And the Word Was Made Flesh

 

St. John is not the first of the Four Evangelists that we usually think of in association with Christmas.   It is St. Matthew and St. Luke who provide us with the narrative of our Lord’s nativity.   St. Luke tells of the census of Caesar Augustus that required Joseph and the Virgin Mary to journey to Bethlehem where they found no room in the inn and so had to lodge in the stable where the Lord Jesus was born.   St. Luke also tells us of the angelic choir who appeared to the shepherds and directed them to where they might find the newborn Messiah.   St. Matthew tells us of the visit of the wise men from the East bringing the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.   It is St. John, however, who plainly states the importance of these events:

 

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (Jn. 1:14)

 

This is a theological statement.   It, and the words which immediately follow after in which the Evangelist testifies to his and others (SS Peter and James at the Transfiguration) having beheld the glory of the Word, conclude the extended theological discourse about the Word that serves as a preamble to the fourth Gospel.

 

That the celebration of the birth of our Saviour is a time for deep theological reflection was evidently an opinion shared by the writers of the most familiar and loved of Christmas carols.   Think of these words from what Charles Wesley called his Hymn for Christmas Day later retitled Hark the Herald Angels Sing by George Whitefield:

 

Veil'd in Flesh the Godhead see,
Hail th' incarnate Deity!
Pleas'd as Man with Men t'appear,
Jesus our Emmanuel here.

 

Since the days of Wesley and Whitefield the last two lines have been further revised to “Pleased as Man with Men to dwell/Jesus our Emmanuel” but the import is the same and it is also the same as that of John 1:14 – God came down and took on human flesh and dwelt among us.

 

Or think of the second stanza of Adeste Fideles, known in English as O Come, All Ye Faithful, the composition of which is uncertain but which was first published to our knowledge by John Francis Wade in the eighteenth century (Frederick Oakeley was the translator for the English version):

 

Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine
Gestant puellæ viscera
Deum verum, genitum non factum.

 

Or in English:

 

God of God, light of light,
Lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb;
Very God, begotten, not created.

 

This is largely taken from the Nicene Creed.   It comes from the section of the Creed that addresses the Arian heresy that the Nicene Council was convened to deal with. (1)   These words were put in to make it absolutely clear that the Jesus in Whom the Church places her faith is God, co-equal and co-eternal, with the Father.   The middle line references the ancient hymn Te Deum Laudamus traditionally attributed to St. Ambrose of Milan.

 

Later in the carol we find this more direct reference to John 1:14:

 

Patris aeterni Verbum caro factum.

 

A literal translation would be “The Word of the Eternal Father made flesh”.   In the usual English version it is rendered:

 

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.

 

This, the Incarnation, is the key theological truth of Christmas.   While the Gospel message is focused on the events of Good Friday and Easter, in which Jesus took our sins upon Himself, paid the penalty as our Redeemer, defeated the foes who had long held us captive – sin, the devil, death, hell – and rose triumphant over them from the grave, none of this would have been possible without the events of Christmas, without the Incarnation.   Just as the joy of the empty tomb and the encounters with the risen Lord could not have been had there not first been the sorrow and the suffering of the Cross, so there could have been neither Cross nor empty tomb, had there not first been that birth in the stable in Bethlehem.  The road to Calvary – and what came after – began at the manger.

 

There are some who like to tell us that “Logos” in John 1:14, and the entire Johannine preamble to which it belongs, should not have been translated “Word” in English.   The English word “Word”, they tell us, does not do justice to the Greek word.   While they are partly right in that the Greek word has a lot more meaning to unpack than is suggested by its English equivalent it is very wrong to say that any word other than “Word” could properly render Logos in the Gospel of St. John.   To render it otherwise, as Reason perhaps, or Logic, might bring out some of the philosophical implications of Logos, but would lose the significance that St. John himself attached to Logos in using it to identify Him Who became Incarnate and was born of the Virgin.   The very first words of the preamble “En archei” are an obvious allusion to the first words of Genesis – “in the beginning”.   After asserting of the Logos that He was with God and that He was God – two Persons, co-equal, co-eternal – , and repeating for emphasis that He was in the beginning with God, the very next thing St. John says of the Logos is “panta di’ autou egeneto kai choris auto egeneto oude hen ho gegonen”.  The Authorized Bible faithfully and accurately renders that as “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made”.   This too alludes to the first chapter of Genesis. 

