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The Light Shines In The Darkness (Christmas Eve)-John 1:1-14

By Charlie Vensel | June 14, 2008

Let me begin by reading a few announcements from a collection of old church bulletins. These are actual announcements. I hasten to add that none of them appeared in our church bulletin. One read, “This being Easter, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come forward and lay an egg on the altar.” Another, “Thursday night Pot Luck Supper. Prayer and medication to follow.” Still another, “This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.” And, “Thursday at 5:00 p.m. there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers’ Club. All wishing to become little mothers, please see the minister in his study.” And finally, “At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.”


Words are so easily confused, but not only confused, often misused. Politicians have the worst reputation for abusing words. Bob Hope once said, “Paramount Pictures is making sure I won’t be typecast. In Nothing but the Truth, I play a fellow who is always truthful and in Louisiana Purchase I’m a politician.”

And, what about those sweepstakes letters we get? The envelopes read, “Notification of $2,500 Winner - Please Open at Once”, and “Notice of Winnings to Charlis Vensuzl in the Amount of $1,000,000.” Does anybody really believe these letters? Words lose their power over time.

“The Word became flesh…” (John 1:14 NIV) This time of year, we hear those words so easily that they are lost on us. We quickly associate them with the baby in Bethlehem’s manger, and rightly so, but then we dismiss them without being startled or shocked or even mildly surprised. “The Word became flesh,” the Gospel writer says, and we yawn in agreement.

Some of the Greeks didn’t yawn. They were appalled at such a thought and quickly acted to correct what they thought of as a ludicrous, even sacrilegious thought. It wasn’t that God could not have become flesh, but why would God have wanted to become flesh? By their way of thinking, the flesh was bad and the body was evil; God would get dirty. If they could have found some way to live outside the body they would have, but they couldn’t come up with anything. So, they tolerated the body as a necessary way to “house the soul.”

The Greek word behind “flesh,” sa¿rx, in this passage is the same word Paul uses over and over to describe human nature in all its weakness and sin. In other words, when God became flesh, Jesus immediately became acquainted with all the desires, problems, and temptations inherent in human life, which is one more reason why the Word becoming flesh isn’t all that desirable.

Who wants a God who is so much like us? Who wants a God to get dirty with us? Who wants a God that does what we do? No, we want a God who rules over the earth, who gives power and dominion to human beings, and whose knowledge and goodness, are always beyond reproach.

But, isn’t that the point of John’s statement? Our God came to be in the trenches. He came into the muck and the mire of humanity to redeem us. We did not have to climb up to him, which is one of the things that separate our religion from all others. There is now in the earth the presence of the Holy One. The Eternal One has appeared in time. The Word becoming flesh is not a sign that the Great God has been diminished to the lesser stature of humanity, but that the great God has paid us a visit in human form, as one of us. God Almighty became the Incarnate Christ and dwelt among us. That is the Good News of the Gospel; God came to be with us to save us from our sins (Matt. 1:21). That is the true Christmas present.

And, when the Word became flesh, the boundaries of darkness were pushed back. The light has shone in the darkness. Now, darkness has always been a potent metaphor for those things in life that oppress and enthrall us, frighten and intimidate us, cause us worry and anxiety and leech the joy from our lives. Not many of us would deny that darkness exists. But, from where did this darkness come?

God crowned creation with his masterpiece, humanity. We were intended to work, live, and reign here with him forever, but the first humans, and every one since, chose rebellion. We commit idolatry; worshiping other gods, created things, even ourselves. We commit injustice; treating others as objects by which we get what we want, from petty selfishness to the horrors of slavery and genocide. We commit immorality; telling God we know best how to make ourselves happy, ingratiating our desires and degrading our true humanity. We’ve made our lives and our world dark through millennia of sin.

We know darkness in our physical lives when illness is close at hand, when we lack the basic necessities of life, like food, shelter, and clothing. We know darkness in our emotional lives when we are burdened with worry, confusion, fear, grief, guilt, or hopelessness, or, when we live with violence or addiction or both. We know darkness in our social lives when relationships fail, when the blessing of solitude gives way to the burden of loneliness, when we cannot make meaningful connections with other human beings. We know darkness in our political lives when we cannot organize our communities and our society in ways that are just and equitable to all, when nations oppress people for power and wealth.

We know darkness in our spiritual lives when the chasm that separates us from God remains unbridged from either side, when we know an estrangement from God, from other human beings, and from ourselves. Darkness symbolizes the evils with which we are entirely too familiar.

It is helpful to think of us as a masterpiece, once glorious, now faded and tarnished. Consider the Sistine Chapel. From 1508 to 1512, the artist Michelangelo lay on his back and painted the Sistine Chapel, one of history’s greatest artistic achievements. But his magnificent art started to fade almost immediately. Within a century of completing his work, no one remembered what his original frescoes had really looked like. One Italian painter described it this way in 1936, “We see the colors of the Sistine ceiling as if through smoked glass.”

