John 1.1–18; Isaih 9.1–7
The 2025 Christmas Day sermon preached at St James Kununurra
I want to speak this morning about the Lord Jesus coming into the world some two thousand and thirty years ago. But before I get to that I need to correct a wrong impression I may have given in my sermon on Sunday. When I spoke of “Islamists,” I was not meaning all Muslims. Most Muslims just want to get on with life; they are not into jihad. They identify with Islam; that is their history and culture, but many are happy to live side by side with Christians and Jews. When I speak of “Islamists” I mean those who are passionately committed to the military creed of Muhammad.
Lorraine and I and our children spent 20 years in South Africa where we had more to do with Muslims than we do here, and things were largely peaceful. There is a large Muslim presence especially around Cape Town and they like to keep things sweet because so many families have Christian and Muslim members. Muslims like to talk about their faith, so we had many interesting conversations. I would encourage you to become friends with a Muslim. In my college in Cape Town I appointed a lecturer who saw himself as a missionary to Muslims. He attended mosque every Friday. He often took his classes along to introduce them to Islam. He did Bible studies with Muslim imams. I was thankful to be training men and women for ministry and mission in a place where interaction with Muslims was easy.
The Islamic Propagation Centre International is an international mission to convert Christians to Islam. Its headquarters is in South Africa, and its former leader, Ahmed Didat, produced many tracts attacking Christian beliefs. There were plenty produced by Christian mission agencies that defended them. The man who succeeded him was a lawyer, Yussuf Ismail, more peace-loving, but still he takes every opportunity to promote Islam. We became friends. On one occasion he asked whether he and a group of Muslims might attend one of our services. We agreed and they addressed a group of us after the service. Yussuf took the floor and explained how Islam and Christianity had many things in common. There were only a few points that divided us. If Christians could relax on a few of these, we could join together and fight what he said was the real enemy, Secularism.
I relate this to make a point. The Bondi Massacre is blamed on anti-semitism, correctly, but this disguises something of the utmost importance. Radical Muslims are not targeting Jews especially. No doubt the Israel-Gaza conflict caused this father-son Islamist pair to target the Hanukah celebration at Bondi Beach, but the destruction of the World Trade Centre did not target Jews, nor did the Bali Bombing, the Lindt Café Siege, nor the jihad going on in West Africa. They are part of a war against America and the secularism of the West. We are all potential targets, including ordinary peace-loving Muslims who do not buy into the jihad ideology.
But what are these few points that divide Christianity and Islam, which if Christians could relax them, would enable us to join forces against Secularism?
The main one, Yussuf explained, is our belief that Jesus is God. He then noted that many Christian leaders no longer believe this. He was able to cite a number of leading churchmen who distance themselves from believing that Jesus is God, including an Anglican Doctrine Commission statement from England to the effect that a Christian need not believe that Jesus is God, only that he is in some way special. “We Muslims believe that Jesus is special,” said Yussuf. Isa is a great prophet, second only to Muhammad, and his mother Mary is revered in Islam.
It fell to me to respond, and I had to say that we couldn’t regard the people he was quoting as Christians—churchmen perhaps, but not true Christians—and I turned to the Gospel of John to show that Jesus godhood was something taught by Holy Scripture, that we could not compromise on.
In the beginning the Word was, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Through him all things were made. And without him nothing was made that has been made.[1]
It is impossible not to see here that John understands this Word, whom he will later say, became flesh, as God himself. It is a quite remarkable thing to hear this first-century strict monotheistic Jewish disciple of Jesus declaring Jesus to be no less than God himself. It is where our doctrine of the Trinity begins, which is heresy to Muslims.
One thing I learned from that encounter was that Muslims respect our Scriptures and were interested to discuss John’s meaning. John begins his Gospel with this incredible statement about Jesus’ true identity. At the end the resurrected Jesus appears to Thomas and invites him to inspect his wounds and realize it is really he. Thomas is overwhelmed and says, “My Lord and my God!” To find this at the beginning and in the conclusion of John makes it very clear that this is his overriding message. However did he come to this? He accompanied Jesus for the best part of three years, often camping together on the road, and knew without doubt that he was a real man. To answer this, we would need to read his whole Gospel where he sets out the evidence, the miracles Jesus did and the things he says. At the end he concludes,
Jesus did many other things in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book; these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.[2]
It was the sheer weight of what he witnessed, especially his resurrection from the dead, which drove John and the other disciples to this incredible conclusion, that Jesus was more than the Messiah; somehow God himself had walked with them on the roads of Galilee and Judaea.
Some people question the authenticity of John’s Gospel. They say that only John has this belief; the other three Gospels only believe him to be a human Messiah. But this is not true. Although it is true that Matthew, Mark, and Luke set out to convince their readers that Jesus is the promised Messiah, if you carefully read them you will see that they actually believed much more. Matthew, for example, when he writes about Jesus appearing to many disciples on a mountain in Galilee says that some worshipped him. Luke also wrote Acts where it is clear Jesus is “the Lord” in heaven, to whom prayer is offered. And Paul, of course, makes enormous claims about Jesus’ identity. Listen to what he says about Jesus to the people of Colossae:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth … all things were created through him and for him, and … in him all things hold together.[3]
The whole New Testament breaths the conviction that God has fulfilled his promises to send a king to rescue us by becoming a man himself, dying to pay out the penalty our sins deserve, and rising to new life to lead us into an eternal new world. As Jesus said to Thomas when he acknowledged him as Lord and God, “’Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”[4] This is our faith and we cannot compromise it.
