Day 3 | Light In The Darkness
Sherrey Frew, author
We’re all aware that Christmas surrounds the astounding birth of the promised Jewish Messiah, who chose to step into history. He developed as all human babies do, only he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin.
Yesterday, we saw John introduce Jesus as the Word and the Light. Today, we’ll consider what the Light’s arrival means for the world.
Read
John 1:9-13
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Reflect
Few people were prepared for Jesus when he arrived. Fewer still expected him to enter God’s grand story in the form of a helpless newborn. No one could begin to imagine how the Messiah would exceed all human expectations and do so in the most creative and unlikely way. Yet, God’s plan accomplished infinitely more than rescuing the Jewish people from political oppression, because it focused on humanity’s desperate need. Many of his own people, the Jews, whom he had loved and guided from their inception to the day he arrived, rejected him. Perhaps they wanted a Messiah who was only for them. Yet God’s love for humanity is so vast that he came to rescue anyone who would receive him.
Christianity is all about the rescue of the helpless — people who are stumbling around because they are hopelessly lost in the dark. Other religions are focused on teaching us how to save ourselves. They want to teach you how to either assemble your own flashlight, so you can find your own way, or try to convince you that you can generate your own light from within. The Bible teaches us that God had to send the light to us because there was no way we could escape the darkness on our own.
As pastor and author Timothy Keller says: “Imagine you see a drowning woman. It doesn’t help her at all if you throw her a manual on how to swim. You don’t throw her some teaching — you throw her a rope. And Jesus is not so much a teacher as he is a rescuer. Because that’s what we most need. Nothing in who we are or what we do saves us.”[1]
Why would God, who enjoys a perfect, loving community within the Trinity, choose embodied living, within space and time, among a people who had turned their backs on him? Why would he stage a rescue mission for people who are convinced they don’t need him? Because he loves us and has acted to save us.
His incarnation accomplished many things, but the motive of his bold mission to be conceived by the Spirit, grow in a virgin’s womb, and be birthed in a shelter for animals is love for us. Within the Trinity, God experiences perfect love and communion. He created us out of his good pleasure. His love for us is rooted in that good pleasure that springs forth out of his nature. 1 John 4:8–9 tells us that God is love and that his love was revealed to us when he sent his one and only Son that we may find life in him.
How the truth that we are completely saved by God’s grace difficult for us to accept? Why should it be a relief?
What does God’s great love mean for you today? Wherever you are, whatever you are experiencing at the moment, reflect on what it means that you are loved by the eternal Creator and Sustainer of the universe.
[1] Timothy Keller, Galatians for You: For Reading, for Feeding, for Leading, (Purcellville, VA: The Good Book Company, 2013).