But in 1981, a scaffold was erected to clean the frescoes with a special solution. One small corner of the ceiling was gently washed. The result was stunning. No one had imagined that beneath centuries of grime lay such vibrant colors. This was not the Michelangelo known by art critics. This artist was the master of form, his paintings resembling sculpture more than painting.

The success prompted the restoration of the entire ceiling. The task was completed on December 31, 1989. It had taken twice as long to clean the ceiling, as the artist had needed to paint it. But the result was breathtaking. For the first time in nearly 500 years, people viewed this masterpiece the way it was intended, in all of its color and beauty.

Very early on in the Scriptures, God promises at the end of the age, not the abandonment of his masterpiece, but rather humanity’s restoration, the unveiling of our true colors. We read as God spoke to the serpent, the father of darkness, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15 NIV) In other words, “I will send light into the darkness and scatter it forever. That light will crush darkness’ head.”

The Word becoming flesh is very much like the restoration of the Sistine Chapel; the light of God is bursting in on all the grime, wiping it away. The renewal of humanity, indeed of the whole creation is now underway with the coming of the Christ Child.

Jesus has stripped evil of its power; he crushed its head. By the cross he has atoned for the sin of the world. And by his resurrection, he has vanquished death. In the words of the apostle John’s vision in Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:10 NIV) Jesus Christ is victorious. He has won resurrection and new creation for all those who repent of their rebellion. And, as much as this restoration is global, even cosmic in proportion, it is also radically individual. While the light of Christ is a Christmas gift to the world, it is also a Christmas gift to each of us.

I read of a man named Tom who tells about a night when he was a teenager. He and his friends were walking around the neighborhood. Suddenly one of them saw a police car and shouted. They hadn’t done anything wrong, but they didn’t want to be seen, either, so they began to run.

The police watched them take off. Tom tripped and knocked over some trashcans. The police officers got out the car and began to go after them. One of the officers turned on a searchlight. Tom looked around for his friends, but didn’t see them. All he saw was that burning, searing searchlight, looking for him. 



Tom jumped behind those trashcans, only to find his friends huddled there. They tried to hide, pulling trash over their heads and hoping to blend in. The spotlight fell on Tom. “Come out where we can see you,” said the voice behind the light. Tom stood up where he was, covered in garbage. “What are you doing?” said the voice. Tom stammered, “Nothing. Officer, I wasn’t doing anything wrong; I saw the light, I ran, I knocked over these garbage cans. I’m sorry about the disturbance.”

He stood there in the beam of the searchlight with nowhere to hide. Then the voice said, “I think I recognize you. Don’t you live around the corner?” “Yes,” he stammered. His heart was racing, and he thought to himself, “My life is ruined. If I don’t get arrested for disturbing the peace, something worse will happen; this officer is going to tell my parents.”

But then the voice behind the light said something unexpected. “Son, I’m not here to punish you; I’m here to protect you.” As he stood before that searchlight, Tom says he caught a glimpse of what it means to stand before Jesus, who is the Light of the World. There he was, fully exposed yet completely protected. He was fully revealed, yet free from unnecessary punishment. He stood hip-deep in garbage, yet cleaner than he had ever felt, somehow cleansed by a light that cast no shadow. In that moment, he saw something of what it means to stand in the presence of Jesus Christ.

When light shines into the darkness, there is a startling contrast. Most of the time we are not aware of the darkness being as dark as it is. Our eyes have adjusted and we get used to it. When the light comes on, our eyes hurt. And through our squinting, we are horrified at the mess. We want the light turned off. It exposes us. We want to go back to the way things were, undiscovered and unexposed. Just like Adam, and just like Tom, we shout, “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” (Genesis 3:10 NIV) We do not want that light to get to close. We do not want God to come and find us and see our mess. Remember when Peter realized who Jesus was, God in the flesh? ‘“…He fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”’ (Luke 5:8 NIV)

Our text tonight reads, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” (John 1:5 NIV) Tom did not understand that the policeman was there to protect him. We often think God has come to condemn. I know I did when people would tell me about him before I was a Christian. We push him back because we can’t live up to the demands of such a God. If you feel like that, then welcome to the club.

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus preached these words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” (John 3:16-21 NIV)

We are right in our assessments that we cannot live up to God’s demands already, let alone more. But that is precisely why the Father sent the Son. He came to save us, not condemn us. Without Christ, we are already condemned. We are sinners because we are born that way, not because we sin. But with submission to Christ, the receiving of our Christmas gift, we are protected and secured like Tom; we are restored like the Sistine Chapel.

Because God loves us, he sent his son Jesus Christ to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. God incarnate came down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ to save sinners like us from death and punishment. The Bible says in Romans 5:6-8, “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

So, why did Christ die for us? Before I was a Christian and I used to hear people speak of this, I thought it was some kind underhanded guilt tactic to make me feel bad. It never made sense to me that someone whom I never knew died for me, and besides, what difference did it make?

