TSJ, TSL WSG 18-12-2016
The Christmas Story
A Scottish farmer did not believe in the Christmas story. The idea that God would become a man was absurd to him.
His wife however was a devout Christian and had raised their children as Christians.
The farmer would sometimes mock her and give her a hard time about her faith.
In particular he could not believe that God would want to come into this world as the little Baby born in Bethlehem 2000 or more years ago.
“It’s nonsense” he said: “Why should God lower himself to become a man like us?”
One Sunday just before Christmas his wife took the children to church, while the farmer relaxed at home in front of a blazing fire.
Suddenly the weather took a turn for the worse, deteriorating into a blinding snow storm, driven by a freezing north wind.
Suddenly he heard a thump on the window, followed by another.
When he went to investigate he found a flock of grey geese disorientated by the storm in his farmyard.
The farmer had compassion on them.
He wanted to help and realised they needed to get out of the storm into the shelter of his barn.
He opened the barn doors and hung up a lamp. BUT THEY WOULD NOT GO IN.
He laid out a trail of bread into the barn
BUT THEY STILL WOULDN’T GO IN.
He tried to shoo them in but to no avail.
Nothing he could do would get them out of the storm into his nice warm barn.
Utterly frustrated, he cried out loud: “Why can’t you fools just follow me in. Can’t you see that I am trying to help you and give you shelter?”
Then he thought: “I wish I could communicate with them. If only I could become like one of them, I could show them the way to go and then I could save them”
He suddenly stopped.
He remembered where his family was and what he had learned in Sunday school
AND AT LAST he understood why God had to become a man.
And he fell down on his knees and thanked God for becoming a man.
And as he looked up – to his amazement he saw the grey geese going into his barn and a white goose was leading them.
(My thanks to John Wright for this story)
Have you, like that Scottish farmer, ever wondered why God became man, an event we celebrate each Christmas?
I think the White Goose story sums it up excellently.
St John’s Gospel opens with the following words
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning”
It is the very story of the Incarnation. God becoming man
Why did St John call Jesus the Word of God and not simply call him Jesus.
Well, because the man Jesus only came into existence on this earth - as the name of the little baby born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
But the Son of God existed before he became human as the baby Jesus – whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.
So to clarify this, John has called him, in his pre-incarnate form “the Word of God”
John’s Gospel was originally written in Greek and in the Greek the word for “The Word” is LOGOS.
In other words, the opening of John’s Gospel should read:
In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God…And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:1 and 14)
For the Greeks, the Logos was “the rational principle of the Universe, its meaning and its plan or purpose.”
However, I believe that St. John understands the term Logos from his Jewish perspective as, in the words of T.W.Manson,
“the creative and revealing Word of God by which the heaven and the earth were made and by whom the prophets were inspired”
John’s imagery reminds us of the opening words of Genesis 1 which reads: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…
But I also think that John used the term LOGOS or The Word to describe the Son of God, because words are how we communicate with one another and God.
And Jesus was the communication of God to man
There is so much in the opening verses of John that we would be here all night trying to unpack the theology of it.
So I would like to look at five attributes of Jesus in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John.
And for ease of reference I would like to use the Greek word LOGOS as a mnemonic for these attributes. JESUS IS
L the Log-in of God
O the Origin of life
G God incarnate
O the Oracle of God
S the Saviour of the World
The first attribute of Jesus is that he is
1. THE LOG-IN OF GOD
“And the word became flesh” (Jn. 1:14)
LOG - IN is the word used when someone wants to connect to the Internet via his or her Computer and LOG OUT is the
term used to disconnect from the Internet.
And bearing that in mind, I would like to suggest that Jesus - when he became a human – was God’s “LOG-IN” to this world.
We, by our sin, had “LOGGED OUT” from God but he “LOGGED IN” again by sending his Son to this earth to live as a man and to die in our place thereby enabling us to come through Christ to the Father
Jesus said in John 14: 6: I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me
As Christians it is easy to LOG OUT from God.
Sin is the simplest way to do this.
And I must say I find it a challenge to keep LOGGED IN to God, in my prayer and Bible study and indeed in my daily living.
The second attribute of Jesus is that he is
2. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
“The world was made by him…” (Jn 1:11)
In John 1, St John points clearly to Jesus being the creator of the world, the origin of life.
And the very style of opening is geared to trigger our memory of the beginning of Genesis, which reads:
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light and there was light…. (Gen 1:1-3)
When we look at the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1 – when God created the heavens and the Earth we see something very interesting.
How did God create?
And we find this phrase used over and over again in the creation account: “And God said…”
For example, we read:
And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. (Gen 1:3)
And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. (Gen 1:6) And it happened.
For each day of the creation we see that the
scriptures record, “And God said…” and it
came to be.
John is clearly linking God’s creation in his Gospel to the "Logos of God" - the Word of God.
He wants us to see that there is continuity between what is observed in Genesis and what is observed in Jesus.
But John wants us to do more than think of Genesis.
He wants us to ruminate on the incredibility of the third attribute: that Jesus is
3. GOD INCARNATE
“And the Word was God” (Jn 1:1)
The LOGOS, Jesus was both God and man.
One of the earliest heresies – the Arian controversy - was to hold that Jesus was only human and not divine.
St. John clearly had a different belief. Jesus, the Word was both human and divine.
The fourth attribute of Jesus that we find in the opening chapter of John’s Gospel is that Jesus is
4. THE ORACLE OF GOD
St John writes this in his Gospel.
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known... (Jn 1:18)
Jesus mission was to reveal the Father to people.
In his great High Priestly prayer in Jn 17, Jesus said this:
I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They are yours: you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They know with certainty that I came from you and they believed you sent me (Jn 17:6-8)
Jesus in Jn 14:6 made this tremendous statement:
I am the way the Truth and the Life. NO one comes to the Father except through me (JN 14:6)
What we know about God is only that which God has revealed through Christ to us.
In a multi-cultural “tolerant” society – where their only vice is to be “intolerant” of those who are “intolerant” it is a real hard to say that Jesus is the only way to God.
The fifth and final attribute that I found in the opening Chapter of John’s Gospel of Jesus is that he is
5. THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD
But as many as received Him he gave the power to become sons of God (Jn 1: 12)
Jesus came to this earth to bring us salvation. To reconcile us to God, by dying in our place.
The Law of God required that we die because of our sin, but the Love of God paid the price himself – on the Cross.
Conclusion:
The Opening verses of John’s Gospel are full of theology and reveal a lot about who Jesus is .
The Logos of God became human – that is what we mean by the incarnation.
And the key verse in all this is that
”to all who received Him, to those who believed in His Name he gave the right to become Children of God” Jn 1:12
That in a nutshell is the Gospel.
In the first century AD belief was not simply “intellectual assent “ as it is today.
It meant a commitment to that person in whom you believe.
If you believed in Aristotle, you LIVED what he taught.
If you believed in Socrates, you lived your life according to his teachings.
Do I as a believer in Jesus really LIVE as Christ would have me live? Am I committed to him as the word belief requires?
What a challenge.
