Scripture reading: Psalm 147:12-20.

Sermon text: John 1:1-18.

We’ve all known of people we call “game-changers.” When the game-changer steps on the field, everything changes. These people completely, consistently rewrite any situation they encounter, always inserting themselves in the position of leadership. Game-changers may not always win, but everyone involved will always remember their participation.

In the Incarnation, God didn’t appear as a “game-changer.” Instead, God appeared as the One who would change eternity itself.

St. John the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of St. John some time around A.D. 90, late in his life. Even after over 5 decades, the events of St. John’s life with Jesus remained fresh in his mind. St. John, however, did not write a biographical account of Jesus’ ministry. St. John wrote his Gospel with one goal in mind: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). The Gospel of St. John would shape the theological debates of the Church for the next 4 centuries, primarily because of his treatment of the Incarnation.

“Wait,” you might say; “St. John never mentioned Jesus’ birth, nor does His Gospel give us any account of Jesus’ childhood. How can you say St. John even mentions the Incarnation?” Today’s sermon text contains the greatest explanation of the Incarnation you’ll find. We read of 2 major points regarding Jesus’ incarnation, both of which prove vitally important to our salvation and God’s redemption of all creation.

First, we find St. John’s definitive statement regarding Jesus’ divinity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I once wrote in a lecture on the Gospel of St. John:

1. John’s wording in this verse is a compact statement of doctrinal orthodoxy of the divinity of Christ. In the last phrase, John’s wording says, “and God was the Word.” However, the word “logos” is in the nominative case, the case of the subject of the sentence. Furthermore, the word has the article (“o”), definitively recognizing it as the subject of the phrase.
   

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3. The word for God (“Theos”) is the first noun in the phrase, but this emphasizes its essence or quality. According to Bill Mounce, “The word order tells us that Jesus Christ has all the divine attributes that the Father has; lack of the article tells us that Jesus Christ is not the Father.” Mounce quotes Martin Luther, who said, “The lack of an article is against Sabellianism; the word order is against Arianism” (Bill Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), 28-29).
   

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5. •“and the Word was the God” (i.e. the Father; Sabellianism or Modalism)
   

6. •“and the Word was a god” (Arianism)
   

7. •“and the Word was God” (Orthodoxy)
   

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9. Jesus Christ is God and has all the attributes that the Father has. But He is not the first Person of the Trinity. All this is concisely affirmed in “the Word was God.”
   

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11. In the Incarnation, God Himself came to us. This brings us to St. John’s second major point, expressed in verse 14: “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.”
    

Here, St. John conquered another heresy, that of “Docetism,” from the Greek word “to seem.” Some heretics of the early Church era claimed that Jesus merely “seemed” human; He merely “seemed” to hunger, to suffer, or even to die. St. John knew Jesus; he knew Jesus was truly human. The Son of God truly experienced birth as a baby; He truly experienced life as a Jewish man in first century Judea and Galilee.

Why is Jesus’ humanity so important? Why does His humanity matter at all in the grand scheme of eternity?

I’ve read many explanations of the importance of Jesus’ humanity, but no one has expressed it more powerfully than C.S. Lewis, who wrote:

1. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person — and he would not need it….
   

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3. But supposing God became a man — suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person — then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God…. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. — Mere Christianity, “The Perfect Penitent”
   

This process — God made incarnate by the Virgin Mary, suffering and dying for our sins — tells us why Jesus’ humanity proves so important. We have all rebelled against God in some way; we all need our relationship restored between us and our Creator. Jesus’ death and resurrection provides the only means of that restoration. When we believe in Jesus as Lord of our lives, we are “justified,” or given right standing, before God. As St. Paul wrote, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Our need for a right relationship with God, and Jesus’ provision of the only path for that relationship, proves the great importance of Jesus’ humanity.

If you’ve lived a perfect life, you have no reason for Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection. If, like me, you’ve sinned and marred your relationship with God, it should matter greatly to you that Jesus loved you enough to become man and live among us. St. Paul wrote, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). St. John would later quote Jesus as saying, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

For believers in Christ, Christmas reminds us of the Word made flesh, dying for us and rising again to insure our victory over sin and death. For those who have yet to believe, Jesus alone can give you what your soul truly craves. Christmas reminds humanity that God still cares, so much that Jesus, His only begotten Son, changed eternity itself for us.