"Confessing the Word Made Flesh" (Sermon for Christmas Day)

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. (John 1:14)

Christmas marks a dividing line between truth and error. The reality of what happened at Christmas--namely, the Word became flesh--that reality is so shocking, so utterly shocking and unreasonable and offensive, that it drives people to deny the truth and promote error in its place. Most all the classic heresies that have been around for 2,000 years now, in various forms, have this in common: They cannot handle the truth of Christmas. They cannot stand the idea that the Word, the eternal Son of God, had to become flesh, with all the implications that flow out of that.

Now we like to think of Christmas as soft and fluffy and inoffensive. Cute, even. But to reduce Christmas to that, in itself, is a form of heresy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Christmas is not “cute.” Rather, it is raw reality that deals with the root problem of humanity. It is earthy, not fluffy. It is flesh-and-blood stuff that brings God to us up close and personal. And that is why it is so ultimately shocking and controversial.

But to us who know the truth of Christmas, its “fleshiness” is absolutely crucial. Your very salvation depends on it! And so the church must always be vigilant about this business of “Confessing the Word Made Flesh.”

“And the Word became flesh.” No more profound truth was ever written in so few words. “And the Word became flesh.” No more unfathomable mystery was ever captured in such a simple statement. The apostle John penned these words for the prologue to his gospel. What all was he saying with this, “And the Word became flesh”? Let’s back up a bit. We first need to identify what he means by “the Word.” And for that we go back the opening verses of that prologue:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” John here is deliberately recalling the Creation account from the opening of Genesis: “In the beginning. . . .” He’s saying that there is one called “the Word,” the Logos, who was in a face-to-face relationship with God and yet who was also God in his substance, in his essence. This one called the Word was there “in the beginning,” that is, at Creation, which means he himself was not created. He is God eternal in his being, without beginning or end. And this Word who was with God in the beginning likewise was active in the act of Creation. “And God said, ‘Let there be. . . .’ And there was. . . .” That was the Word, the Logos, acting in Creation. So John says of him: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” This one called the Word is true God, from eternity, above all created things.

But now here is the shocking thing: “The Word became flesh.” The one who was true God, from eternity, at a certain point in human history, became also true man. The Word became flesh, became one of us, a flesh-and-blood human being, became our brother. How can this be? It is. Our mind, our reason, cannot comprehend just how this is possible. But God declares that it is so, and it is so, and faith receives this truth in quiet humility.

“The Word became flesh.” This truth is absolutely crucial to our salvation. Here’s why. John goes on to finish the sentence: “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.” Now we will see why this truth is utterly saving--and therefore so controversial.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” You could also translate it, “He tabernacled among us.” In the Old Testament the Lord God made his dwelling in the midst of his people, literally, at the Tabernacle, “the tent of meeting.” The Lord did that, made his presence known among the people, in order to meet with them, to interact with them. The Lord tabernacled among them, to guard and guide them, to give them his word, to forgive their sins through his appointed sacrifices, to lead them into the Promised Land--in short, to save them. That is how the Lord dealt with Israel by tabernacling among them.

Now John is saying, that is what happened on an even greater scale when the Word became flesh and “tabernacled” among us! God was present in the midst of fallen humanity in order to save us. The only Son of the Father, the glorious Son of God from eternity, pitched his tent in our midst when he became flesh, and he did so “full of grace and truth.” God’s Son was on a saving mission to redeem mankind, and he did it by becoming man himself. That’s what the little baby in the manger is all about. That’s what Christmas is all about: The Word becoming flesh in order to save us.

Why did God have to become man to save us? Because the situation called for it. This is God’s plan, and it’s the only one that works. All of humanity, every one of us, had fallen into the death-trap of sin, ever since our first parents. We have fallen, and we can’t get up. We cannot save ourselves. Only God is able to do that. But at the same time God’s justice demands that those who sin against him must die. Man had sinned, and man must die. The sins can’t just be swept under the rug. They must be dealt with.

