“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1
This weekend was our Carol service. Think of how many songs have been written to proclaim Jesus birth! ‘Silent Night”, “O come all Ye Faithful,”, “Away in a manger.” Hundreds of carols offering praise to the baby born in Bethlehem.
A birthday celebration. That’s what Christmas is all about. But is it accurate to say that Jesus has a birthday in the same sense that you or I do? Did life begin for Jesus with his first breath of Judean air? Unlike us, Jesus existed before his birth. In fact, Jesus existed before there was air to breathe, long before the world was born.
“In the beginning…” John’s Gospel begins with the same momentous words as Moses in his account of the creation (Genesis 1:1). But John takes us back even further, to a time before atoms and time and gravity. A time when all that existed was Christ with the Father and the Spirit.
The Word had no beginning, rather he simply ‘existed’ “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God” declares the Psalmist (Psalm 90:2), or as AW Tozer puts it ”From the vanishing point to the vanishing point…. The mind looks backward in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks to the future till thought and imagination collapse….and God is at both points, unaffected by either.”
Why does John call Jesus ‘The Word’? According to William Barclay, the Greek title ‘logos’ is the name for ‘the instrument through which God made the world…. the thought of God stamped upon the universe… the creating and guiding and directing power of God, the power which made the universe and kept it going”
This year see the baby through John’s eyes “in the beginning, with God.” Imagine this Jesus, who wove together your body in your mother’s womb, also weaving for himself a body. Picture him experiencing human life with all its joy and pain and doing it humbly for you.
The Maker of the Universe (Fredrick William Pitt)
The maker of the universe, as man for man was made a curse:
The claims of laws which He had made, unto the uttermost He paid.
His holy fingers made the bough which grew the thorns that crowned His brow:
The nails that pierced His feet were mined in secret places He designed.
He made the forests where there sprung, the tree on which His body hung:
He died upon a cross of wood; yet made the hill on which it stood.
The sky that darkened o’er His head, by Him above the earth was spread:
The sun that hid from Him his face, by His decree was poised in space.
The spear revealing precious blood was tempered in the fires of God:
The grave in which His form was laid, was hewn in rock which He had made.
The throne on which He now appears was His from everlasting years:
But a new glory crowns His brow, and every knee to Him must bow.
– Phil.
