The Meaning of Christmas

December 24, 2024 ()

Bible Text: Selected Scriptures |

Series:

The Meaning of Christmas | Selected Scriptures
Brian Hedges | December 24, 2024

The three most important days in the Christian year are Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter; and that's because the three most foundational events of the gospel are the incarnation and the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without these, there is no Christianity. As the twentieth-century Scottish preacher James Stewart said, “Christianity means devotion to the person of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen.”

Tonight I want us to think for a few moments about the meaning of Christmas. What is the meaning of Christmas? What do we mean when we say that God became man?

Here at the outset, I should just give kudos to one of the members of our church, Ron Hayden. A few weeks ago, he wrote something of an outline on the whiteboard in our conference room. They were very beautiful thoughts. They kind of got the wheels turning for me, and so my message is kind of an adaptation of some of those ideas.

I want us to think about what it means when we say that God became man. I find much help in the church fathers. It was the early church in those first three or four centuries who really wrestled with this truth, the doctrine of the incarnation. I want to just give you a sampling of some of the quotations from the church fathers.

We confess together in the Nicene Creed these words: “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

Now that document, the Nicene Creed, is an echo of what some of the earlier church fathers themselves wrote. So for example, the second century church father, Irenaeus of Lyons, wrote these words: “He became what we are so that we might become what he is.”

Or Gregory of Nazianzus said, “Without ceasing to be what he was, he became what he was not.”

You see the running theme here? Christ became something. He became what he was not, he became what we are, and did that with a purpose so that we could become, in some way, like him.

Here's one more statement from Cyril of Jerusalem. He said,

“Let us confess the presence of him who is both king and physician. [This is a beautiful thought.] For Jesus the King, when about to become our physician, girded himself with the linen of our humanity and healed that which was sick. For if the incarnation was a phantom, salvation is a phantom also.”

What all these church fathers are getting at is that something really took place in the incarnation as God, the eternal Word, the person of the Son, took on flesh, took on a real human nature.

That’s what the incarnation means. He became human. And the Scriptures, of course, speak in just this way. The church fathers are just themselves trying to work out the implications of the Scriptures. And so what I want us to do tonight is look at four ways in which he became what he was not so that we could become like him; four ways for us to understand the incarnation, all of these rooted in passages in the New Testament.

1. The Word Became Flesh

The first passage will be in John 1, and the first thing I want us to see is that the Word became flesh. Let’s look at John’s gospel for a moment. John 1, and I'll read the first five verses and then verse 14.

“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 any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

“[Verse 14] 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.”

The Word became flesh, and it’s important to read verse 14 in light of those first five verses that tell us who the Word is. And in fact, in those five verses, we learn three things about the Word, who the Word is. We see his eternity. “In the beginning was the word.” That’s very similar to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But here John, speaking about a new beginning, a new creation, says, “In the beginning was the Word.”

But we see that this Word has distinct personality. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” And then again in verse 2, “He was in the beginning with God.”

So this is a figure who in some ways is to be identified with God and yet is distinct. There is plurality here of persons within the divine being, and yet the text also says “and the Word was God.” So there's also unity. He is with God. He is himself God.

Then verse 3 tells us that he was the agent of creation, that all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In verses 4 and 5, he is the agent of illumination. He is the one through whom light comes into the world. And John then tells us in verse 14 that this figure, the eternal Word, the creator of heaven and earth, the one who is eternally at the Father’s side, that this one has become flesh.

Some years ago, the journal of the American Medical Association published an article by doctor Paul Ruskin. It was on the stages of aging, and in the article, Dr. Ruskin described a case study he had presented to his students when teaching a class in medical school. He described the case study patient under his care in this way:

“The patient neither speaks nor comprehends the spoken word. Sometimes she babbles incoherently for hours on end. She is disoriented about person, place and time. She does, however, respond to her name. I've worked with her for the past six months, but she still shows complete disregard for her physical appearance and makes no effort to assist her own care. She must be fed, bathed, and clothed by others. Because she has no teeth, her food must be pureed. Her shirt is usually soiled from almost incessant drooling. She does not walk. Her sleep pattern is erratic. Often she wakes in the middle of the night, and her screaming awakens others. Most of the time she is friendly and happy, but several times a day she gets quite agitated without apparent cause, then she wails until someone comes to comfort her.”

