This is our second Sunday of the series, “Jesus is the reason for the season” and our 4 Christmas questions. If you remember last week’s message we answered the first question; “WHERE did the idea of Christmas originate?” That answer took us on a journey back before creation itself, back to the very mind of the Triune God. There we considered the ‘Covenant of Redemption’ between God the Father and God the Son and how Christmas was a link in history and part of God’s eternal plan and purpose. We saw how wonderfully BLESSED believers are; How we are IMPORTANT in God’s plan; and how we can have absolute CONFIDENCE in God’s promises. Last week we focused on WHERE and what they did in that covenant.
Today, we’ll move onto the 2nd question and focus on the WHO? Who was the chief character within the Covenant and the central character of Christmas. Again, this week, this topic will take us into some profound truths of Scripture but, in the end, we will better appreciate why, ‘Jesus is the reason for the season.”
But we do NOT start with JESUS. Rather we start with John 1:1-2, which reads;
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.”
Here is the clearest and most powerful declaration of the Deity and pre-existence of Christ in Scripture. In the Greek the last words of v.1 actually read, “And God was the Word.” A.W. Pink notes;
“This wonderful verse contains three things. It tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ, here called the Word, is eternal-that he is a distinct person from God the Father, and yet most intimately united to Him- and that He is God.”
The Word or LOGOS is Christ. Theologically, at this point, it is incorrect to speak of JESUS, for that name is attached to His human birth as the God-Man. In the beginning he is referred to as the WORD. In the beginning WAS THE WORD. He did not become the Word, he existed as the Second person of the Trinity, as the Son from all eternity, what theologians call, “eternal generation.” In other words, God the Son existed before His incarnation and being named Jesus. He DOES NOT BECOME THE SON OF GOD at the birth. If we look at Col.1: speaking of Christ we read;
“He is the image of the invisible God...he is before all things...for God was pleased to have his fullness dwell in him...”
And Heb.1:3 confirms this;
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being...”
This tells us that NOT ONLY was the Word in the beginning, but that the Word is God. In Isa. 48:11 the LORD declares;
“I will not yield my glory to another.”
For He alone is God. Yet in John’s gospel, ch.5:23, Jesus makes a statement that either proves His divinity or would be blasphemous. Jesus said;
“that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”
To honor is to give value to someone and Jesus claims the same honor, the same value, as that which The Father receives. Unless Jesus was God, to claim the honor or glory that belongs to God would be sacrilege. Jesus makes other statements that would be shocking if not true.
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn.14:6 ) That’s a VERY exclusive statement.
In Lk.5: 20-21, Jesus said;
“Friend, your sins are forgiven.” The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, ‘Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone.” Then Jesus said, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins...He said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood...”
Forgiveness of sins is a prerogative of God alone.
This is precisely the argument C.S. Lewis made in his classic book, Mere Christianity. In his famous trilemma, he wrote;
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
And in Jn.3:17 we are told that;
“God sent his Son into the world...”
So the Son must have existed before the Christmas birth. As Dr. D.A. Carson notes;
“Jesus is not the Son of God by virtue of being the ultimate Israel, nor is he the Son of God by virtue of him being the Messiah, the ultimate Davidic king, nor the...perfect human being. Rather, he is the Son of God from eternity, simultaneously distinguishable from his heavenly Father yet one with him...”
The Word, the second person of the Trinity, while One with the Father, is eternally the Son even before creation.
Throughout the Scriptures we read of the continuous bond of love that exists between God the Father and God the Son. Whether before creation, Jn.17:24;
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
or whether in his earthly life, as at his baptism;
“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
The Father continually loves the Son and the Son the Father. And one of the great expressions of love is the giving of a gift. In Jn. 3:35 we read;
“The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”
The Father has given Christ the sovereign rule and judgement over all things! What a gift! The Father’s love for The Son is an eternal, infinite and perfect love.
The Father takes great pleasure in The Son. In Mt. 12 is a quote from Isa.42:1;
“Behold, my Servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in who my soul delights.”