 

The first verse of Genesis says “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth”.   This introduces us explicitly to the Father, the God with Whom, the Logos/Word was in the beginning according to John 1:1.   God the Son, the Logos/Word through Whom all things were made is implicit in the verse.   The Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, is introduced to us in the second verse “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”   Then in the third verse He Who was implicit in the first is brought out into the open and introduced to us explicitly “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”.

 

These words “And God said” occur throughout the Creation account.   The sixth verse “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”   The ninth verse “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.” The eleventh verse “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.”   Verses fourteen to fifteen “ And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.”   The twentieth verse “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”   The twenty fourth verse: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”   Finally the twenty-sixth verse “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

 

When St. John says of the Word, “all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made”, this summarizes the entire first chapter of Genesis.  God the Father created all things by speaking them into existence.   God the Son is the living Word thus spoken through Whom the Father created all things. This is Who St. John tells us “was made flesh and dwelt among us”.     So, as usual, the translators of the Authorized Bible got it right, and the preachers who like to think they are a lot smarter than they actually are have it wrong.   (2) Word, and only Word, is the right word for Logos in the English of John 1:1-14.

 

The All-Powerful Word of God, Who was with God the Father from the beginning, and sharing His divine essence is Himself God, became flesh and dwelt among us.   He was, as He Himself told Nicodemus in John 3:16, God’s gift to us – the first Christmas gift.

The response that this calls for from us is that of the refrain of Adeste Fideles:

 

O come, let us adore Him

O come, let us adore Him

O come, let us adore Him

Christ the Lord.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

 

 (1)   Speaking of the Nicene Council, the sixth century Church historian Theodorus Lector in his Historia Tripartita lists the Right Reverend Nicholas, Bishop of Myra as having been in attendance.   Yes, that is the Saint Nicholas.  According to later legends, he slapped either Arius himself or one of the heresiarch’s followers in the face at the Council.

(2)   Preachers who think they are a lot smarter than they actually are tend to come out of the woodworks at this time of the year.   There are those who like to tell us that Jesus couldn’t have been born in December and that the Church borrowed a pagan holiday when she made December 25^th Christmas.   Hippolytus of Rome, who died almost a century prior to the first Council of Nicaea wrote that Jesus was born eight days before the kalends of January, and a December birth is the implication of the account of the angel’s visit to Zechariah in St. Luke’s Gospel.  Zechariah was of the division of Abijah that served in the Temple during the week of Yom Kippur in September/October.  The sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, therefore, would have been March/April, when the conception of Jesus took place, making His birth in December/January.   Then there are those who claim Jeremiah 10 forbids Christmas trees.   These might have a point if anyone burned incense to a Christmas tree, offered it a sacrifice, or prayed to it, but as this is not what is typically done with Christmas trees, which are decorations not idols, these preachers merely prove themselves to be Pharisaical clowns of the worst sort.

The Cross is Where Law and Gospel Meet

 

The cross is universally recognized as the main symbol of Christianity.    This seems strange to some since the cross was the instrument by which Jesus Christ was put to death.   The New Testament itself makes it a symbol of the Christian religion however.  St. Paul writing to the Galatians said “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal 6:14).   Indeed, the association was made by Jesus Christ Himself.  When He asked His closest disciples first, Who men said that He was, then second, Who they, that is His disciples themselves said He was, He received St. Peter's confession "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" (Matt. 16:16)  Praising this response as having been revealed by the Father, He then began to explain to His disciples that His being the Christ meant that He would go to Jerusalem, be put to death on the Cross - a particularly cruel form of execution ordinarily reserved for the worst of criminals - and would rise again from the dead on the third day.  (Matt. 16:21)   He then told them that if they wanted to be His disciples they must deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him.  (Matt. 16:24)    Taking up the cross was not a reference to wearing a cross as a piece of jewelry.   It was a reference to the condemned criminal being forced to carry the crossbeam to the execution site, as He Himself was forced to do (with Simon of Cyrene being forced to help Him).  (1)

 

 

