THE DECLARATION BEGAN IN BETHLEHEM

Jn.1:17,18 – For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

This verse gives us a deeper look into the message of the birth of Christ, why exactly did He become a man? Of course there is more than one answer to that question; immediately our mind goes to redemption and rightly so. Christ became a man to die for the ungodly, He came to save us from our sins. But there is also something more than that that lies at the very heart of redemption. Jesus’ whole life and existence was designed to display the Father and His love for us. In today’s verse John says that Jesus actually declares God the Father. Now this is more than giving us teaching about the Father, which He did, but this is about being the radiance of the Father. The birth, life, ministry, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal or declare to us the glory of God. His life is a long declaration of God. Here is how the Reformed Expository Commentary describes this passage.

“Jesus came to provide the perfect revelation of God that men could receive. John describes him as “the only God, who is at the Father’s side.” This is why Jesus is greater than John the Baptist or Moses, not to mention Muhammad or the pope. Jesus is himself very God of very God, one in the divine Trinity. He is in intimate fellowship of love with God the Father; literally, John says, he is “in the bosom of the Father”. He, then, is the One who can show us God.….This is what Jesus does—he interprets and explains and exposits God to us. Jesus gives a full revelation of God in what he taught and what he did. To know what God is like and what God intends for the world, we need only study Jesus Christ. This is why John called him “the Word”; God speaks most plainly and eloquently in him. This is what we most greatly need, and what we should all most fervently seek: to know God through Jesus Christ. As Jesus prayed to his Father: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”.

This changes my whole view of Christmas, the birth of Christ is the beginning of Christ’s unveiling of the Father. This is why at the end of Jesus’ life He was able to say “if you have seen Me you have seen the Father”. The first witnesses of the incarnation of Christ were in that manger the night the Savior was born. Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds were the first to gaze on this man who was the very image of God. I wonder what they knew that first night? Maybe we can have another perspective as we look on Christ again this Christmas.