The Unbreakable Word, A Broken Man
The Unbreakable Word, A Broken Man
John 1:1-5; Col. 1:15-17; Phil 2:6-11; Heb 1:3-4; Isa 52:13-53:12
Today is the Fourth Day of Christmas. Our Christmas celebration is not just one day, but continues through Epiphany on January 6. The celebration only begins on Christmas Day. And, although we haven’t continued the custom, in earlier times, gift giving continued all through the days of the Christmas season. The song, Twelve Days of Christmas, was first published in English in 1780, thought to be French in origin, but was written to symbolize the Christian faith when celebrating Christmas was outlawed in England. The “true love” is God, the giver of the gifts, beginning with the “partridge in a pear tree,” representing Jesus Christ, the two turtle doves representing the Old and New Testaments, and so forth, through the “twelve drummers,” which represents the twelve points of the Apostles’ Creed, which we repeat to “drum” it into our minds. But the celebration continues, and so this last message on the miracles of Christmas.
Last week, I spoke about the virgin birth and how difficult it is for people to believe. It is one of the major sticking points for the skeptics of Christianity. We all know, don’t we, that such a thing is impossible. But that’s precisely the meaning of “miracle.” God does things that are impossible for us, and that are contrary to the laws of nature. As much of a joy as the birth of a child is, it is not considered a miracle when a baby is born, simply because that’s the way things work normally. When all goes according to design, a baby is born. Beautiful, special, and a wonder, certainly, but not a miracle. But, when a baby is born against the laws of nature, when a virgin conceives and gives birth, that is a miracle. And we believe in a God of miracles. He parts seas, raises the dead, gives sight to those born blind, and causes a Child to be born of a virgin. God is big enough to handle impossible things.
Today, I want to talk to you about what is really the main sticking point for many when it comes to Christianity. In fact, it is such a problem that many people want to claim to be Christians while they deny this fundamental fact of faith. Further, as I wrote in an email to my father, it took seven major Ecumenical Councils, beginning with Nicea in AD 325, and ending with the Second Council of Nicea in AD 787, to iron out how we believe and how we express what we believe about Jesus Christ as being both God and Man. Countless heresies were spawned during this time as people tried to figure out how such a thing could be. It was the inspiration for St. Anselm of Canterbury to write a seminal book, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), in AD 1098. The problem is how Jesus could be both God and Man. Most people have no problem with the man Jesus. They just don’t get the whole Incarnation thing, that God took human form and became not only like us, but one of us.
They can accept Jesus being a great teacher, a moral example, an enlightened man – but God? Muslims argue that Jesus can’t be divine because God can’t have a son. The question, though, is “why not?” Why cannot the God who created the universe do whatever he wants to do? Why cannot God have a Son? Why cannot the God of the universe take on human form and walk among men? “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen 18:14, See also Jer 32:17, 27).
More than that, though, we have to deal with what Jesus said about himself. It’s been several months now, but I’ll just remind you of what C. S. Lewis said. It was what Jesus claimed for himself that forces us into a corner. Jesus claimed to be one with the Father, the only way to the Father, and the Son of Man prophesied in Daniel 7. If Jesus was who he claimed to be, we cannot simply dismiss him as a great moral teacher or enlightened man. If Jesus was not who he claimed to be, then he was either a lunatic or a liar, deluded or a deceiver. And if Jesus was not who he claimed to be, then nothing he said can be taken as “great moral teaching.” It is either the ramblings of a madman or the plagiarism of a fraud. If we accept that what he said was truth, then we have to accept him for what he claimed to be, very God and very Man, Immanuel - “God with us.”
We also have to deal with what the witnesses claimed for him.
The prologue to John’s gospel is one such claim. In the beginning the Word existed, and the Word was face to face with God, and the Word was God. Not “a god,” but simply God. Not one among many, but the One. John makes his meaning even more clear in verse 3: Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. That is, this Word is the Creator of all things. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The first word of Creation was, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3). Jesus claimed in John 9:5, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And John, in Revelation, discovers that The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp (Rev 21:23).
