In the Beginning
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Merry Christmas Friends,
Christmas is just a week away. It is hard for me to believe how fast it has snuck up on me. We managed to get the decorations, inside and outside, up just in time for the Christmas parade to pass by our house. Everything is looking festive as we get ready to gather with friends and celebrate the birth of Christ.
I wish you all the joy that the season brings no matter how or what you celebrate. As for me, I celebrate the birth of Christ Jesus, God with us, and new beginnings, and it is my sincere hope that you will join me in this time of festive celebration and worship.
Beginnings — Old and New
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”1 As he was writing these inspired words I wonder if the Apostle John’s thoughts were returning back to the opening words of Scripture. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”2 As one of Jesus’ closest friends John had witnessed first hand the miracles, he had learned directly from the example and teaching of the Lord. In these opening lines of his gospel he is bringing the old and coupling it to the new. The beginning of all things is overlapping with the beginning of the new thing. The Kingdom of God has come to earth. Immanuel — God is with us.3
To completely understand the significance of Christmas we must go back to the beginning. There is so much more to celebrate beyond the birth, miraculous as it was, of a baby in Bethlehem. More by far than a pronouncement of peace on earth and good will to all people. Christmas is the Creator of all things, heaven, earth, the stars, moon, and galaxies, humbling himself to be born of a woman and live among the Created. Becoming one of us that we might know him, and that he might know our struggle, our pain, our tears, and we might know his mercy, his grace, his forgiveness.
Read my Christmas 2024 article, Immanuel — God with Us.
In the beginning God created, and it was good. It was very good.4 In order for it to be good there had to exist the opportunity for not good. For evil. For corruption. Good has no meaning without an opposite. So, God gave the people he created the opportunity to be not good.
It didn’t take long for the people to choose not good. Exercising their free will they rebelled and did the one thing God had commanded them not to do, and in so doing infected themselves, and all their offspring throughout the ages, with the ugly stain of sin. The man and the woman whom God had so lovingly created disobeyed the Creator. Suddenly, with one bite of the forbidden fruit, all of humanity became infected.5
A solution was needed, and over the course of time God gave people laws to guide them back to him. A system of sacrifice was instituted. A system that relied on the annual animal sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. One could be forgiven for the sins of the past year, but would need to be forgiven again for sins in the year going forward, and again in the year after that, and so on. Sacrifices could atone for sin in the short term, but could not cure the root cause of sin. A rebellious heart.
The only way to fix a rebellious heart is to have a heart change. A spiritual heart transplant. Receiving new life from a perfect, sinless, non-infected donor.
A New Beginning — A Change of Heart
In the beginning God created. His creation rebelled and rejected his way. They stood condemned.
In the new beginning was the Word. This Word was with God at the creation, and in fact, the Word was God. He was in the beginning as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did their creative work.
When the time was right God began to move. In the past he spoke to the people through the prophets. The prophets had told of a coming Savior, the Messiah, who would save them from sin. At the new beginning God sent his Son, the Word, the one who was with him in the beginning at creation to earth.
This was Christ Jesus, the one whose birth we celebrate in this Christmas season. He was born under the law, and he kept the law, perfectly, for all his life on earth, so that he could be the perfect sacrifice, the cure for sin, and bring us into right relationship with God by helping us to renew and to experience a change of heart. Everyone who believes on him and follows him will receive adoption as the children of God.
I believe the Apostle John started his gospel with “in the beginning” intentionally. He was purposely making a connection between the in the beginning of Genesis and the in the beginning of the Gospel of John. It is a loud shout that God is with us. We are not forsaken.
He is with us because we matter to God, he has always wanted to be with us. That is why he gave Adam and Eve animal skins, the first animal sacrifice, to cover themselves. Why he gave the Law and the Commandments, the prophets, his written word. He wants to be with us, and so he came to live life as we do and experience what we experience. And in spite of all we have done to push him aside and to deny his existence, he still wants to be with us. To be Immanuel — God with us.
This is love. This is Christmas. God with us.
Merry Christmas, and thanks for reading.
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Pressing On
I chose the title Pressing On because my life, since I began following Jesus more than 50 years ago, has been guided by a verse found in Paul’s letter to the Philippian church.
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14
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John 1:1
Genesis 1:1
Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23
Genesis 1:31
Read more in Genesis chapter 3.