to say.
The eternal Word
was found in a manger, verse 14: “And
the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” He was always God. But in a moment of time He became flesh. He did not cease to be God at that
point. But now, in addition to His being
God, He is united to the flesh. Now He
is something that He was not before. He
is God in flesh.
Flesh is all that
is of human existence. Flesh here means
human life—flesh and blood. That He
became flesh means that He took to Himself a real human body and soul. He was conceived in the virgin
Mary. The egg of Mary was fertilized by
the Holy Spirit, it developed, and a baby was born after nine
months. So Romans
1:3 can say that He was of the seed of David after the flesh. Or Hebrews
2:14 can say, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and
blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he
might destroy him that had the power of death.”
All that human life is He became.
It means that He is
a real man who tabernacled, dwelt among us. From birth to death, and everything in
between, He was sinless. He was a holy
child. But that He was sinless did not
make Him less human. We think if He is
sinless then He cannot really know human life.
But it is the other way around.
It is sin, not sinlessness, that distorts human life.
Sin is not normal and ordinary to human life. Adam was not created a sinner. Adam was a man, human, before he sinned. Sin is abnormal. Sin is de-humanizing.
But Jesus was
without sin in this cursed world. And He
was the one, as no one else, who could feel the horror of sin and death. He had a real body and He experienced all
that is true of the body. And in that
human body He placed Himself squarely in that human condition. He was begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth. He was conceived within the
womb of the virgin Mary. Modern technology can show us the development
of a child in every stage, week after week, day after day. We look at this and we say, “What a great God
He is—the Creator of life.” Now the Word
became flesh. All that
He was as God and with God He remained without any dilution. But He who took to Himself a human body and
soul in Mary’s womb is the Creator of the galaxies. The little Babe in the manger is the one who
upholds all things by the Word of His power.
He did not cease to be what He was.
He became what we are. He was
made of the substance of His mother.
Behold the glory
and the majesty of the incarnation of the birth of Jesus Christ. Bow down and worship One
who rightfully is worshiped of angels and has now covered over His glory with
our weak flesh. He who spoke the world
into existence and He who parted the Red Sea with His hands and He who holds
the whole earth still for Joshua’s victory—He lies in a manger, dwelling among
us.
And we behold His
glory, the glory of His love and grace and mercy.
Why did He
come? John gives the fundamental answer
to why He came in verse 29 of John 1. “The next day John seeth
Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Why did the eternal Word dwell among us? He did so in order to be God’s Lamb, to bear
away the sin of the world. Take away the
cross, and there is no explanation for the manager. Take away a substitutionary,
wrath-bearing death of Jesus Christ on the cross, in the place of all those
given to Him by the Father’s election, bearing their death—take that away, and
you do not have an explanation for the birth of Jesus Christ. Why did He come? He came as God the Son. For it was God the Son in
flesh who alone could do this. He
came to bear away my sins.
Eternal God, God
the Son, Creator, Life, and Light became man in order to lift up from our
shoulders the damning and infinite weight of our sins. To bear them Himself and to
cast them all away upon His cross.
He came, the One who is with God, so that we might be with God in love
and fellowship. He came, so that we
might come to God. He, the Word, was
born as the baby Jesus, so that we might have life and light.
Notice, He is the
One who taketh away the sin of the world. John does not leave that indefinite. He becomes very particular. For instance, in John 10
Jesus says, “I lay down my life for the sheep.”
And He goes on to say that the sheep were the ones whom the Father gave
to Him. Yes, He lays down His life for
the elect of God. But
the elect of God, throughout the whole world, then and now, Jew and Gentile,
white, black, Chinese, Indian—the whole world.
But no one in the
world can have sin removed without Jesus Christ—no one shall escape the flames
of Hell and the judgments of the One and only God without Jesus Christ, God’s
Lamb, God’s Son, God’s perfect sacrifice, God and man.
Oh, may God by
grace awaken us to the glory and to the reality of who He is. He is the only Savior. There is none other than He.
You must know this,
for without this knowledge personally brought to you by the Holy Spirit through
faith in your heart, you will perish.
You must know this, for it is the only way of salvation. You must know this in order that you might
treasure and embrace and follow Him as the Word made flesh, the only
Savior.
Do you? Do you do this personally and truly?
Verses 10, 11: “He was in the world, and the world was made
by him, and the world know him not. He came unto his own, and his own received
him not.” Those are the most horrible,
the most awful, the most terrible words: “They did not receive Him.” Why?
Because of ourselves we are born dead sinners who hate Him. Therefore the Word, the eternal Son of God,
the Creator, the Savior must open our hearts. For our sin is that we reject Him, the eternal
God.
It is by
grace. John puts it this way in verses
12, 13: “But as many as received him, to
them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his
name: Which were born, not of blood, nor
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Born by the gracious will
of God.
In this way we
receive Him. And to receive Him is to
embrace Him as precious, as treasure and delight. It is to live out of Him. It is to follow, obey, trust, and cherish
Him. For in Him is salvation. He is the One who is the Word, the Word of
God, the One who is able to speak as none other to our
hearts. He says, “I, God in flesh, am
the Lamb of God who hath taken away your sin.
I give you life and light.”
Then let us bow in
wonder before the manger and let us lose ourselves in praise.
Let us pray.
Our Father, we
thank Thee for the blessed Word. And we
pray that its simple yet profound truth may ever live in our souls. To Thee be praise and honor for ever and
ever, Amen.