In a book that was quite popular when I began my theological education, John F. MacArthur Jr. used Jesus' call to take up the cross to hopelessly confuse Law and Gospel.    The book received the endorsements of all sorts of evangelical celebrities and even contained an introduction by an orthodox Anglican priest, the late J. I. Packer, who definitely ought to have known better.  (2)   While I am more reluctant to speak negatively about MacArthur after his behaviour of the last two years – the Solzhenitsyns and Niemollers and Wurmbrands who stood up admirably against the Satanic public health totalitarianism usually came from among the heretics and schismatics whereas the leadership, even that which is ostensibly orthodox, of Apostolic Churches behaved abominably - the confusion of Law and Gospel is deadly error, which is particularly obnoxious when it is tied in to a theology of the cross.   It is in the Cross of Jesus Christ, which bears the shape of the meeting of two paths, that Law and Gospel meet, and it is because of the Cross that they must never be confused.

 

 

Law and Gospel, when juxtaposed and contrasted, refer to the two Covenants, the Old Covenant God established with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai and the New Covenant He established with believers in Jesus Christ - both individually and collectively as the Church - through Christ's Death on the Cross and Resurrection.   The Law Covenant takes its name from the Books of Moses in which the terms of the Covenant are set out.   The Gospel Covenant takes its name from the Christian kerygma - the message of Good News that we proclaim to the world about how God has sent the Promised Redeemer, His Son Jesus Christ, how He has accomplished the salvation of the world through His Death on the Cross, and how He rose again victorious over death.     The emphasis in the contrast is on the opposite principles by which the two Covenants operate.   The principle upon which the Law operates is exactly what its name would indicate.   God commands and requires obedience, men obey and are rewarded and they disobey and are punished.   It is summed up in the words "do and live" (Rom. 10:5, Gal. 3:12).   The principle upon which the Gospel operates is that of grace - God's favour, freely given in Christ.   The Gospel tells us that God’s grace has been given to us in Christ, we receive it by faith, by believing the Gospel.  It is summed up in the last thing Jesus Christ said on the Cross before committing His Spirit to the Father – “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30).

 

 

St. Paul explains the contrast between the two principles this way:

 

 

For what saith the scripture?  Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.  Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.   But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.  (Rom. 4:3-5)

 

 

Later in the same epistle he declares the mutual exclusivity of the two principles.   In talking about the “remnant according to the election of grace”, i.e., ethnic Israelites who believe in Jesus he says:

 

 

And if by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.  But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. (Rom. 11:6)

 

 

St. John expresses the contrast at the beginning of his Gospel:

 

 

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.  (Jn. 1:17)

 

 

The mutual exclusivity of the principles of Law and Gospel does not mean that there was no grace in the Old Covenant or that there is no law in the New.   The Tabernacle/Temple, with its daily sacrifices, and especially the Day of Atonement was all about the forgiveness of sins and reconciling the offender to God which is only accomplished through grace.   These did not accomplish the removal of sin, but they pointed forward as St. Paul explains in his epistle to the Hebrews, to the One Sacrifice of Christ at the heart of the Gospel which did.   Jesus, after the Last Supper in which He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist declaring the Cup to be the “New testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Lk. 22:20), gave to His disciples a New Commandment “That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (Jn. 13:34), a Commandment both similar and different to the Two Greatest Commandments in which He declared the whole of the Law to be summed up.   What the mutual exclusivity does mean is that the Law and the Gospel have their own ends to accomplish, that neither can accomplish the ends of the other, and that it is disastrous to try and accomplish the end of the Gospel by means of the Law.   When the Law is used for its own end rather than that of the Gospel the two complement each other.

 

While the Law forbids sin and requires righteousness it is incapable of producing the righteousness it requires (Rom. 7).    This is not the end for which the Law was given.   In contrasting the glory of the Law with the greater glory of the Gospel St. Paul described it as the “ministration of death, written and engraven in stones” and the “ministration of condemnation” (II Cor. 3:7, 9).   This is the end for which the Law was given.   It was given to condemn.   As a Covenant, the Law was made with a specific people for a specific time.   Its message, however, is for all people in all times, and that message is to the effect of “this is the righteousness God requires, you do not measure up, you are a sinner, you are condemned”.   The condemnation in the Law’s message for us is not a maybe condemnation – “you might be condemned if you don’t shape up”.   It is a certain condemnation, a judgement that is already past, a sentence hanging over all of our heads.

