Most people in the U.S. do not believe that the Son of God existed before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The results of a LifeWay Research study show that 41% of American adults agree, even though 80% agree that Jesus is the Son of God. Of Christians who attend church four times a month or more 63% agree that the Son of God existed before Jesus was born, while 15% of those unaffiliated with organized religion believe it.
This is an important issue.
The first chapter of the Gospel of John provides helpful teaching. Please read John 1:1-18 now (Click on the reference)…
John teaches that “the Word” is “the one and only Son” (verse 14). He started talking about this in verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Calling him the Son does not mean he is less than the Father. It does not mean he is younger than the Father. The Son was not created. He is and he always has been. The Son and the Father exist on the same level, relating face to face so to speak. Everything that is true about God is true about the Word. The Son is no less Deity than the Father. Everything owes its existence to the Word. God created the universe through the Son. Life itself comes from the Son. The Word, aka Son of God, is the eternal, all-powerful, holy Creator and Lord of the universe.
John explains that “the Word became flesh” (verse 14). The Word became physical. The Son of God became a real human being. This is not a human becoming a god or godlike. It is not a man attaining transcendent enlightenment. This is the Son of God (who was in the beginning and who was the agent of everything being made) becoming a real human. He had a body with brain and muscles and skin and hair and guts. He had human thoughts and human emotions. He was not a facade or fake. He was a real human with a real physical body like you and me. Jesus the Messiah (verse 17).
The eternal Son “became” a human. He was God then he “became” human. He began to be a human. He came into existence as a human. John, writing in the everyday Greek language of his time, uses the same word in this statement as he used in verse 3 to describe how the universe and everything in it began to be – “all things were made” – all things began to be. The Word began to be flesh. This is something brand new. God had never been in the flesh before. He had made features of himself visible to a few people (see Exodus 24:9 for example), but he had never been a human before this. The human “Jesus” did not exist before this. The Son of God existed before this – he is eternal. But he was not a human. By becoming flesh he became something he had never been before. When the Holy Spirit caused Mary to be pregnant with the Son (Luke 1:35), he became the God/Man. He was the Creator incarnated, in-the-flesh, like one of the creatures.
John says the Word “made his dwelling among us.” He came to where we are. He moved into our neighborhood. John’s phrasing echoes the arrival of God in the tabernacle which Moses and the Hebrews built after they left Egypt (see Exodus 25:8-9 and Exodus 40:34-38). The Word becoming flesh was the glory of the Creator and the God of Israel coming to be with his people (see Malachi 3:1). The Son of God has lived in our world at a specific time in history in a specific place on Earth. He could have exploded onto the scene with power and splendor. Instead, he was compressed and packed into the womb of a virgin girl and quietly birthed in a stable.
Infinite God chose to be bound by limits. (I wonder if it felt something like a 350 pound man getting stuffed into a suitcase.) The Word who was eternal squeezed into time and space. The Son who was with God in the beginning came to be with people. The Light who gave life became dependent on a mother and father. He grew and lived among the people of Israel approximately 2,000 years ago.
This is the essential message of Christianity, the unique announcement of Christianity. We might want to say the primary teaching of Christianity is something like God loves you, or love your neighbor (even love your enemy), or live with high moral and ethical standards, or make the world a better place… All of these are components of Christianity, to be sure, but they are not the peculiar truth that Christianity proclaims. The essential message is this: the one God, the Creator of all, has physically come into our world in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the tune we dance to. This is the foundation we build on. This is the programming of our operating system. How could it not be? If it is true, it takes priority over everything else that we believe and teach and practice and value. There is no Christian faith apart from the reality of the eternal, pre-existent Son of God becoming a human and living in our world.
So, celebrate Christmas as the commemoration of the astounding fact that the Lord God Creator came to us as one of us. Sometime this season sing the second verse of Charles Wesley’s carol Hark! the Herald Angels Sing: “Late in time behold Him come, Off-spring of the Virgin’s womb: Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity, Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.”
Yes! Amen!