Christ the Revealer
No man hath seen God
at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he
hath declared him. (St. John 1:18)
When I lived in North
Carolina I had a friend who joked that she had a “Ph.D. in everything.” She always
had an opinion on every subject that came up in conversation – and spoke with
great confidence. (Never mind when the facts got in the way of her opinions!)
We
got away with teasing my friend, who took her ribbing well. But if the truth
were told, you and I are disturbingly similar to her. We think we know it all,
especially about matters of eternity and truth, and we certainly don’t want
anyone telling us otherwise. We might all have widely differing conceptions of
God, of Heaven and of Hell; but we share a common confidence in our made-up
religions.
This
Christmas 2008, St. John bids you and me give thanks for Christ the Revealer –
for only the Lord Jesus Christ lightens our darkness with the truth of God’s
holiness, and of His mercy in providing our Savior.
As we
consider John 1:18 on this Feast Day of the Nativity, we first must come to
grips with our natural, destructive ignorance of the things of God.
John
says “no man has seen God.” True, Jacob wrestled with the pre-incarnate Christ,
and Moses saw God’s hind parts, but no mere human being ever has peered into
the infinitely complex nature of God. There is a creaturely ignorance that you
and I possess; if you could know God comprehensively, He wouldn’t be God. He
would be the god of your own making. God knows you inside and out, but you
cannot know Him with the same perfect comprehensiveness. You may know Him
rightly, but you cannot know Him fully. He alone is the infinite God.
But
there is another sense in which you and I are culpably ignorant of God, and we
desperately need a Revealer to set us straight in our religious thinking. Do
you remember when Moses asked to see God’s glory, but the Lord told Him that no
one could behold His glory and live? Isaiah had a similar experience at his
commissioning, when his vision of the thrice-holy Lord so terrified him –
because of his sin – that he called down woes upon himself.
You
and I naturally are sinners, and we cannot for an instant abide the holy
presence of Almighty God. This is why we need Christ to reveal the Father to
us.
Now,
most of you don’t want to think you’re ignorant of God. But if you were honest,
you would admit that you worship a “Mr. Potato-Head” god. Just like the toy,
you can craft this god, this idol, in any way you see fit. You want a god that
hates people different from you? You’ve got it! You want a god who sends no one
to Hell except conservatives? You’ve got it!
You
and I might not mold a golden calf as did the children of Israel when Moses was
on Sinai receiving the law, but Paul says in Romans 1 that we suppress the
knowledge of the true God and make up indulgent idols for ourselves all the
time. These idols only steal our life – and allow us to indulge ourselves to
Hell.
The advent of Jesus Christ
illustrates graphically just how much you and I need One to reveal the true God
to us. St. John describes for us, secondly, our unique Revealer.
Jesus, John writes, is the
only-begotten Son of the Father. From all eternity Jesus has enjoyed a
relationship with the Father within the bonds of Trinitarian love, a
relationship that you and I cannot rival. True, by grace and in Jesus the
Father adopts you and me into His family; but there is only one eternal Son. He
is eternal and omniscient – and he knows the Father in a way that you and I
cannot.
He is “in the bosom of the
Father.” This is John’s Hebraic way of emphasizing the perfect intimacy the
Father and the Son enjoy. To be in a person’s bosom was to have the
closest-possible relationship with that person. Here the apostle is teaching us
that if we want to know the invisible God, we must know Jesus. Only he is in
the bosom of the Father, perfectly enlightened to every divine mystery and to
the impeccable character of the infinite God!
John writes that Jesus has
“declared” the Father to us. Interestingly, this word may be translated
“exegete,” which is what I’m supposed to be doing when I preach to you. I am
charged with exegeting the Scriptures – not with telling you funny stories or
making up my ideas and passing them off to you, but literally explaining what
God’s Word says verse by verse. Exegesis is a true and honest unfolding of what
God has said.
So Jesus exegetes the Father
to you and me. He came, he said, not to testify of his own ideas but of the
Father’s very nature. He bore faithful, and perfect, witness to the Father.
You must hear him.
But what does Jesus tell you
about God the Father?
There is a temptation these
days to focus only on Jesus’ words and thus to ignore his work. Both are
equally important to hear. He came not only to teach; he came to save his
people from their sins. This was, after all, the meaning of his name!
In verse 14 John says that
Jesus was “full of grace and truth.” Being full of truth, he rightly and
perfectly revealed who God is, what God expects of you (perfection and
holiness), what you are (a hopeless sinner) and what you need (his
righteousness credited to you). Now, I know you love your Mr. Potato-Head god.
You can make him nice and sweet and not so concerned about your self-indulgent
pride. But if you want to know the true God, who judges prideful sinners by
sending them to Hell, you must learn from Jesus. He is the Truth.
John also says Jesus was
“full of grace.” Grace is God not giving you what you deserved for your sin –
Hell – and giving you instead what he alone deserves – Heaven. There is no
grace for those of you who cling to your Mr. Potato-Head idol. Your idol will
give you what you always wanted: eternity apart from the true God. Yet if you
deal honestly with yourself in the light of God’s Truth, you can lay claim to
God’s infinite mercy and love in giving Jesus to be your Savior.
God’s Truth is troubling.
His grace is sweetest comfort. But you cannot enjoy His grace unless you look
first to Christ the Revealer ... Christ the Truth.
Some of you in the Western
world tend to feel guilty at the end of the day about leaving “Christ out of
Christmas,” so you might mutter a prayer about how thankful you are for Christ
the Savior. Well and good.
But have you first given
thanks for Christ the Revealer? Because unless you know him as God’s true and
final Revealer, you never will understand the joy of Christmas.