But how is it possible that Jesus could be an ordinary human being and God at the same time? How can he be the Son of God, and his Father be God, and there be only one God? To many it doesn’t make sense, so they think it cannot be true.
The first thing to say is that we don’t believe it because we have reasoned it out, but because God reveals it to us through Jesus and his apostles. I was invited by my study supervisor to dinner at Selwyn College, and found myself sitting across the table from an old science professor called Durant. He and his wife wrote a science textbook which was widely used in English schools. Most English schoolkids knew it as Durant and Durant. When he learned I was from Emmanuel College he asked me about its Dean who had recently published a book called The Myth of God Incarnate. It is a collection of essays arguing that the idea of Jesus being God developed long after Jesus’ time—Jesus was just a remarkable man. But as you can see, his disciple John believed him to be God from the time of the resurrection. Professor Durant, said: “I don’t understand these theologians. They think they need to understand the Trinity. We scientists don’t understand light. We gave up trying to. We just accept it for what it is and study its properties, but what it is—that is a complete mystery. If we don’t understand a little thing like light, why should we think it strange we cannot understand God?” The only way we can know anything about God is if he tells us, and that is what he has done through Jesus and the Holy Scriptures.
But let us look more closely at what John says. “In the beginning was the Word …” What does he mean by “the Word”? Some think John is buying into Stoicism. I thought Stoics were people from back in Roman times who thought everything happens for a reason, so if things get tough you should just suck it up; it was meant to be. On our way back from Canberra we listened a lot to the radio and we listened an interview with a woman who said she was a Stoic, and had gone into it quite deeply, reading all the Latin classics on the subject. Lorraine has a friend who is a Stoic. Stoics believed in a world soul, a kind of blueprint of the universe and everything that happens in it. They called this “the Logos” or “the Word.” Some people think this is what John meant. The Word is the living (impersonal) soul of universe. But we do not need to go this far to find John’s meaning.
John’s Gospel starts the way the whole Bible starts. Genesis 1.1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …”
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
How did God create the universe? Genesis says he spoke it into existence. He did it by his Word. John is right: “In the beginning was the Word …” Our word is with us, wherever we are.
So John is talking about the powerful Word of God, which brought a universe out of nothing. Whatever God says— whatever he wills—happens; he is the almighty Creator. It has to be, because there is a universe today and we are part of it.
The next thing John says is that this Word was with God. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God …” That also sounds correct, except John is saying something more than this. Prepositions are tricky, and this one literally means the Word was towards God—facing him; suddenly the Word is personal. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in relationship with—face to face—with God, “and the Word was God.” That is the bit that is difficult.
So here we have a puzzle: God’s creative Word is personal, and is in intimate relationship with God. He is therefore separate, but he is also God, but there is only one God. This is mind-blowing stuff, and theologians and philosophers have puzzled over it for thousands of years.
The next two verses just repeat and emphasize what is said in the first. God’s Word brought about every last part of the universe. Nothing exists that God has not created it by calling it into being by his Word. And then, if we skip down to verse 14 we read that “the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory …” And here John changes his language: no longer is it about God and his Word, but it is about an only Son with his Father, full of kindness, mercy, and truth. This is the language John will use from now on, and Paul will use constantly. It is the way God wishes we should think about this mystery. The Word is a person. Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father God, who has become a man to rescue us from death and destruction.
This understanding we can never surrender, and let me tell you one reason why, something that makes an enormous difference between Christianity and everything else. People think being a Muslim is like being a Christian. It is not. Muslims do not believe you can have a personal relationship with God. According to Islam, God is almighty and alone and unapproachable; the nearest you can come to him is his law; Islam is about law-keeping in hope of heaven at the end. But even in heaven there is no friendship with God. He is too distant by far.
Back in the 1960’s a woman called Bilquis Sheikh, from an elite family in Pakistan, gave herself to study the Qur’an. She came across various references to Jesus, and since she knew nothing of his life, started to study the Bible. She eventually gave her life to Jesus and discovered a personal relationship with God. Her family were horrified and pressured her to come back to Islam. Her servants fled in fear. Her home was torched. She had to run away from Pakistan. She wrote an account of her spiritual journey called I Dared to Call Him Father. That’s what it’s all about. No Muslim would call God “Father.” What John tells us in this first chapter of his Gospel is that God is personal; he has never been alone. He has always been “facing towards” his Word, like a Son in relation to his Father and a Father with his Son. And God the Son became a man. Why? So we could know him, and be in relationship with him and his Father. In verse 12 he adds that Jesus has given to those who believe in him the right to become children of God themselves.
… to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God …[5]
This is what Christmas is all about:
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light …
We celebrate the birth of God’s king to rule the world and put its wars to an end, but who is this king? Wonder of wonders he is none other than the Lord God Almighty himself, come amongst us as a human being. I pray you will experience this great light for yourself.
[1] John 1.13.
[2] John 20.30–31.
[3] Colossians 1.15–16.
[4] John 20.29.
[5] John 1.12.