 

 

The Gospel tells us that God, out of His Own love and mercy, has done everything that needs to be done to rescue us from this condemnation.   He has given us His Only-Begotten Son as the Saviour He promised back when our first parents fell into sin (Gen. 3:15)   That Saviour, Who was without sin (Heb. 4:15, I Pet. 2:22) took our sins upon Himself when He was nailed to the Cross (I Pet. 2:24) and by His Suffering and Death, a work of perfect redemption (Rom 3:24, I Pet. 1:18-19) and propitiation, i.e., turning away of wrath (Rom. 3:25, I Jn. 2:2) He obtained for us the righteousness of God (II Cor. 5:21, Rom. 3:21-22, 26).   That the work of salvation is complete and nothing more needs to be added to it was proclaimed by Christ as He died (3) and by His Resurrection (4).   This is God’s free gift to us (Rom 3:24, 6:23, Eph. 2:8) proclaimed in the Gospel to all who believe.    Believing is not something we do to add to or complete what Jesus has done.   Faith merely receives what is brought to us through the proclamation of the Gospel.   (5)   The salvation proclaimed in the Gospel is as certain as the condemnation proclaimed in the Law.

 

 

When Law and Gospel are used for their own distinct purposes these messages complement each other.   God, through the message of certain condemnation contained in the Law, works repentance – brokenness, humility and contrition – in our hearts, preparing them for the message of certain salvation proclaimed in the Gospel by removing the impediment to faith that is our own self-righteous delusion that we can earn God’s favour.   Through the Gospel, when it is received in faith, God works love in the hearts of believers (1 Jn. 5:19), which love is the source of the only human works that are in any way acceptable to God.

 

 

When Law and Gospel are mixed the certainty of both messages is compromised.   The Law, adulterated in this way, ceases to be the message of certain condemnation to the sinner.   The Gospel, similarly adulterated, ceases to be the message of certain salvation to the believer.   Both become the same message in which both condemnation and salvation are uncertain.  

 

 

It was by going to the Cross that Jesus fulfilled all the demands of the Law.   It was by fulfilling the demands of the Law at the Cross that Jesus gave us the Gospel.    It is in the Cross that Law and Gospel meet each other and we should not try to force them to meet anywhere else.   The call to discipleship illustrates the point very well.

 

 

Contrary to the way it is explained in the typical sermon, i.e., your “cross” being some non-specific burden that is particular to yourself, Jesus’ original hearers would have understood the call to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him quite literally as a call to follow Him to their deaths.   Since it was made in the context of predicting His Own Death and Resurrection an obvious opportunity to do just this was provided along with the call.

 

 

At the Last Supper Jesus told His Apostles that they would be scattered like sheep and that St. Peter in particular would deny Him three times.   St. Peter vehemently vowed that though he were to die with Jesus, he would never deny Him.   All the others joined in and said the same thing.   Of course, things turned out exactly as Jesus predicted.   The Apostles scattered after the arrest at Gethsemane, St. Peter followed Him to Caiaphas’ palace, where he denied knowing Jesus three times before the cock crow signaled the dawn.   None of the disciples were crucified with Him that day.  

 

That is not where the story ends, however.    Jesus went to the Cross Himself.   He completed the work of salvation for the Apostles and for the rest of the world.   He died – and then He rose again.   The Cross led to the Empty Tomb.   The Empty Tomb led to the Ascension from the Mount of Olives.   The Ascension led to the sending of the Holy Spirit on Whitsunday.   At Whitsunday St. Peter proclaimed Christ to the multitude and three thousand were converted.   Later, after healing the man lame from birth, he proclaimed Christ to the crowd at Solomon’s Porch in the Temple.   He and St. John were arrested and brought before the priests and the Sanhedrin who ordered them not to speak or teach in Jesus’ name and they answered that they “cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts. 4:20).   Arrested again and miraculously delivered from prison, the Apostles were brought again before the Sanhedrin where St. Peter with the others declared “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).   Much later, St. Peter was indeed crucified as a martyr for Christ, as Jesus Himself predicted when after His Resurrection He forgave and restored him (Jn. 21:18-19).  

 

 

It was the Cross that made the difference.   Up to that point, the call to discipleship operated on the principle of Law which cannot produce that which it demands.   Then Jesus fulfilled the Law at the Cross and ushered in the Gospel.   Under the Gospel, discipleship operated on an entirely different basis, the basis of grace and liberty and the power of the Holy Spirit, and what was demanded under Law was produced under the Gospel.

