John 1:14-18 NIV
[14] The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. [15] (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ”) [16] Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. [17] For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. [18] No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
To the north of Glasgow, close to the edge of Loch Lomond National Park and the entrance to the West Highland Way, is a place where you can breathe quite rarified air. The suburban neighbourhood of Bearsden is populated by people with financial resources and standing and good reputations. It’s quite a safe and civilised area.
Which is why it’s often chosen by well-paid professional athletes and staff from football clubs as their home.
One can only imagine how it must feel to look out of one’s window on a morning, see a fleet of house moving vehicles in your cul-de-sac and notice that a famous footballer, his WAG and their children are moving into one’s street. It must elevate the standing of one’s neighbourhood no end.
That might be a special experience, but I can only imagine the tingling that shot up John’s spine when he wrote these words:
John 1:14 NIV
[14] The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Or, as The Message rather brilliantly paraphrases it:
John 1:14 MSG
[14] The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
What a verse!
These verses, you see, teach five things that Jesus did when He came at Christmas.
Firstly, He dwelt.
Now, this word has a very special connotation for the Jews of Jesus’ day. It means ‘to pitch a tent among’ or ‘to tabernacle’.
Way back during the time of the Exodus, Moses was given this command:
Exodus 25:8-9 NIV
[8] “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. [9] Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.
That sanctuary, or Tent of Meeting, or Tabernacle, was pitched right in the middle of the Israelite community and was a symbol of God's presence among them. It was what made them unique. Even when the Israelites sinned, Moses knew that they needed God’s presence or they would lose their identity and sense of who they were:
Exodus 33:15-16 NIV
[15] Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. [16] How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”
So what John is saying is that Jesus is not just God become man, He is also a visual aid of God's presence with us in everything and He is the One from whom we derive our identity.
Like the Israelites, without Him we are lost.
So the fact that at Christmas we commemorate Jesus coming to abide with is, to feel and experience all that it means to be a human being, is a very special thing.
But we don’t just see that He dwelt, we also see that He showed.
What did He show us?
John 1:14 NIV
[14] The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
He showed us the unseeable, unfathomable glory of God.
We need to understand this clearly. Yes, Jesus glorified God by carrying out miraculous deeds – but when He did so, the glory went to God. People who feel the need to carry out miraculous deeds to attract people to themselves ought to remember what happened to Moses (Numbers 20:1-12).
God is always very jealous over His glory:
Isaiah 42:8 NIV
[8] “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.
Isaiah 48:11 NIV
[11] For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.
But this is not the height of capriciousness. God is God. He is fully deserving of all the glory there is. No-one else deserves it.
It should all go to Him.
And yes, Jesus glorified God through His wonderful teaching. That is one hundred percent true.
And yes, Jesus glorified God by dying on the cross and being risen from the dead. That goes without saying.
But there is another way in which Jesus glorified God:
Through His obedience to the Father.
John 17:4 NIV
[4] I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
There is a profound lesson for us here. For too often, the church has been tied up in great works and deeds, like buildings, or works of art, or in an obsession with the supernatural, like miracles and visions and dreams.
But the main way in which Jesus showed us the glory of God was by obeying God. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t meme-worthy. I doubt it ever went viral. It was horribly unfashionable. But it was what He did.
And so will we. First and foremost. Above all.
But Jesus didn’t just dwell and show, He Gave.
John 1:16 NIV
[16] Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.
This is such an incredible picture. Grace is undeserved favour. It is unmerited kindness. It’s as if grace was a great waterfall, like one of the Niagara or Victoria or Iguazu or Plitvice Falls, where the water just keeps coming and coming and coming and just doesn’t seem to stop, and it’s power is just overwhelming.
It is just astonishing.
Ephesians 1:7-10 NIV
[7] In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace [8] that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, [9] he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, [10] to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
This is what John is talking about.
As you visit these Falls, you are simply overcome with the incredible power of it all. Yet you know that if you ever tried to swim or raft or sail over these Falls, you would not live to tell the tale.
They are dangerous.
Yet there is no danger in grace – only if you reject it. Or take it for granted.
That is what Jesus came to give: powerful, limitless grace to those who want it and need it.
Of course, this was not grace that supported a sinful life or condoned ungodly behaviour.
When Jesus rescued the woman caught in adultery He said these very striking words to her:
John 8:10-11 NIV
[10] Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” [11] “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
The only possible response we can have to this incredible flood of grace coming in our direction is not to use it as an insurance policy when we’re close to dying but to leave our life of sin now.
Apart from dwelling, showing and giving, Jesus did a fourth thing: He Taught.
That is nothing new to any Christian. Jesus’ teaching was the greatest of any person who ever walked this earth. No-one else has ever challenged or impacted human society more than Him.
