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Christmas Eve 2017
Christ Church on December 24, 2017
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Incarnational Love

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Introduction

As we all know, Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Not only was this Incarnation a great expression of love, if we are thinking scripturally we will come to see it as the very definition of love. And notice that this definition, in order to be a true definition, must be an incarnate definition. It must be a definition in 3-D.

The Text

“And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it. For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist” (2 John 5–7).

Summary of the Text

Incarnational love is the way in which we must walk. John beseeches the unknown lady to whom he writes in this way. He pleads with her, not as though there were some new commandment. Rather, he pleads with her that we all continue to love one another. This is the same commandment that we have had from the beginning (v. 5). This is the commandment; this is the law of Christ. This is what love foundationally is—walking in the commandment. And what is the commandment? That we walk in love (v. 6). This is to be done with a basic wariness about deceivers. There are many deceivers out and about, many deceivers have entered the world. How are they to be identified? They are the ones who refuse to confess something—they refuse to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. Such a one is a liar, a deceiver, a false teacher, an antichrist (v. 7).

Imperatives Flow from the Indicative

Let us begin with a brief grammar lesson. An indicative statement is a statement of fact. The door is open. This is simply a fact. We do not know who opened it, only that they did. When an indicative statement is made, the only thing you can do with it is believe it, or not. You either believe or refuse to believe it. The only thing you can do is confess it, or refuse to confess it. And the one thing you cannot do is obey an indicative statement. You cannot, in response to the door is open, spring up and say that you will open it right away. At least not without a great category confusion. You will only confuse yourself, and you will do nothing to the door.

This is not to say that there is no relationship between indicatives and imperatives. If someone were to tell you the door is open, and then command you to acknowledge that the door was open, this would be a command—an imperative—that presupposes knowledge of the facts, knowledge of the indicative.

Now according to our text Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh. This is a staggering fact, but still a fact for all that. Believe that He is come in the flesh is the imperative. Apostles and ministers, evangelists and church planters, not to mention all Christians, are all commissioned to go out into the world with a simple two-part message. 1. Declare the grand indicative; 2. Command all men everywhere to believe and confess the truth of what was just declared.

Love and Lies

From the day that sin entered our world, love has always been understood in contrast to its opposite. When God cursed the serpent, He established the antithesis between the seed of the serpent and the seed off the woman (Gen. 3:15). As long as God has a people that He is calling from this fallen world, the antithesis must be understood by all who would be faithful to Him.

In the Incarnation, God’s Son entered the world. It is striking that the same expression is used of the deceivers. They too have “entered the world,” many of them. Many deceivers come, and they come not confessing.

This means that there is no confession of the truth, no love of the truth, where there is not a rejection of the lie—a rejection of those who will not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Prov. 8:13, ESV).

You cannot love the wheat without hating the tares. You cannot love the patient without hating the cancer. You cannot love the sheep without hating the wolves. You cannot love the truth without hating the lie.

Confessing, Walking, Obeying, Loving

See how all these things are bound together. Those who do not obey the commandment are those who do not walk in love. Those who do not walk in love are those who will not confess the reality concerning of Jesus.

Before walking in love, walk around it first. Take it in. What I mean is this. Look at what it means to walk in love. It means to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This confession of the stupendous indicative cannot be made without finding yourselves immediately in the midst of loving your brothers and sisters.

What did walking in love mean for Jesus Christ? For Him, walking in love meant being God come in the flesh. For us, walking in love means confessing that this is who He is.

The love of God is the mirrored side of the law of God. James tells us that the law of God is like a plate glass window, and not like a series of French panes. If you break the law anywhere you have broken the whole thing (Jas. 2:10). But the glory of the new covenant is this—if you keep the gospel at any point, you have kept all of it.

No one is saved by a partial Jesus, and no one ever had a partial Christ. If you have Jesus at all, you have all of Him. And if you confess Him, you love Him. If you love Him, you are walking in Him. If you have the commandment at all, you have had it from the beginning. Salvation is a grand mystery, but one thing we can say about it is this—it is never parceled out. It is not distributed with a tea spoon.