And so Christ Jesus--that is his name, the name of the Word made flesh--Jesus came, as a man, to do the job and fulfill the demands of God’s Law. Jesus, as a man, kept the commandments, to love God and to love one’s neighbor, kept them perfectly, and he’s the only one who has done that. Jesus is the one righteous man, totally innocent. Even so--or really, because he is perfectly righteous and innocent--he suffered and died, as a man, in man’s place. Every person’s place, your place and mine. He’s the only one who could do it. Being true God, his suffering and death have infinite worth, enough to cover the sins of all humanity. Jesus died as the sacrifice, our substitute, to pay the price our sins deserve. His perfect righteousness is counted in our account. And when Jesus rose from the dead, he showed that his righteousness and his sacrifice have indeed done the job and conquered sin and death. And so we are acquitted, declared not guilty, in God’s court of justice. A righteous man has been found to keep the Law. A man has stepped forward to bear the penalty of the Law against sinners, and that man is Jesus, the God-man, the Son of God come in the flesh to save us.

God had to become man, the Word had to become flesh, to do the job, the saving mission. And he has, and therefore you are saved, all you who believe in him. That’s where Christmas is leading to. The Savior is making his dwelling among us, full of grace and truth.

But that is why also Christmas is so hated. There are people who cannot accept the fact that God became man, that the Word became flesh, in order to suffer and die to save us. Why? Well, if that’s the case, then it says several things about me. It says that I need saving, that I am a lost sinner, unable to save myself, and I don’t like to hear that. My natural man, the old Adam, hates that and hides from it, hides from God. To say that it takes the death of the Son of God to pay for my sins. . . ? You mean, I’m not good enough on my own? You mean there’s nothing I can do to merit or earn my salvation? No, I can’t have that. I can’t accept it. You see, these are the implications that flow out of the Word becoming flesh.

And so, over the years, people have changed the message to suit their self-satisfied desire to be their own god, to be their own Savior. They don’t want, or think they need, God’s own Son dying for them as the only solution to their problem. They prefer some other plan, whereby they are good enough or can make themselves good enough, to gain God’s favor, whether by attaining to some superior secret “knowledge” or by a life of good works or by self-improvement or whatever. Anything but the Word becoming flesh to save them. Anything but that Christmas.

Even in the first century these errors concerning the person of Christ had crept in. The apostle John, by now an old man, the last surviving apostle, had to deal with a heresy of this type in the late first century. His epistle, 1 John, deals with such an error, where some people were going around teaching that the man Jesus was not really the Christ, was not really the eternal Son of God come in the flesh to suffer and die. They didn’t like that message, and so they changed it. But John emphasizes, over and over again in this letter, the absolute necessity that the Son of God did come in the flesh, and that his blood, shed on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins, is the only thing that will save us. It’s not by our attaining to some superior “knowledge,” so-called.

The church has always had to face such errors, in every century. A couple of centuries later, there was a heresy called Arianism, which likewise couldn’t accept the idea of God and man together in the one man Jesus Christ. And so the church came up with a way to say it, to both affirm the truth and reject that error. Maybe you recognize these words concerning Christ: “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. . . .” Yes, the Nicene Creed, at least this part of it, was written to combat the error of Arianism and to affirm the true doctrine of the person of Christ. Because the person of Christ goes hand in hand with his saving work: “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary and was made man.”

Still in our day the church needs to be vigilant to guard this precious truth of Christmas. The Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses change the person of Christ to fit their own made-up religions. Even more subtle and insidious is a spirituality that leaves the person of Christ out almost entirely, or at most, turns him into a “life-coach.” My daughter Anna and I were listening to an interview on Sixty Minutes the other night with this fellow Joel Osteen. That’s what this guy Osteen does, either leaves Jesus out, as the dying Savior for sinners, or else turns Jesus into a life-coach to help you become a “better you.” But that’s a different Jesus. That’s a different gospel, which is no gospel at all.

Can you see why Christmas is so controversial, really? People don’t want a flesh-and-blood Savior who has to die for them in order to make them acceptable before God. They’d rather do it themselves, or think themselves good enough on their own. So they’ll change Christmas into some little innocuous feel-good thingie about Santa and reindeer and hot cocoa and warm family memories. Oh, not that there’s anything wrong with cocoa or family. It’s just that they can’t do what your flesh-and-blood Savior can do.

What can he do? This Jesus, born in a manger--he can save you! He does save you! He grew up and died on the cross for you, to do the job. Now you are forgiven, now you are God’s child too. Celebrate this truth! Rejoice in it! God is with us, to save us, in the person of Christ:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail th’ incarnate Deity!
Pleased as Man with man to dwell;
Jesus, our Emmanuel!

“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.”

John 1:1-18 (ESV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 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.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

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. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 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. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

1 John 4:1-16 (ESV)

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.