Matthew notes something interesting about it:
Matthew 7:28-29 NIV
[28] When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, [29] because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
He was clear, concise, direct, uncompromising.
Luke is paraphrased in The Message as saying this:
Luke 4:31-32 MSG
[31-32] He went down to Capernaum, a village in Galilee. He was teaching the people on the Sabbath. They were surprised and impressed—his teaching was so forthright, so confident, so authoritative, not the quibbling and quoting they were used to.
Why was His teaching so confident, forthright and authoritative?
Because He knew it and He lived it so He could teach it with integrity and authority – in total contrast to the other religious teachers of His day.
But John notes another two aspects of His teaching: it was full of grace and truth.
Some of us might think that these are two opposites, like the poles of a magnet that drive each other apart. They think that absolute truth must have no grace because it exposes untruths. They think that grace must cover and tolerate untruth, and so must reject truth.
Neither of these assertions are at all true.
Grace and truth are two sides of the same coin.
Grace that covers or tolerates untruth or wrong cannot be grace. Grace is not so gentle as to cover wrongdoing. Grace is rugged in the face of sin. It was grace that sent Jesus to die a violent death on the cross for our sins.
Truth must confront untruth and expose it – of course – but without grace it is heartless, hopeless and has no means of dealing with the evil it has exposed. Jesus was tough and unrelenting in the face of the wrongdoing He knew was taking place in the very hearts of those who should be leading His people, but only to give then fair warning so they could repent, not just for the sake of destroying their dignity.
That is why grace and truth can coexist in blessed harmony, and they do so perfectly in our Saviour Jesus Christ. He is the truth (John 14:6), but there is no-one, and neither will there ever be, who showed more grace to more undeserving people than Him.
Jesus taught, but He also lived. And that was why He had authority. But that authority was to teach with grace and truth.
But Jesus did more than just dwell, show, give and teach. Lastly, He Showed:
John 1:18 NIV
[18] No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
Jesus made known the Unknowable Father. He showed us in detail, close up and personal, what the Father is like.
And not just in the sense where relatives or people known to our family see us and comment on how we resemble our parents.
No, this was something way deeper:
John 14:6-10 NIV
[6] Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. [7] If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” [8] Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” [9] Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? [10] Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
In a deeply profound way, when people saw Jesus, they saw the Father, because the Father is God, and Jesus is God, so anyone who saw Jesus saw the Father.
Do you know what is absolutely stunning about this? The single greatest, most revered figure in Israelite history is Moses. And that is quite reasonable, in a sense. I mean, he led a million people, many of whom would win a world championship of moaning if one existed, through the desert to the edge of the Promised Land. That is quite some achievement.
But for all his closeness to God, Moses did not see God’s face. Not even once. All he saw of God was His back (Exodus 33:19-20).
However...
2 Corinthians 4:6 NIV
[6] For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
When we look at the face of Christ, we see the face of God: not reflected, refracted or masked in any way. No: when we see Jesus, we see God. Because Jesus is God.
Way back when my daughter was small, I used to do the projection for her toddlers’ group's Nativity play. In my experience, this was the best job I had ever had in my home church. It was just a delight. Those kids were either cute as a button or absolutely hilarious, or occasionally both. There was always an expectation that things would go wrong, and it generally did.
But the message of the Gospel reached their families. That was what mattered.
Maybe you think I’ve gone wrong with this meditation series. After all, it’s now Christmas Day, and we’ve not really gone into detail about the Immaculate Conception or about donkeys or stars or angels or shepherds. We touched on the story of the Wise Men, but only the part where Herod tried to deceive them to kill Jesus.
So maybe this is the least Christmassy set of Christmas posts you have ever seen.
Maybe you think it’s like the Christmas Market our politically correct council came up with. It had a Christmas tree, an anamatronic reindeer, and for some reason they had combined it with ComicCon, so you had the bizarre sight of Imperial Stormtroopers wandering past some Christmas craft stalls.
But no Jesus.
Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.
Like John, I have skipped all the passages about a traditional Christmas. I’ve blogged on them before.
But what I’ve done, as John did, is focus on what, or rather whom, Christmas is all about:
Jesus. And no-one else.
So knowing that Jesus dwelt with us, showed us who God is, gave us grace upon grace, taught us from the Word of God and showed us who the Father is, will you worship Him today?
Who is He in yonder stall
At whose feet the shepherds fall...
‘Tis the Lord, O wondrous story
‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory
At His feet we humbly fall
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all!
Will you do that, right now?
Have a very blessed Christmas!
Prayer
Lord Jesus, now I know today who You really are, I want to spend my whole life following You. No-one else will do. Teach me what it means. Amen.
Questions
1. Are these verses about Christmas? What do the teach us?
2. Why should we worship and follow Jesus?
3. Will you worship and follow Jesus today?
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