The Infinite Infant God

The infinite God became an infant so that the unapproachable God could be approached, and so that the unknowable God could become knowable.

A different Christmas text

The text we’re looking at today isn’t one you usually hear at Christmas. At Christmas we think about the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and Joseph. But today’s passage comes from a Gospel that has no birth story at all: the Gospel of John. John was one of the disciples closest to Jesus, and he doesn’t begin his book with the beginning of Jesus’ earthly life. He begins with the beginning of the pre-incarnate Jesus.

The Word

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 all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

— John 1:1–5

John starts in a very mysterious way. What is this “Word” he’s talking about?

He also starts in a very creative way, with a direct allusion to the very beginning. “In the beginning was the Word.” What does that phrase remind you of? In Greek it’s exactly the same opening as the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, uses for Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The incarnation of Jesus is about new beginnings.

John is emphasising God’s transcendence. It was God’s word that created the world. God spoke, and there was light.

He’s also showing that this Word is divine and yet distinct. Jewish thinkers already spoke of God’s Word and Wisdom as divine yet distinct from God the Father, so it was the closest term John had. That’s why he can say both that “the Word was with God” and that “the Word was God.” The Word isn’t created. The Word is the Creator, there before the beginning of time.

Glory

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

— John 1:14

This Word took on flesh and became one of us. And because the Word took on flesh, we can behold the full glory of God.

I don’t think we grasp how significant that is. For the Israelites, God’s glory was frightening. Throughout the Old Testament, seeing God’s glory was a huge deal. You couldn’t come close to God’s presence and live. God was not approachable.

Imagine Moses here today hearing the Christmas message: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory.” He’d cry out, “Do you realise what this means? This is what I was denied!” Moses asked to see God’s glory and was only allowed to see his back (Exodus 33:18–23). Through Jesus, you can meet God. You can know him personally, and without terror. This is everything Moses wanted.

Jesus is the glory of God wrapped in humanity: the very essence of God in human form, starting as a baby, so that we can grasp the heart of God.

Insulation

Let me show you what I mean. Ben, what’s this, and what does it do? (A bare electrical wire.) What happens if I touch it while it’s connected? Right, that’s not a good idea.

Now what’s the difference between that wire and this one? (An insulated cord.) Has this cord lost its power? No! It’s just become usable. Electricity doesn’t become less powerful when it’s insulated. It becomes usable.

That’s what John 1 is saying. The infinite God didn’t stop being infinite. He just became approachable. Jesus isn’t God’s power turned down. He’s God wrapped up and packaged so that we can know and approach him. Jesus is God’s power made safe, and God’s truth made relational.

He came as a baby because this time he hadn’t come to bring judgement but to bear it: to pay the penalty for our sins and take away the barrier between humanity and God.

Tabernacle

“Made his dwelling among us.” In the original language, the word for “dwelling” is tabernacled. He pitched his tent among us.

The tabernacle was where God’s presence dwelt, the place where heaven and earth collided. That tabernacle, where heaven once found a home on earth, now reaches its fulfilment in the person of Christ. Jesus is everything the temple was meant to be. He is the interlacing of heaven and earth.

You might expect God’s word to arrive as a book, as it does in other religions. In Islam, you could say, the word became a book. In Christianity the Word became flesh. The Word took on skin. The Word is a person.

And because Jesus came close to us, he knows us, and because he knows us, he can empathise with us. Not second-hand empathy, but first-hand. We feel deeply sad for the people at Bondi who lost their lives. Imagine how much sadder you’d feel if you knew them and their families. True empathy happens up close. Jesus empathises with us because he came close to us.

He came himself

Tim Keller makes this point in Hidden Christmas. The biblical God is infinitely holy, so our sin couldn’t just be shrugged off. It had to be dealt with. But he’s also infinitely loving, and he knows we could never climb up to him, so he came down to us. He didn’t send someone else, or a committee report, or a preacher to tell us how to save ourselves. In Keller’s words, “He comes himself to fetch us.”

You know something is important when the leader does it himself. At Christmas God came to save humanity from the inside out. He came to do it himself.

People have tried many times to improve society, often with noble intentions. There are hundreds of schemes for political improvement, and some are very good. But they keep falling short because they don’t deal with humanity’s basic disease. They change our circumstances but leave us untouched. They alter our surroundings but have no power to change our character. You can’t change the system without changing the heart. That’s why God came himself.

Keller also says that once you grasp the incarnation as real, many other difficulties in the gospel story dissolve. If there is a God, and he has become human, why would it be hard to believe he’d do miracles, pay for the sins of the world, or rise from the dead?

The humility of God

What fascinates me about Jesus is his sacred enigma. In him we have a living paradox: the source of all being, born as a child of dust and earth, yet eternally Spirit. He came through a mother into our humanity, yet he remains forever divine. He’s the great mystery our ancestors spoke of, and yet he demystified himself. He’s the great unknown who longs to be known, the one who is utterly other and yet longs to be one with us. In Jesus heaven and earth are perfectly interlaced, and the chasm between God and humanity is bridged.

Think of the gospel as a U-shape. Jesus, “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” (Philippians 2:6–7). Down he came, all the way to the cross, and then God exalted him to the highest place.

That humility shapes how we live. Keller points out that because God became human and emptied himself of his glory, we shouldn’t want to spend time only with people who have power, glamour and connections, people who can open doors for us. We need to be willing to go to people without power, beauty or money. That’s the real Christmas spirit, because God became one of us.

Immanuel: he is God, he is human, and he is with us.

An invitation

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive 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.

— John 1:10–13

Many people rejected Jesus. He offered himself to everyone, but not everyone accepted him.

Jesus is a bit like getting a dieting book for Christmas. It’s an offensive gift, but it’s one you need. Receiving him means you don’t get to run your own life anymore. If Jesus is in your life, you’re not his manager. This child is your manager.

And while Jesus came close to us, he doesn’t force himself on us. But if you do receive him, you’re given the right to become a child of God. Jesus came as a child so that we could become children of God.

So will you accept that invitation today, to become a child of God? Will you choose Jesus, the child who came into the world to make the unapproachable God approachable and the unknowable God knowable?