The View From 1776

Pastor Dan Gardner, in Sunday’s sermon at the Cohocton, New York, Assembly of God, focused our thoughts upon Jesus Christ as the center of the Christmas celebration.

Jesus is not, as ethical culturalists say, just a good man and a great moral teacher.  Nor is he the ignorant superstition of deluded minds, as atheists assert.

Jesus is God; He is eternal; He created everything; He is the author of all life; He is the enlightener of mankind; and through Him we are all children of God, with fellowship in the family of His universal church.  There can be nothing else as important this Christmas as worshipping Him, through whom all out blessings come.

The principal text for Pastor Gardner’s sermon was John 1:1-13.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.  He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.  The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.  He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, was simultaneously human and divine.  John explicitly identifies Jesus with God: He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. (John 1:10)

Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.  I and the Father are one. (John 10:25-30)

Another similar formulation is found in John.  Jesus said:

"Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” “You are not yet fifty years old,” the Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:56-58)

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:3)

John 1:1 is particularly powerful: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

As Pastor Gardner explained, the New Testament Greek term for word is logos, or knowledge (as in our names for branches of knowledge - psychology, sociology, etc., with the difference that God’s Word is universal, not confined to any single aspect of the universe). 

Thus the Word, in John’s sense, is universal knowledge, the Mind of God, in which the universe exists, subject to the laws of nature He created.  God’s Mind, God’s Word existed before the universe.  The universe and all in it are parts of God’s Mind, parts of his Word.  God-Jesus is Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover who imparted all energy and motion to the universe.

God is pure existence preceding essence, and Jesus is God.  As Exodus records, while tending sheep in the desert near Horeb, the mountain of God, Moses saw a bush that was burning, but not being consumed by the flames.  From the flames, God said to Moses, “I am who I am.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ “(Exodus 3:14)

God-Jesus is being, life itself, existing eternally outside and preceding the universe, the Creator of everything humans endeavor to understand.  In contrast, all things within our universe have a beginning, subsequently develop characteristics (essences), and come to an end. 

True science is the human mind intuiting aspects of the laws of nature, which are manifestations of the Mind of God.  In the same way, Old Testament prophetic revelation was intuition of God’s Will for human social conduct. 

In Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, we celebrate God’s fullest revelation of His Will.  The Apostle Paul’s distillation of the message of Christmas is:

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.  Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. (Galatians 4:4-7)