Coming Face-to-Face with Christ

Welcome to the Christmas Day edition of Things Unseen. I did wonder if anyone would be listening today, but I wonder if some of our podcast community may actually be entirely on their own today, or far away from home. And I know that for some of us, this particular Christmas Day may be the most difficult Christmas Day of our lives, perhaps because of the special struggles we’ve been experiencing, or maybe because of the loss we feel of someone who has been very dear to us.

And friends, the message of Christmas Day of the birth of the Lord Jesus is that He’s able to be with us, and to help us, and to save us no matter who we are, where we are, or how we feel. And He does this precisely because He became one with us. Apart from sin, right from the beginning of His human life, He came face-to-face with everything that we have to face. He felt what we feel. And so today, let’s take a moment to think about Him and to listen once again to the story of His birth.

Years after the gospels of Matthew and Luke had been written with their accounts of Jesus’ birth, the aged Apostle John sat down to write his gospel. No doubt he’d read the other Gospels and could still remember being an eyewitness of the events they described, and he’d long pondered the meaning of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus. But I think he also remembered the promise Jesus had given him and the other Apostles in the upper room the evening before the crucifixion. He told John and the others that the Spirit would come to them to remind them of everything He had said, to show them the things that were still to come, and also, interestingly, to lead them into the truth about Him. And so, John wrote his gospel so that we might find in that gospel his understanding of the truth about Jesus that the Spirit of God had revealed to him, and he’s now sharing it with us—the inner meaning, the truth about the coming of Jesus into the world.

The other gospels, John Calvin once insightfully wrote, show us Christ’s body, but John shows us His soul—that is, in a sense, John gives us the inner story of the incarnation. The others describe the outside, the events in which Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and the Magi and Simeon and Anna were all involved. But John tells the story from the inside, not from their point of view, but in a sense from the Lord Jesus’ own point of view, and then from John’s observations.

So, I thought the very best thing I could do today on the podcast was simply to invite you to listen again to John’s wonderful words:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

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 bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made Him known. (John 1:1–18)

The Son of God was always face-to-face with God His Father. That’s what John means by saying, “The Word was with God.” The preposition He uses means towards God. But the Son who was face-to-face with God came to be face-to-face with us, face-to-face with you. And all that is left for us to do this Christmas, therefore, is this: to look face-to-face with Jesus, who is face-to-face with God.

So, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. And I pray you’ll know His presence this Christmas Day and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.