Christmas...The Wonder Of It All

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Take at least a moment and consider these words that the apostle John wrote in his gospel letter,

“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him” (John 1:10 – NKJV)

As we go about all of our activities in our intent to celebrate Christmas there is always the many facets of the holiday that it seems tend to occupy our thoughts. Such things are often far from the shear wonder of what Christmas is really all about.

Oh I know all the history of December 25th and the pagan leanings associated with past celebrations, and the questions that always seem to get tabled when the Christmas season comes around. Sometimes we get so involved dealing with the questions and discussing the history of December 25th that we tend to overlook the message that is meant to be conveyed to each one of us.

Our Scripture text especially garners my attention when I think about Christmas. And when it does come to mind I sense a need to dwell on it and when I do this I am in great awe.

John tells us in verse one of his gospel that “the Word,” who has always been and was “in the beginning” of all things as we know them, who “was with God,” a holy union that we are hard pressed to explain, and that this “Word was God.” This alone is enough for a person to contemplate without going much further, but note from our text what we further learn about “the Word,” about “God” and essentially about Christmas.

“the Word . . . was in the world” – Christmas, at its very core, is a time of Christian meditation on this magnificent truth. For the “Word” we are told is “God.” “God . . . was in the world.” The One that was “with God,” the second person of the Triune Godhead, “was in the world.” He came to this earth and inhabited a body made for Him (Hebrews 10:4-10), and was born of a virgin, and actually “dwelt among us” (1:14).

“the Word” was the One who “made . . . the world.” Christmas conveys this truth to all of mankind, that “God,” by whom “the world . . . was made . . . was in the world.” Into a dark and sinful “world” entered the Creator to convey a love that surpasses any act or form of love that can ever be manifested by man.

And yet . . . Christmas reveals also the truth that, “the world did not know Him,” this “Word” that “made the world,” this “Word” that came into this very “world.” He was a stranger to the inhabitants of a “world” He created. You would think that “the world” would “know” Him, the One who created them. But sin had separated mankind from “God,” a most serious separation that by its very nature deserved judgment . . . but instead . . . brought “the Word” into “the world” to “declare . . . God” (1:18) and to make it possible that “truth” (1:14) reveal that “as many as (would) receive Him to them He (“the Word”)” would give “the right to become children of God” (1:12).

Christmas . . . the wonder of it all! These truths of holy writ that we have considered here are ones we embrace at this time of year, pondering them and meditating upon them. Oh such “truth” of a “God . . . full of grace,” a “God” whose love reaches down to a “world” of lost sinners in such a manner as we recognize on a day that we call Christmas . . . the day when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”