Sermon for Christmas Day: December 25, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. (1 John 4:1-3a)

Christmas marks a dividing line between truth and error. There’s something behind all the controversy that erupts each year! God became Man- that in itself is so shocking, so utterly unreasonable and offensive, that it drives people to deny the truth and promote error in its place. Over 2,000 years, do you know what people just can’t take? They cannot handle the truth of Christmas. They cannot stand the idea that the Word, the Logos, the eternal Son of God, had to become flesh, with all that implies with it.

Now we know, Christmas is not merely “cute.” Rather, it is raw reality that deals with the root problem of humanity. It touches on flesh-and-blood sin that brought our God to us up close and personal. That fleshly truth of Christmas may be controversial, but it is also crucial. Your very salvation depends on it! “And the Word became flesh.” No more unfathomable mystery was ever captured in such a simple statement. The apostle John was delving into a true mystery.

He started the Gospel account with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” It’s just like the opening of Genesis: “In the beginning. . . .” He’s saying that there is one called “the Word,” the Logos, who was eternally face-to-face with God and yet who was also God in substance, in who He actually is. This one called the Word was there “in the beginning,” that is, at Creation, which means he himself was not created. He is the Son of God, without beginning or end. “And God said, ‘Let there be. . . .’ And there was. . . .” That was the Word, the Logos, acting in Creation. So John says of him: “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The Word is true God, from eternity, above all created things.

One event changed the world, and that was: “The Word became flesh.” The one who was true God, from eternity, at a certain point in human history, became also true man. The Word became flesh, became one of us, a flesh-and-blood human being, our brother. How can this be? It simply is. Our mind, our reason, cannot comprehend just how this is possible. But God declares that it is so, and faith receives this truth in quiet humility.

“The Word became flesh.” Why is this absolutely crucial to our salvation? Here’s why. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Salvation depends on it, the one and only way to heaven, and there you have the controversy.

In the Old Testament the Lord God made his dwelling in the middle of the Exodus camp, a tent in the very center, surrounded by the tents of all the twelve tribes. This was the “tent of meeting,” or the Tabernacle. He came there to meet and interact with Moses and the people. That was His tabernacle, His dwelling. He gave His Word from there, protected them, fed them, forgave their sins using the appointed sacrifices. The cloud and pillar of fire led them while they traveled, then God rested at, or inside, the Tabernacle, His dwelling place.

As grand and miraculous as that was in the days of Exodus, John is writing that the appearance of Jesus in the flesh was even greater! His tabernacle of skin and bones, clothing and sandals was where He pitched His tent among us, to save fallen humanity. God’s Son was on a saving mission to pay for mankind’s sin and reclaim us, and he did it by becoming man himself. That’s what the little baby in the manger is all about. That’s what Christmas is all about: The Word became flesh in order to save us.

Why did God have to become man? Because our situation called for it. This is God’s plan, and it’s the only one that works. All of humanity, every one of us, had fallen into the death-trap of sin, ever since our first parents. We have spiritually fallen, and we can’t get up. We cannot save ourselves. Only God is able to do that. But at the same time God’s justice clearly demands: Man had sinned, and man must die. The sins can’t just be ignored. They must be paid for.

And so Christ Jesus—the Word made flesh–Jesus came, as a man, to do the job and fulfill the demands of God’s Law. Jesus, as a man, kept the commandments, to love God and to love neighbor, He kept them perfectly, and he’s the only one who has done that. Jesus is the one righteous man, totally innocent. He alone could take our place. Every person’s place, your place and mine.

As true God, his suffering and death have infinite worth, enough to cover the sins of all humanity. Jesus died as the sacrifice, our substitute, to pay the price our sins deserve. His perfect righteousness is counted as ours. And when Jesus rose from the dead, he showed that his righteousness and his sacrifice have indeed done the job and conquered sin and death. And so we are acquitted, declared not guilty, in God’s court of justice. A righteous man has been found to keep the Law. A man has stepped forward to bear the penalty of the Law against sinners, and that man is Jesus, the God-man, the Son of God come in the flesh to save us. That’s how it had to be. That ought to be enough to make Christmas so beloved.

That is why, though, the genuine Christmas is so hated. There are people who cannot accept the fact that God became man, that the Word became flesh, in order to suffer and die to save us. Why? Well, if I believe that, then it would necessarily say several things about me. It says that I have to admit I need saving, that I am a lost sinner, unable to save myself, and I don’t like to hear that. My natural man, the old Adam, hates that and hides from it, tries to hide from God. To say that it takes the death of the Son of God to pay for my sins…? You mean, I’m not good enough on my own? You mean there’s nothing I can do to merit or earn my salvation? No, I can’t have that. I can’t accept it. You see, the Word became flesh means I have to believe things that I don’t want to believe, or I don’t see the reason to believe.

Human beings want to change the message, to make Jesus one option among many possible faiths that will get you to the same place. Maybe they want themselves to be the gods they follow. You and I in our sinful natures want that. Anything but the Word becoming flesh to save us. Anything but that kind of Christmas.

It was the same even in the first century. The apostle John, by now an old man, the last surviving disciple, unbelievably had to deal with a heresy that rejected Jesus was the Son of God. His epistle, 1 John, repeatedly emphasizes for his hearers the absolute necessity that the Son of God did come in the flesh, and that his blood, shed on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins, is the only thing that will save us. It’s not by our attaining to some superior “knowledge,” so it was called.

A few centuries later, some other heretics called Arians denied that Jesus was truly God’s Son. Following Scripture’s words very closely, the church came up with a way to confess its answer to that challenge, to both affirm the truth and reject that error. Maybe you recognize these words they approved at their meeting concerning Christ: “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. . . .” Yes, the Nicene Creed, at least this part of it, was written to combat the false teaching of Arianism and to affirm the true doctrine of the person of Christ. Who Christ is then goes hand in hand with the work He came to earth to do: “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary and was made man.”

Still in our day the church needs to test the spirits- to be vigilant to guard this precious truth of Christmas. The official teachings of Latter-Day Saints, Community of Christ and the Jehovah’s Witnesses try to change the person of Christ to fit into their own religious inventions. Even more troublesome than that is any Christian pastor or author who either avoids talking about Jesus or only uses His words as life-coach advice on principles of success, or the Bible is a key to making lots of money. A different gospel is no gospel at all, no matter how popular it may seem.

Can you see why Christmas remains controversial? People don’t want a flesh-and-blood Savior who has to die for them in order to make them acceptable before God. So they’ll change Christmas into a collection of cute little harmless feel-good traditions about Santa and reindeer and hot cocoa and warm family memories. And not that there’s anything wrong with Christmas fun. It’s just that the fun part can’t do what your flesh-and-blood Savior can do.

What can he do? This Jesus, born in a manger–he can save you! He does save you! Even to this day. He grew up and died on the cross for you, to do the job. Now you are forgiven, now you are God’s child too. Celebrate this truth! Rejoice in it! God is with us, to save us, in the person of Christ:
    Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
    Hail th’ incarnate Deity!
    Pleased as Man with man to dwell;
    Jesus, our Emmanuel!

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.