Is God Passive?

(Unpacking the Meaning of the Incarnation)

John 1:14-18                                                                                                                                                                        Christmas 2012

Key verse 1:14,                                       Written by Kevin Jesmer after being inspired by Steve Leston’s message 12/16/12

“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 joyful celebration of this Christmas has been marred by the recent school shooting in NewtownConnecticut. When our hearts and minds should have been focused on the celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus, we have been distracted by unimaginable evil. My heart was covered by a veil of depression. I was sickened by what happened. I felt helpless that we will not be able stop future shootings. Questions came to my heart about God. Could God stop such evil acts? Why did he not now? Why is there evil in the world?  Is Pastor Steve going to address the event in the message? How is he going to do it? I was hoping that he would do a message on the presence of evil in the world and the omnipotence of God. I wasn’t quite sure how he was going to handle this very difficult sermon. But I was quite delighted on the course that God led him. He decided to preach on, “Is God Passive?” This is very appropriate for countless people are asking themselves, “Is God active or passive when events like the shooting unfold?” From John 1:4-18 we will discover that God is not sitting quietly by, being passive in world events. God has been, is, and always will be an active force in this world.

The following message will discuss the incarnation of Jesus Christ and how he entered into this world and into our life “box” in order to reveal his glory and nature to us. This is tantamount to receiving eternal life for Jesus once said, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (Jn 17:3) After entering in our “box”, Jesus engages our lives, inspiring us to live an incarnational life, just like he did, so that other people may come to know this Jesus who came to be their Savior.

Despite of what is happening in the world, if there is one message that the gospel gives to us it is the message that sin, death and evil will not rule in the end. It may have its way from time to time. Destructive forces my rise and wane around us, but children of God look forward to the second advent of Christ when there will be no more death, nor mourning nor tears. Our eyes look to the Savior Jesus and as we do our hearts become filled with the joy and the peace that only faith in Jesus brings. Horatio Spafford wrote a famous hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul.” He wrote it when his ship passed over the exact spot where his wife and daughter had drowned in his recent past. The words to the hymn reveal the power of faith and the peace that faith in Christ can bring, even in life’s tempests.  They go like this…

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, Even so, it is well with my soul.”

    Horatio could be strong in the midst of his personal “storm.” because he knew Jesus, the Prince of Peace very personally. His faith allowed him to see the glory and nature of God. He knew that God was not passive, but active and that God was continually doing his work. For Horatio, God was active in bringing peace to his soul, teaching him how to trust, filling his heart with grace and forgiveness and planting hope in his heart that Jesus will come again. Horatio’s God…our God… is very active among us and wants to reveal to us his glory and his nature.  The Prince of Peace Jesus is ruling. This Christmas, may it be “well” with our souls. May the peace of God shine bright in this time of darkness. May Christ be a refuge, a source of strength and a Rock to us all.

Part 1: God Entered Into Our Box (14-15)

We are in need of spiritual eyes to see God. John 1:14-15, talks about the incarnation of Jesus. Here we find deep and profound issues. There are people thinking that God is standing around and doing nothing as things spiral out of control.  But we just need “spiritual” eyes to see God’s actions. Think about what Jesus said about the work of the Holy Spirit in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” God is very active, yet, like the wind, we may not immediately see it, but we can see the effects. Knowledge that God is active, gives us hope when we are confronted with so many tragedies.

There is a book called, “The Five Loves Language” written by Gary Chapman. One of the premises of this book is that we don’t recognize the love we show to one another until we learn to interpret each other’s love language. And so, for married couples to strengthen their relationship, they need to discover each other’s love language. Likewise, we need to know God’s love language to recognize God’s acts of love. God is working. We need to recognize it. We can see the greatest act of God’s love in sending of his One and Only Son, Jesus into the world as a baby in a manger. (John 3:16) This brings to mind two topics. First, God entered into our “box” and second, God engages our lives for he is not passive…he is active.