Paul, writing to the church at Colossae: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 1:15-17). That is, Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. He is also the Creator, and so is God. And as Creator of all things, including the powers and authorities, he is Lord over them all. So that, as Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:10-11).
The writer to the Hebrews, like John, introduced his thesis with a prologue. There he states that the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Heb 1:4). This sentence contains a word we know – character. Jesus is the very character of God. As to the Colossians, we learn here that Jesus is the visible being of the invisible God, having the character of God. And as to the Philippians, he is in very form, or nature, God (Phil 2:6).
But I want you to notice something about each of those witnesses. John tells us that the Word became flesh (Jn 1:14), and then has the Baptizer identifying Jesus as the Lamb of God (Jn 1:36). Lambs, in Jewish religious life, were for sacrifice. “Lamb of God” identifies Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of Passover, meaning that his life would be given for the deliverance of his people. John, then, has the longest, most detailed account of Jesus’ final week, from chapter 12 and the triumphal entry, through chapter 19, and the suffering and death, and then the most resurrection appearances in chapters 20-21. Even though Jesus is the perfect Word of God, the Creator and the means of Creation, he is to be broken and sacrificed for deliverance from sin.
Paul, to the Philippians, citing an ancient creed, tells us that even though Jesus was in very nature God ... he made himself nothing and took on the very form of humanity. Then he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death. His exaltation to glory came through the sacrifice on the cross, that he laid down his life. In fact, those are the very words Jesus used in John 10:18 - “No one takes it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” The cross was by design. Jesus intended to give his life, he said, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28; Mk 10:45).
And to the Colossians, after telling them that the Son is the image of the invisible God, wrote that he is the firstborn from among the dead, and that God’s plan was to reconcile to himself all things ... by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Phil 1:18-20). That is, this perfect Man, God in human flesh, came to be a reconciling sacrifice, that he came to die to make peace between man and God.
The writer to the Hebrews, after extolling Jesus as the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, the very character of God in human flesh, still in his prologue remarks that after he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. In the Old Testament, Leviticus, Numbers, and 1 Chronicles and Nehemiah, there was a purification ritual for things that had become unclean, through childbirth, a woman’s monthly cycle, touching a dead body, illness, discharge of bodily fluid, or other contamination such as idolatry. Ease your mind: it wasn’t just women; there were a lot of things that might make one unclean. When Antiochus IV Ephiphanes profaned the temple, the Jews performed a purification ritual to make the temple clean again. What this writer is telling us is that sin contaminates us, and that Jesus provided purification to make us clean before God. But it was by making the sacrifice of himself, the perfect Lamb, suffering outside the city gates to make the people holy through his own blood (Heb 13:12).
The question some people ask is how can God die. The problem is that we think of death as the end, and in some ways it is. It is the end of this life. But we know that it wasn’t the end for Jesus. It was a transition, a change from one state of being to another state of being. But it really hinges on our doctrine of the Triune nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, co-equal and co-eternal. But the Son took on human flesh, became one of us, and that human flesh died. The basic problem is that we know that God is eternal, and that as God, he is unbreakable. And yet ...
Isaiah has just 15 verses that predict the broken Messiah. It is this very brokenness of the unbreakable God that enables our salvation. It ought to be a chapter all its own, but is split between chapters 52 and 53. But we need to back up to Isaiah 42:1 –
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. Then the prophet picks up the Servant theme again in chapter 52:13, and we have the prophecy of the Suffering Servant – his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness. What sort of torture would do that to a person? Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? So the Servant is identified as the “arm of God.”
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
We do not understand how it could be. All we know is that it is. God in his glory laid aside his deity and took the form of man, becoming like us in every way, so that he might reconcile us to himself. The real miracle of Christmas is that God love us so much that he was willing to take on humanity to show us his love, and then to go to the cross, to suffer and die as an atoning sacrifice for our sin, and to conquer our last, great enemy to give us life eternal with him.