Unlike you and me, Christ lived a sinless life, perfectly obeying all of the Father’s decrees that we should have, but could not. He suffered the same temptations we do, but never caved. When the first man, Adam, sinned, spiritual and physical death entered the world. Christ is called the last Adam. In other words, Christ did what Adam was supposed to do, live by perfect obedience. God’s holy justice of punishing sin must be maintained, so Christ stepped in to take God’s wrathful punishment on our behalf. It was more than just a humiliating time in his life, followed by a brutal death, but he faced all of God’s wrath and punishment for all of those before, during, and after his life that would believe in him. It was a punishment of cosmic proportions. But, at the same time, it was a loving act of cosmic proportion. Christ paid the sin debt that was ours so we could be reconciled to the Father.

While Christ died on the cross and suffered for us, the Father raised him from the dead after three days as the Scriptures predicted and Jesus testified would happen. God raised him to show that victory over sin and death was complete. Sin and death would no longer have dominion over us because God was pleased with his sacrifice in our stead. In fact, the Father honored Jesus for his work in that Jesus now sits at the Father’s right hand in heaven and is the King of the Universe. He is also our high priest, who being tempted in every way understands us, and prays as our advocate before the Father. He is the judge over all creation, the one to whom we will all give an account upon our physical death.

Christ’s death provides those who believe on him as Lord and Savior with three things. First, we have a new record before the Father. The Bible says Christ became sin for us. In other words, Christ took on our sin, so that we have none in the eyes of the Father. Not only is our sin gone as far as the east is from the west, but we are clothed in Christ’s righteousness. When God looks at us, he sees the perfection of his Son.

Second, Jesus promises to give us a new heart to replace our old sinful nature so that sin no longer dominates our lives. Jesus promised to send his Holy Spirit, the very spirit of Christ himself, to live within us, to make us over in his image. When this happens, we, like Jesus, are able to live a life pleasing to God, obeying his commands, and enjoying him forever. We, at long last, are able to do what he requires.

Third, Christ promises us a new inheritance. We have a real hope in that when we die, we will go to heaven, and not suffer eternal wrath in hell. In heaven, there will be no more tears, no more pain, and no more sorrow; things will be as they were supposed to be. One day, Christ will come back to earth, to judge the living and the dead, namely to eternally separate his children from those who are not, the light from the darkness. He will bring down the entire company of heaven with him and will finalize his earthly kingdom. Perfect heaven and perfect earth will be united; it will be heaven on earth for the rest of eternity.

These three things - a new record, a new heart, and a new inheritance - God promises to those who trust in Jesus. Jesus himself made it very clear that this act of trust was to be responded to with great urgency, for it is an offer from the Divine King to those who do not know what tomorrow will bring. He tells us that we are to turn from our own ways and submit to him. In other words, we are to turn from our sin and submit to God’s decrees. There is no middle ground. He was not calling us to think about these things, nor was he calling us to merely acknowledge them, but to be moved in our core to act accordingly. Using his words, we are to “Repent and believe the good news (Mark 1:15).”

Therefore, to receive our Christmas gift of salvation and restoration, the first thing we need to do is repent. Repentance is turning away from our self-rule, our evil ways, and recognizing that we have forsaken God for our own pleasures. It is more than an emotional feeling of remorse, or a regret that we have been exposed, though it includes those feelings. It is a conscious act of turning from trust in ourselves to trust in the work of Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

Second, we need to believe; we need faith. Faith is more than mental assent that there is a God or that Jesus is that God. The Bible tells us that even the demons of hell believe this much. It is also more than positive thinking. Neither is faith a hope that God will make our lives easy in times of trouble as a sort of cosmic bellhop, nor is faith trusting in our good religious efforts. No, these things are not faith.

When the Bible speaks of faith, it speaks of saving faith. Saving faith means that we not only believe the facts about Jesus’ mission, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to the position of King of the Universe, but that we trust in his finished work on the cross, and trust in Him alone, to remove our sin debt, to make us over in his image by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the assurance of eternal life. Saving faith penetrates our very being and produces change; we will submit to His teachings and honor him in all areas of our lives. Faith is a new way of life.

About this time each year, people will ask one another, “Have you caught the Christmas spirit yet?” It is contagious and church is a wonderful place to catch it. My prayer is that you will catch the authentic Christmas spirit, which is a lot more than some seasonal jolliness and charity. The real Christmas spirit is having received and responded to the real Christmas gift, the Word becoming flesh in the Christ Child, our salvation and redemption.

The question when faced with the Christmas gift of the Incarnation then is, “do you trust in this Jesus, the Word become flesh?” Have you repented and given yourself, body and soul, mind and spirit, heart and will, sins and failures, dreams and hopes, to King Jesus? Have you received this Christmas gift of new and eternal life? These are the questions the Lord asks on Christmas? Indeed, that is what Christmas is all about.

If so, praise be to God; you are ready for Christmas! May this be a time of joyful celebration and renewal for you. May you be caught up in the awe of God’s goodness once again.

If not, the light is shining into the darkness this Christmas season. God’s hand is outstretched to all of humanity with his protecting searchlight. May this Christmas be the time you come to see the Savior for who he really is. May this be the time you open the heavenly gift of salvation. May this be the time you become his forever.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Topics: Christmas Eve, John |

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