The most miserable Christian who ever lived, provided he is a Christian, has no less of Jesus than the saintliest Christian ever. And this is because Christ was born in a stable, and He was given for us. All of Him was given for us. And so it is that we are saved to the uttermost.

“Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

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The God Who Stoops

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Introduction

The message of the gospel is one that not only brings us forgiveness of sin, but also one that upends all our categories. God unmakes our tawdry pasts, and replaces them with a fresh start, a new birth, a clean slate. But He also intends to unmake our officious assumptions about what all those things must mean.

The Text

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is. 55:8–9).

Summary of the Text

Through His prophet Isaiah, God tells the Israelites that He does not think the same way that they do. His ways are not their ways, according to the Lord’s declaration here (v. 8). The reason for this is that God’s ways are higher than ours, and are higher in the way that the heavens are higher than the earth. The same thing goes for His thoughts (v. 8). God’s ways and thoughts are higher.

But this means that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts about what constitutes higher things. God, in other words, can be highly irreverent. Through the Incarnation, God has declared that He at any rate was not going to stand upon His dignity. We believe that for God to be higher means that He could not possibly dwell with the lowly. But this is far from the case. The Incarnation—even when we think we have gotten used to it—is profoundly unsettling.

A Different Calculus

What men think is wealthy and respectable is Mammon worship in the sight of God.

“And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

What men think is reverent and humble is thought by God to be arrogant and insolent nonsense.

“Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things? Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye” (Acts 7:49–51).

What men call obedience is actually stiff-necked rebellion in the sight of God.

“And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites” (1 Sam. 15:20).

A God of Reversals

So with all that in mind, consider this great juxtaposition from Isaiah:

“For thus saith the high and lofty One That inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones” (Is. 57:15).

Where does God live? He inhabits eternity. He dwells in the high and holy place. So far, this accords with our sense of propriety. But this high and holy one, this eternal one, also dwells with the contrite and lowly spirit. What is He doing there? He is reviving the hearts of those who are contrite. God stoops in order to pick us up. How far did He stoop?

In a Lowly Manger

And how does this apply to our understanding of Christmas? Take these thoughts from Martin Luther:

“If Christ had arrived with trumpets and lain in a cradle of gold, his birth would have been a splendid affair. But it would not be a comfort to me. He was rather to lie in the lap of a poor maiden and be thought of little significance in the eyes of the world. Now I can come to him. Now he reveals himself to the miserable in order not to give any impression that he arrives with great power, splendor, wisdom, and aristocratic manners.”

The Lord Jesus was born into our poverty so that He might liberate us from our poverty. And by poverty I mean poverty of all kinds—spiritual, financial, emotional, and intellectual. The Lord Jesus was no Little Lord Fauntleroy. He was not, as the French saying goes, like a “little Jesus in velvet pants.” Joseph and Mary sacrificed turtle doves at his dedication, which was the sacrifice that the Mosaic law set apart for the poor. What does this mean? He means that He is the Savior. Let us use a word that might hit us harder (because we have turned Savior into one of our “religion words”). He is our Shield and Buckler. He is our Deliverer. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ, I tell you.

So It Begins With a Child

When the first Adam was created, he was shaped out of the dust of the ground, and he was a fully formed man, but without the breath of life. When God breathed into him, he had sudden existence, and though he was just five minutes old, he looked like a thirty-year-old man (say).

But the Lord Jesus stooped all the way down to a single cell. The eternal Son of God, according to His Deity, was conjoined with a cell that had roughly the thickness of a hair. He was of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God through His resurrection (Rom. 1:3-4). He was not only as small as we are, but He also became small in comparison to us.

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: And the government shall be upon his shoulder: And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, To order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice From henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” (Is. 9:6–7).

The Zeal of the Lord for Salvation

What has been accomplished for us has been accomplished by the zeal of the Lord of hosts. He is the one who has performed it, and He began by stooping low. As C.S. Lewis put it so wonderfully.

“He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.”

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