Bible Study - The Christmas Story Part 2 - John 1:1-18

Last week, we talked about the tendency in our world to focus on so many other things than the true Christmas story in these weeks before Christmas. Entertaining music and heartwarming stories and gift-giving, etc., are not bad things, but we need to be sure to hear the Christmas story from the Scriptures, above all. There is our real hope and joy, in the coming of Christ.

We began with the Gospel of Mark, which tells us that the really Good News is in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but then takes us directly to the grown-up Jesus, beginning His public ministry, along with John the Baptist. Mark, as God inspired him, did give some insight into what is sometimes called the “holy family.” Jesus was without sin, but the other family members had trouble accepting what Jesus was doing and trusting in Him. Clearly, some did not believe in Him, but later on they are listed as His followers, after His resurrection. Mark likely did not include the stories of the birth and early years of Jesus, since the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were already written, and God did not lead him to repeat all these.

John’s Gospel was likely the last of the four Gospels to be written, and probably for the same reason as with Mark, God chose to have him start with the adult Jesus and John the Baptist. John does have a “prologue” of 18 verses, though, (John 1:1-18) in which he makes several very important points.

First, God the Son had already existed from all eternity. See John 1:1-4. He is called “the Word” and was God and was with God, even before the creation. He was with the Father and the Holy Spirit and was involved in the creation of all things “in the beginning," as Genesis describes. “In Him was life,” new and eternal life, too. John uses the word “life” 36 times in his Gospel. See John 5:24-26 and 10:27-30 and 14:6, for example. His life and His Word would bring “the light” to the people of this world, living in darkness. (See passages like Psalm 119:105 and 130; Psalm 36:9; John 8:12; and Proverbs 6:23. Notice how light and life and the Word go together, especially in Jesus. See also John 12:35-37.)

Sadly, the forces of darkness would not understand and would oppose Jesus, finally sending Him to the cross, but they would not overcome Him. John the Baptist would also come, sent by God as a “witness” for Jesus and His “Light,” but he too would be rejected. Jesus would make available “the true Light” for everyone, as he came into the world. Yet the sinful world “did not know Him” and “His own people did not receive Him,” including His own family at times, though He was their Creator (John 1:5-11).

Some would “receive” Jesus, though, and become “children of God,” “born” into a new life of faith and belief, not by their own power and choice and will but by the grace of God, in Christ Jesus. That would not happen, though, unless “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” in this world, as a real human being, along with being “the only Son from the Father.” He would be “full of grace and truth” as He dwelt (literally, “tented”) among us. As God showed His glory in the Old Testament tent, the Tabernacle (see Exodus 40:34-38), so Jesus would show the glory of God through His life and ministry and Word and even His suffering and death (John 1:12-14). (See John 12:27-33 and Paul’s words about living in our own “tent," our body, in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5.)

John 4:24 tells us that God is a Spirit. Yet for God the Son to do His saving work for us, He had to became a real man and take on flesh and blood, as well as being true God. The Latin word for “flesh” is “carnis." One who eats meat is called a carnivore. So, the “incarnation” is the event of God the Son taking on human flesh, as He was conceived and born as a real baby boy, born of the Virgin Mary, by the power and miracle of the Holy Spirit. That is what actually happened in the true Christmas Story, as we shall see in weeks ahead. We will learn more about why it had to happen, too.

In John 1:15-18, we hear that John the Baptist witnessed about Jesus that Jesus existed before him, though John was actually born first. God the Son was God, at the Father’s side, and had existed with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the one true God, from all eternity, before becoming a man, Who could make God known and bring us “grace upon grace” in His “grace and truth” for us, that would save us. He had always existed, but now He came also in the flesh, for our good. Notice how many other passage in John’s Gospel make these same points. Though we cannot explain it, God the Son became man in Jesus Christ and was sent from the Father to do just this. See John 3:16-17, 5:23-25, 8:23-24, 8:49-58, 17:4-5, and 18:33-37, for example. In the last passage, Jesus tells Pontius Pilate, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world - to beat witness to the truth.”

Finally, see 1 John 4:9, where John says, “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.”

John also summarizes the main purpose for writing his Gospel, as God inspired him to do, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). That is why John uses the words “witness” and “testify” many times in his Gospel, and uses the verb “believe” 98 times! The Lord really wants us and all others to come to faith, above all.

We will hear more about all this and the purpose of the incarnation of Jesus next week.