Joy to the World - Pt 21

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.” (John 18:33-38 ESV).

Our reading today is a great Christmas text even though it comes from the end of Jesus’ life on earth, not the beginning. The uniqueness of his birth is that he did not originate at his birth. He existed before he was born in a manger. The personhood, the character, the personality of Jesus of Nazareth existed before the man Jesus of Nazareth was born. The theological word to describe this mystery is not creation, but incarnation. The person, not the body, but the essential personhood of Jesus existed before he was born as man. His birth was not a coming into being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person. I know that sounds as if I am “splitting hairs”; however, it is a very important distinction to make. The prophet Micah puts it like this: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” (Micah 5:2). This prophecy was delivered 700 years before Jesus was born. The mystery of the birth of Jesus is not merely that he was born of a virgin. That miracle was intended by God to witness to an even greater one, namely, that the child born at Christmas was a person who existed “from of old, from ancient days.” That Christ existed before his incarnation, and even before the foundation of the world, is finally a function of his divinity. He is first and last, Alpha and Omega (cf. Revelation 1:8), because he is God. Jesus is before, and he is better than, anything in the created world. Christmas is far more than the celebration of a great man’s birth. God himself, in the second person of the Godhead, entered into our space, and into our frail humanity, surrounded by our sin, to rescue us. He came. He became one of us. God sent God. The Father gave his own Son for us and for our salvation! Joy to the world!