Then the doctor asked his students if any of them would like to take on the care of such a patient. They all, of course, said no. And then he showed them a picture of the patient, and it happened to be his six-month-old daughter. Those of you who are parents of a newborn can relate. He went on to talk about the amazing blessing it was to care for his child and things he was learning from his child.

But the point I want you to get is this, that when the Bible says that the Word became flesh, it means that the eternal God took on that condition; that he became an infant, that he became a baby with all of the helplessness of an infant child; that Jesus, the eternal Word, went through those stages of development. That’s an amazing thought, and it’s what we mean when we sing together, as we just have,

“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate Deity…
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing…”

That he took on flesh, that he became one of us, means that he came down into the very experience of our humanity, beginning with his miraculous conception, his birth, and then all of the stages of childhood and adolescence and growing up into an adult.

This didn't add anything to his glory, but it did express his glory in a new way. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory,” John says, “the glory as of the only Son of the Father.”

Listen to how the Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne explained this. He said,

“The Word became flesh. Christ did not get more glory by becoming man, but he manifested his glory in a new way. He did not gain one perfection more by becoming man. He had all the perfections of God before, but now these perfections were poured through a human heart. The almightiness of God now moved in a human arm. The infinite love of God now beats in a human heart. The compassion of God to sinners now glistened in a human eye. God was love before, but Christ was love covered with flesh.”

“The Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory.” And, of course, the only appropriate response to this astounding truth is “O come, let us adore him,” to worship this great God.

2. The Son Became a Servant

We see in Scripture not only that the word became flesh, but number two, that the Son became a servant. And I'll remind you now of a few words from that hymn from Philippians 2 that we just read a few moments ago, Philippians 2:5-8. It’s probably an early Christian hymn that is incorporated by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians. He says in verse 5,

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

“Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!”

That amazing passage conveys this idea that Jesus Christ, the eternal one, because his very nature was the nature of God, it led him not to exploit his godhead and his advantage but rather to take on the role of a servant—literally a slave—by being born in the likeness of men and then being obedient to the point of death.

Years ago, I read a story about a remote tribe in Africa. It was a place where water was scarce, the wells were deep. To get water was sometimes a hundred-foot climb down to the bottom carrying water skins. And one day, a man fell into this well. He broke his leg; he was injured. No one was strong enough to go down into the well, pick the man up, and carry him back to the top…except the chief. But to do so, the chief removed his robes, he removed his headdress, he removed all the marks and the insignia of his royalty, and he made that difficult climb down to the bottom. He rescued the man and then carried him back up on his shoulders.

In a way, he humbled himself in doing that. He took a role that a chief often would not take. He laid aside his garments of royalty. But in so doing, he showed what a wonderful chief he was, what a strong leader he was.

This is very similar to what Jesus has done for us, because he is equal with God. He took the role of a servant, and in doing so, he showed us the heart of God. God has this kind of heart. In his servanthood, Jesus Christ displays the very hearts of deity.

I love the words of this old poem:

“Seek not in courts nor palaces,
Nor royal curtains draw,
But search the stable, see your God
Extended on the straw.”

You know, Martin Luther the Reformer made much of the humanity of Christ. He loved to preach the man Christ Jesus. Someone accosted him one day; they thought he was too focused on Christ’s humanity, and Luther replied, “I know no God except him who became man, and I want no other.”

Jesus said, “If you've seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” John says, “We beheld his glory in this way, that he became flesh.” And Paul tells us here that this is how he reveals to us the heart of God, by becoming a servant.

I think we should just note here that the reason that Paul gives us this little theology lesson in Philippians 2 is actually with a very practical purpose. He talks about the divine humility in the servanthood of the Son in order to teach this mindset to the Philippian church. You see it in verse 5 when he says, “In your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” “Have this mind, the mind of Christ. Imitate him, be like him.” And the appropriate application here, of course, is to imitate Christ in his servanthood.

Perhaps nothing characterizes a Christlike disciple more than this: to serve, to take the lowly position, to humble ourselves, and to imitate Christ. I wonder tonight how much domestic strife and family squabbles would disappear if we would simply put this in practice—if husbands and wives and moms and dads and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters would simply apply this, to seek to be like Jesus by serving one another; by putting the prerogatives and the preferences of others ahead of your own; by being the first to do the household chores, to step in and help, to be willing to defer to the wishes of someone else; and to do it simply out of love, not to minimize conflict, but simply out of love for Jesus, love for others; imitating Christ, the servant.