First, God came into our box to reveal the glory of God.  What does it mean that God entered our box? In a sense each one of us lives in a box. We live in the physical world where we are subject to limitations of time and space. We are confined to the boundaries of the natural world and its physical laws. We can only clearly see what is going on within the confines of our box. We may hear things going on outside of our box but we can not interpret them properly. We can not even see and interpret God properly. God dwells in the spiritual realm, in the kingdom of Heaven. He is normally not in our box. We are in the flesh and therefore unable to understand or communicate with God on our own. We may hear him. We may hear of him. Small rays of God’s light may shine through the cracks of our box. But God’s glory and nature are hidden and obscured by our box. The question is, how can we ever see God’s glory and understand his nature while dwelling in the confines of our “box”?

God entered into our box through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Look at 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. The “Word” in Greek can be translated as “Logos”. There is a large array of definitions to this word. To the Greeks it meant the divine order that rules the world. It was the “Great Idea”. The Greeks felt that if they could capture that “Great Idea”, then they could understand the spiritual world. To the Jews, the “Word” was the very word of God. It was God’s voice in the Old Testament. It was the command of God. And so, to the Jewish believer, Jesus’ coming into the world meant that the supernatural word of God, that divine “Word”, took on flesh in order to communicate to us.  It is more than saying that our God showed up. He actually took on flesh and entered into our humanity. The Greeks and the Jews were both correct in sense.

There are many ways that people have tried to get out of their box and enter into communion with the holy God on their own. Some have tried denying themselves by living like a monk. We may try hard to make ourselves measure up, dealing with our own sin. But we can never measure up and get out of the confines of this world.  We can try to become detached from this world and our sin, like Buddhists who try to detach themselves from their desires to reach Nirvana. But we can never get to that point in self denial. Why? Because we are intrinsically selfish. Maybe we can try to enter into communion with God through traditions. But even by following all of the traditions of our church and religion we still can not get out of our box. Good works, self denial, following traditions can not get us out of our box. Then what can we do? ….Nothing on our own!

The secret is that we don’t need to get out of our box on our own power. The beauty of Christmas is that it is a celebration of how God himself came into our box to clearly reveal his glory and nature to us. God took on flesh, placing himself into our box…into this world and our lives. This has been God’s desire all along. Think about God in the Old Testament. He dwelt with Adam and Eve in the garden. He dwelt among his people in the Tabernacle during their wanderings in the desert. And now, he has come to dwell among his people through faith in Christ.

Let’s think about what God wanted to reveal to us. Look at verse 14b again, “…we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  He wanted us to see his glory. The glory of God is the sum total of God’s qualities and attributes. Though we live in this world, (and in our own worlds) we can see the glory of God in Jesus. Jesus took on flesh and revealed to us what we could have never seen on our own.

Jesus is called the Son of God. By referring to him as the “Son” it means that Jesus is in very nature God. Jesus shares in the Father’s nature. God’s nature is full of grace and truth and Jesus came into this world, full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:14b) God gives truth to make us wise. God reveals his divine wisdom in Jesus. He gives us grace, bringing us salvation. He came full of blessings, blessing that we don’t deserve. God is not passive. He is active.

John the Baptist could see the glory and nature of God in Christ. Look at verse 15, “(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.’”)  In that culture, old was better. John was Jesus’ cousin. He was born six months before Jesus. (Lk 1:36) He began his ministry before Jesus began his ministry. John came ahead of Jesus from an earthly perspective. But in verse 15, John is saying that Jesus ranks before him. He is saying that Jesus is greater than him because Jesus came before him. He could say this because John had eyes to see that his own cousin was actually God who came to this world in the flesh. Jesus is the eternal God who came to us to reveal the nature of God to us and all things that we could not see.

In the Old Testament it was hard to understand the nature of God. We see God praising those who annihilate whole cities and he strikes down the one person who simply tried to hold up the ark when it was tumbling over. (2 Sam 6:6-7) How can we understand God from this? You can not understand the nature of God outside of Jesus. Jesus is central. He is the one who explains everything to us. Hebrews 1:1-3 explains this nicely. It reads, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”  We can now understand God and we can know his truth. God was saying to us, “I am going to tell you what I am all about and I will do this by sending my One and Only Son, Jesus Christ. And he will explain everything to you.” We can no longer say, “I wish I knew. I don’t get it.” In Christ, everything is explained to us. We have the four gospels and we have 20 plus epistles. Nestled within these words is more truth about God than we can ever unpack in our entire lifetime. We Christians now know things that the prophets didn’t see. We understand things that the angels didn’t understand. We have insight into the divine because the Logos took on flesh. Jesus was born in a manger. He came into our box to reveal the glory and nature of God. God is not passive he is active.