 

 

Had a certain evangelical celebrity from Sun Valley, California understood this he would have written a very different book indeed.

 

The Law and the Gospel meet in the Cross.   Don't try to bring them together anywhere else.

 

 

 

 

(1)       The multiple references to the carrying of the transom, both in Jesus' call to discipleship and in the Gospel accounts of His and Simon's being made to do so, demonstrates that the  familiar T/t - shaped complex cross was the Cross of the Crucifixion and not the crux simplex or "torture stake".   All the earliest writers who make any allusion to the kind of cross used indicate that it was the T-shape.  Claims to the contrary arise from the delusions of hyper-Protestants like the nineteenth century Rev. Alexander Hislop who start from the premise that the Catholic - not just papal, but actually Catholic, held by all Churches everywhere since the most ancient times - understanding of everything is wrong.  In Hislop's case he thought that everything Catholic was not just wrong but a fraud designed to pass off Babylonian paganism as Christianity.  He saw the T in the familiar cross shape as a reference to Tammuz, the Sumerian/Babylonian deity with some similarities to the Adonis of Greco-Roman mythology after whom the Babylonians named a summer month which name was borrowed by the Jews for their tenth civil month/fourth religious month in the Babylonian Captivity and remains the name of that month in the Jewish calendar to his day.   Hislop, on the basis of no evidence other than his own conjecture and imagination, identified the mythological Tammuz with the son and supposed reincarnation of the Nimrod mentioned in Genesis as an early king of what became Babylon.   All of this deserves to be mocked as the risible nonsense that it is.

(2)       The same year (1989) that this book, The Gospel According to Jesus, was published, MacArthur was defending his "Incarnational Sonship" doctrine before the Independent Fundamental Churches of America.   Incarnational Sonship is a gross heresy.   By denying the Eternal Sonship affirmed in the Nicene Creed and deriving Christ's Sonship from the Incarnation it implicitly teaches Sabellianism by confusing the Persons of the Father and Holy Spirit, the Latter being the Agent in the Incarnation.   MacArthur has since recanted this view.

(3)       “It is finished” also has the sense of “paid in full”.

(4)       “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).   The parallel structure of the verse indicates the second “for” has the same sense as the first.

(5)       Proclaiming the Gospel is something done both by individual believers and by the Church collectively.   With regards to the Church it is a more formal Ministry than it is with the individual believer.   Proclaiming the Gospel is part of the Ministry of the Word which includes preaching in the sense of giving a sermon, teaching if that is distinguished from preaching, and even just the reading of the Scriptures.   The Ministry of Sacrament is another form of proclaiming the Gospel.    Unlike the Ministry of the Word, which involves Law as well and is the Ministry where the danger of confusing or mixing the two must especially be guarded against, the Ministry of Sacrament is pure Gospel.   In Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the physical elements of water, bread, and wine become vessels through which the Word of the Gospel is conveyed tangibly.   The Absolution is another form of proclaiming the Gospel although it is a bit of a stretch to maintain that it is also another Sacrament as our Lutheran friends do seeing as there is not really a physical element comparable to water, bread, or wine.   It is part of the Ministry of the Keys, the Gospel Key that is the counterpart to the Discipline/Excommunication which is the Law Key, and as such belongs to the Apostolic Government of the Church.   Those who have inherited the errors of the Puritans, and specifically the Puritan error of associating the priestly office with the Law and the prophetic office with the Gospel - it is obviously the other way around, the prophetic office being all about rebuking people for sin, the priestly office being all about provision for forgiveness of sin – would regard the sacerdotal assertions in this footnote as legalistic.   Ironically, these also generally follow the Puritans in advising people to look to their own works for evidence of their election, which is another way of telling people to put their faith in their own works.   With regards to individual believers, proclaiming the Gospel is less of a formal Ministry and consists of verbal communication – although the quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi (amusingly fact checkers assert he didn’t say it even though what they really mean is that no evidence exists from his own time that he said it which hardly constitutes proof of the negative assertion – they would be on firmer ground if they could find an alternative attribution) “Preach the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words” bears keeping in mind.   So does the similarly themed poem that includes the lines “The Gospel is written a chapter a day/In the deeds that you do and the words that you say/Men read what you write whether faithless or true/Say what is the Gospel according to you?”