“Love so amazing, so divine / Demands my soul, my life, my all,” the hymn-writer says. And friends, we’ve not really grasped the meaning of Christmas, we’ve not really grasped the meaning of the incarnation, we haven’t really grasped the meaning of the gospel until it’s begun to work itself into our hearts in just this way that we start to imitate the Savior by serving one another.

3. The Rich Became Poor

The Word became flesh, the Son became a servant, and then number three, the rich became poor.

Here's Paul again in 2 Corinthians 8:9. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

This passage gives us the doctrine of the incarnation expressed in economic terms. And again, there’s a practical point. Paul here is seeking to encourage gospel-motivated generosity among the Corinthians as he is seeking to raise funds for the impoverished, on-the-brink-of-famine believers in Jerusalem. The need is urgent, and Paul’s trying to raise money to help fellow believers.

But notice his approach. He doesn't burden them with laws about giving. That’s not his approach at all. Instead, he seeks to inspire them with the example of self-giving love, the example of others, including the Macedonian believers who gave in spite of their poverty (you see that in 2 Corinthians 8:1-2), but especially the example of Jesus Christ.

Look at verses 7 and 8, preceding verse 9. Paul says,

“But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.”

This is gospel-motivated, grace-driven generosity. We could say that the heart of Christian ethics is the heart of love. It is out of love to give ourselves and to give from our substance to others.

Some of you, perhaps, have read the famous short story by O. Henry called “The Gift of the Magi.” Well worth reading if you've never read it before. It’s about a young married couple named Jim and Della, who at Christmastime want to buy one another gifts. It’s really told from Della’s point of view, but she has very little money. Now this was written early in the twentieth century, and at the time she only has a dollar and eighty-seven cents, so not very much money even for then.

But there were two prized possessions in their household. There was her beautiful hair and his fine watch. And she looks in the mirror with no money to spend, she sees her hair, and it suddenly occurs to her that she could sell her hair. She could cut her hair, sell her hair, and then she would have money to buy him a gift.

So that’s what she does. She cuts her hair, she sells the hair, she has enough money to buy him a chain for his watch. And then on Christmas night, they’re together and she presents him with the gift, but he’s, of course, somewhat stunned by her cut hair. And she assures him, “It’ll grow back. It’ll grow back. It’s okay.”

But then, when she receives his gift, she realizes why he’s so stunned, because he had bought her combs for her hair, and in order to do so he had sold his watch. In other words, because of their love for one another, they gave prized possessions, sold them, in order to express that love.

This also is the meaning of Christmas, not only that we adore the God who became flesh, not only that we serve one another because of the servant who is also the son, but also that we love and we give with generous hearts.

“Truly, he taught us to love one another;
His law is love and his gospel is peace.”

This is the meaning of Christmas.

4. The Sinless Became the Sin Bearer

Finally, fourth of all, we learn that the sinless became the sin bearer. The Word became flesh, the Son became a servant, the rich became poor, and the sinless became the sin bearer.

One more text, 2 Corinthians 5:21—actually two more, but this one first, 2 Corinthians 5:21, where Paul says, “For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

There are few verses in all the Bible that summarize so succinctly the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think this is what Paul means: “Him who knew no sin.” He's speaking of Christ who is the sinless one, the one who is holy and harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners (to use the language from Hebrews), the one who is perfect in every way. There was no stain upon his character. Even when Jesus was crucified, Pilate washes his hands because he finds no guilt in him. Nobody can make a charge to stick against him. Here’s a man who lived a perfect life. He knew no sin. But Paul says that God made him to be sin for us.

What does that mean? “He made him to be sin for us.” I don’t think it means that he made Jesus to be a sinner, but rather that he treated Jesus as if he had been a sinner. He treated Jesus as the sin bearer.

I think perhaps the background to this text, and certainly the background to much New Testament thought, is the prophet Isaiah and the prophecy of the suffering servant from Isaiah 53. Here’s just a portion from that chapter.

