The story of Christmas, with all its wondrous details of
angels, shepherds, magi, and a manger is a compilation from the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Mark
begins its narrative of the life of Jesus with the adult John the Baptist’s
call to the people of Israel to repent, John’s Gospel, like Mark’s, begins its
narrative with John the Baptist, but it does include a prologue that sheds some
powerful light upon the Christmas story even without mentioning any of the
parts of the story that children love to hear.
Luke begins his story with the coming of Gabriel to Zechariah to
foretell the birth of John the Baptist, Matthew with the dream of Joseph where
the angel tells him that Mary’s pregnancy is not a sinful mistake but a divine
intervention. John’s prologue backs up
much further than either of these accounts of Jesus by starting, “In the
beginning”. The one who will become
incarnate at Bethlehem has a history that predates all of creation and even
time itself. Before anything that now
is, except for God, had come to be, the Word of God already was in
existence. That Word, which could also
be translated as: thought, expression, idea, or speech, was both with God “in the beginning” and that
Word was God from the beginning. With his opening statement, John’s Gospel
makes an incredible and amazing claim for Jesus: he was, and is God.
This same
claim concerning Jesus will be made throughout John’s Gospel, most famously
with the “I AM” statements, yet here in the prologue John has already removed
all doubt from those who would question his intention. If John is taken at face value, Jesus must be
considered as fully God, anything less is to ignore the Gospel’s claims. Along with existing before all else, the Word
also had a necessary role in the creation of everything that exists, so much so
that John assures us that nothing exists that he didn’t have a part in
creating.
The
next thing that John shares concerning the Word of God pertains to life
itself. It is clear that human life is qualitatively
superior to all other life as we know it, we alone ask ourselves about where
life came from, what its purpose is, and what happens to us after we die. Such questions have been asked by our
ancestors throughout history, but the light had only shined dimly through
natural revelation (looking at the world around us) and those who had a
connection with God but were themselves imperfect vessels. All of that changed with the coming of the
Word, who was both originator of the life of mankind, as well as a beacon of
light shining in the darkness and pointing us toward the Father. The darkness, for its part, has been entirely
unable to understand/overcome the coming of the light of Christ, it cannot
understand how humility, service, and self-sacrifice are God’s ultimate tools
of victory because hate does not comprehend love.
John
has already made definitive claims about who Jesus, as the Word of God, was and
is, as John’s prologue continues, in vs. 10-14, the purpose of his coming among
us in the flesh will be made clear.
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