Part ll:  God Engaged Our Lives

God came to engage our lives. He is not some spiritual force out there that has nothing to do with us. Engagement brings to mind a mechanism of sorts, like an old fashion watch with gears. Nothing works until the teeth of the gears come together and they all begin to work in unison when an outside force is applied. In the case of the watch, the force is made when winding it up. In the same way, our God is actively engaging our lives. This is revealed in the incarnation. There are two things that God provided when he came into our “box” and engaged our lives. They are grace and truth. First, grace. Look at verse 16, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”  How can we explain grace? Thousands of books have been written on the subject. But in the context of this passage, grace is God taking on flesh to be our Savior. This required the forgiveness of the Holy God and his willingness to engage our lives. We need the grace of God so that we can stop with trying to gain righteousness through self denial and ritualistic cleansing and the like. We are made right with God through his grace of forgiveness.  Out of his incarnation, we have received grace upon grace, so much grace that we can never use it up. There is so much, grace and forgiveness and strength in Christ. It is a continual, flood of grace. Praise the Lord!

The second thing God provided when he engaged our lives is truth. Look at verse 17, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”  God’s word is truth. (Jn 17:17) How does grace and truth interact? To the Jewish person, the truth is embodied in the Law. The Law is God’s ideal standard. The laws of God are good and great guideposts in life. Where would we be without the Ten Commandments? But in the Old Testament era, the law is a large set of rules that demands perfect obedience. God is absolutely holy and we are not. We, on our own, are sinful and unable to live up to God’s law. Under the Old Covenant, if we tried to approach the Holy God, without perfect obedience to his law, we would be killed. If you are not holy then there would be no hope for you. But Jesus’ coming into our box helps us. Let’s see.

Grace allows us to fulfill the requirements of the law of God. Think of the law as this. What  if God tells you that you must get to a certain address in Orange County California by next week and if you don’t get to that address on time, then you will die. Think of that as the Law under the old covenant. But Jesus comes full of grace and truth and says, “Yes…you have to get to that address at that time…but I am here to help you.” Then Jesus gives us the car, the gas cards, the GPS, an extra driver, all the time off work and even paid lost wages. That is grace.

God tells us what he wants and he provides a way to get there through Jesus Christ. Jesus, by his grace gives us the ability to come to the holy God just as we are and serve God, following the truth. He gives us the grace that we need to live as a spiritual person. Without Jesus, we are like those who are bobbing in the water with our heads barley above waves, getting swamped with every wave. Humanity does not have the wisdom to overcome this world. God is not saying, “Here I am. Jump higher and you might reach me.” No. Jesus came to reveal God to us. He came in the flesh to dwell among his people to bring us salvation. God has given us his truth, his divine wisdom. In Christ, you have been connected with the wisdom of the ages. In Christ we find our strength, our hope and our peace. God can lift you up. He can restore our hearts. He can do this because he came into our box and engaged our lives with his grace and truth. God is not passive he is active.

How shall we respond to this graceful, engaging Christ? With thanksgiving and worship of course! This is first and foremost.  But we also must reach out to people introducing them to this “Logos” who came in the flesh. Jesus came from heaven to earth, entered into our box and revealed the glory and the nature of God to us. As his followers should we not have the same desire? Matthew 28:18-20 reads, “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  Jesus was basically saying to his disciples, “You have to disciple people in my words.” In keeping with the concepts of this passage, it could mean, “Reach out to someone else. Enter into their lives and reveal to them my nature and my glory. Love and serve them with the grace and truth that you have received from me.”

This Christmas, pray that you can share this wonderful grace of God with someone. If they are weak, Jesus can make them strong. To people who are suffering share with them the love and the mercy of Jesus. Jesus can give life, pulling people up out of the pit. To the lost, Jesus reveals the truth that we no longer have to be lost. We can get direction from Jesus who came full of grace and truth. To those who are disconnected from God, family and anything else in life, they can be connected to God through Jesus Christ. This connection will go on into eternity. For those who are stuck, God reveals his glory in Christ. He pulls us out of our “now” and into his glory. May God bless you and yours this Christmas season! God bless!