So intensive and intimate and unique is this relationship that Christ said;
“No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son.”
The Father’s love for The Son is pure and an eternal delight. This love is not based on Grace, which is undeserved favor, like His love towards us. It is a love between equals, as Jonathan Edwards wrote;
“(Of) infinite happiness of the Father consists in the enjoyment of His Son.”
This must be so, for The Father and The Son and The Spirit are ONE GOD and, as John Piper writes;
“We may conclude that the pleasure of God in His Son is pleasure in Himself.”
And then we move on.
Jn.1:14 reads;
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
When the eternal Son of God took on human flesh he was born as JESUS, the God-Man. He did not LOOSE anything, but took on flesh, our humanity.
1 Jn. 4:9;
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world.”
Think of that. God wanted to show His love for us. How did He do that? By giving us the most precious gift He had, His one and only Son, His delight that first Christmas day.
When you love someone, you want to show them. This is why men buy diamond rings and not cigar bands as an expression of their love. There is a reciprocal nature, between the preciousness of the gift and the depth of one’s love. Life is our most precious gift, so when Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” it speaks of the deepest kind of love.
So when we consider Christmas, one very great truth should jump out at us. YOU ARE LOVED!
To give us the gift of His Son should both humble us and generate the deepest praise. There is NO GREATER TREASURE than the Son.
1 Jn.4:19 reminds us;
“We love him, because he first loved us.”
John Stott writes;
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly that God’s love is the source, not the consequence, of the atonement...God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.”
And before He died, he had to be born. More on that point next week. But I want you to see just how much the believer is loved by God in Christ. In John’s gospel, ch.17 we have what is called Christ’s High Priestly prayer. Starting at v.20 he prays;
“My prayer is not for them alone (meaning the disciples). I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.”
That applies to us and every one who comes to faith in Christ. And then down in v.23 He makes this breathtaking statement;
“I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me (now listen) and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
“Loved them EVEN, the same as, equally, as you have loved me!!”
Do you hear those words! “Love them even as you have loved me!” When we come to faith and trust Christ as our Lord and Savior, we become God’s children. Jn.1:12 reads;
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God.”
By grace through faith, we become God’s children by adoption. For believers this is God’s eternal plan. Eph.1:5 reads;
“He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will...”
And when we are born-again of the Spirit, it confirms this new relationship with the Father. Rom.8:15,
...the Spirit your received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “ABBA, Father.”
In Christ we have entered into an intimate relationship with our heavenly Father, ABBA is like saying, “Daddy” a term of endearment.
The Father’s love for believers in Christ is the Father’s love for His Son, Christ Jesus. The only difference is that God’s love for us comes from His grace, his love being an undeserved favor towards us. Unlike the purity of the love between equals, between the Father and the Son, we are not only NOT EQUAL, but we were ENEMIES. Rom.5:10 tells us;
“For if, when we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son...”
What divine love is that! Indeed, we might willingly and with joyful heart give our most precious gift to someone we love - but would we give it to an enemy? That’s what God did that first Christmas!
“For God so loved the world that He gave, His one and only Son...”
Here was the most unimaginable treasured gift, given by the incomprehensible Sovereign God, and yet it was rejected! Jn.1:11;
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
What an insult to the most high God! Think how you would feel if you gave your most costly, precious, and unique gift to someone and they rejected it. Not only didn’t want it, but took it and ripped it, and stomped on it and destroyed it. How would you feel? But his love motivated him to give it and to come anyway.
Jesus is the reason for the season because He is God who came to earth wrapped in human flesh FOR US! He is the Father’s treasured gift of love given to us. The blessed promise he brings is that we can experience the same love the Father has for His Son, by ADOPTION, by believing in Jesus. What a glorious Christmas message - GOD SHOWS US IN SENDING HIS SON - WE ARE LOVED!
Is it any wonder that the Apostle Paul breathlessly declares;
“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” 2 Cor.9:15
