God has received a bad press. Many who have claimed to
represent Him have misrepresented Him. The wrong message has been communicated.
People think He is out of touch, cold, distant and uncaring. In the birth of
Jesus Christ God speaks for Himself.
When we converse with people, we often struggle to find the
right words to communicate what is on our minds. We are left feeling frustrated
because we haven’t adequately or accurately expressed ourselves – our hearers
haven’t got the right impression or the full story.
When God wanted to express Himself to the human race, He
had just the word. John opens his Gospel with this statement:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Word God used was a person. This person couldn’t be a
mere man – that would be an inaccurate representation of God, because
the human race has been corrupted by sin and so couldn’t communicate what God
is like. Neither could the person be a mighty angel – that would be an inadequate
representation of God, because angels, though sinless, are finite – they are
creatures, and as such could never fully communicate what God is. In order for
God to accurately and adequately express Himself, the person had to be God, and
so John tells us, “the Word was God.”
But for us to understand this message it had to be
translated into our language. That’s why John goes on to say:
And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us.
John 1:14
One who was God became man in order to declare what God is
like. As one Bible teacher said, “when we look at Him, the guessing games about
God stop.” We don’t have to imagine what God is like. We don’t have to wonder
if He’s interested in us. We don’t have to speculate about how we can know Him.
Look at Christ.
Look at Jesus in the manger – He was God, and He was
prepared to come to us. Look at Jesus in Nazareth – He was God, and He was
prepared to live with us. Look at Jesus on the cross – He was God, and He was
prepared to die for us.
God has something to say to you, and He has said it all in
Christ.
Have you got the message?