“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows….
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

“…Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief….
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities….
he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many…”

He was the sin bearer. I think that passage means and Paul means in 2 Corinthians 5 that God treated Jesus as if he’d lived my life. With all of its sin, all of its inequity, all of its pride and anger and lust and rage and envy and all of the ugly things in my heart, he treated Jesus if he’d lived Brian Hedges’, life so that he could treat Brian Hedges as if I’d lived the sinless, spotless life of Jesus Christ.

And, friend, he did that for you. He did that for you. And if you’re conscious of the guilt of your sin and the burden of that sin on your shoulders, there’s only one way that can be removed, and that’s by trusting in the incarnate Savior who became the sin bearer.

Max Lucado tells a story about a man who was injured. He was severely disfigured in a house fire as he attempted to rescue his parents from the burning house. Sadly, they died, and he was injured, disfigured, embittered by the loss and by the injury, and he refused plastic surgery.

No one was allowed to see him, not even his wife. She went to the doctor, this plastic surgeon, and she wanted so desperately to connect with her husband, who was shutting her out, that she had a very strange request. She said, “I want you to disfigure my face so that I can be like him. If I can share his pain, then maybe he’ll let me back into his life.”

The doctor was appalled, shocked by the request. Of course he refused, but he was so moved by this woman’s love for her husband that he went to speak with the man. He knocked on his door. He called out loudly, “I’m the plastic surgeon. I want you to know I can restore your face.”

The man still was locking him out, would not let him in. There was no response. And finally, the doctor said, “Your wife wants me to disfigure her face, to make her face like yours, in hope that you will let her back into your life. That's how much she loves you.” And as Lucado tells the story, “There was a brief moment of silence, and then, ever so slowly, the doorknob began to turn.”

It’s a very faint picture of what Christ has done for us. He became sin for us.

This is the message of Christmas: not only that the Word became flesh and the Son became a servant and the rich became poor, but also that the sinless one took on the disfigurement of our sin. He became our sin bearer, our substitute, and our Savior so that through his sacrificial and sin-atoning death on the cross we could see the demonstration of God’s love, we could be reconciled to him in peace, and that our own hearts could be transformed and healed from the disfigurement of sin. The sinless became the sin bearer.

The meaning of Christmas is connected to Good Friday and Easter. The manger leads to the cross and to the empty tomb, and it’s these three things together—the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection of Jesus Christ—that are the great answer to the problem of sin and death in the world.

Let me conclude with just one more quotation from a church father, this one from Saint Augustine. He said,

“The maker of man, he was made man so that the director of the stars might be a babe at the breast, the bread might be hungry and the fountain thirsty; that the light might sleep and the way be weary from a journey; that the truth might be accused by false witnesses; that the judge of the living and the dead be judged by a mortal judge; that justice might be convicted by the unjust and discipline be scourged with whips; that the cluster of the grapes might be crowned with thorns and the foundation be hung up on a tree; that strength might grow weak and eternal health be wounded and life die.”

He became what he was not so that we could become like him. Friends, this is the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what Christianity teaches; that God, in his great love for us in sending his Son to be our Savior, the Son took on a human nature. Not only that, he took on our sins, he took death itself; and he did so so that you and I could be forgiven, could be freed, could be reconciled to God, could be transformed in our hearts, and could have the hope of a world that someday will be made new by the power of the risen Christ.

I ask you tonight, have you accepted this Christmas gift? Have you reckoned with the real meaning of Christmas? Have you responded with faith and trust in Christ, the crucified and the risen and the incarnate one? If you've never done that, I hope you will do so tonight. Let’s pray together.

Gracious God, how we thank you tonight for this unspeakable, indescribable gift; this gift of grace; this gift of love and peace, of light, of forgiveness; this gift that answers the problems of our world and the problems of our own sinful, broken hearts. We thank you, we adore you. We are in awe of what you’ve done, and we pray tonight that you would, by your Spirit, cause this message to so work in our hearts that we would be changed by it and that we would become more like your Son, the Lord Jesus, that we would become people who are characterized by love and by servanthood and by generosity, that we’d be people who imitate Christ in his incarnate humility. We pray tonight that you would receive our worship as we lift up our voices together, and we pray that you would help us be in this world lights in a dark place that point people to the light of Jesus Christ. That is our prayer. We pray it together in Jesus’ name. Amen.