“When Christ Moves Into the Neighborhood”

John 1:1-18

Pastor Christopher English           

I.    Introduction

This is the first Sunday of Advent.  "Advent" comes from the Latin word adventus, which means "visit," "coming," or "arrival."  The season of Advent is a time to participate more fully in all that Christ accomplished and is accomplishing in the two "visits" of Christ: His first coming through the Incarnation, what we call the Christmas Story, and His Second Coming when he will return to planet earth visibly, bodily, to consummate the kingdom of God

This morning we are going to examine the purpose of Christ’s first visit to planet earth by exploring this question:  Why did God have to become a human being in order to rescue and redeem creation?  Why Immanuel?

II.    Exposition

The gospel of John presents us with a rather unique view of what we romantically call the “Christmas Story,” the first visit of Jesus Christ to planet earth in human form.  John does not begin with shepherds and manger scenes, but with the pre-existent Christ dwelling for all eternity within the inner community of the triune God as God and with God. 

John’s purpose for writing his gospel, as he states plainly in chapter 20, is that all might believe that Christ is the divine Son of God and in believing have eternal life.  So John’s Christmas Story begins with Christ as the almighty, Creator God, through whom all things were made.

Max Lucado in his book, "Cosmic Christmas," describes a fictional confrontation between God and Satan as God is about to send His greatest gift to Earth.

"The two stood facing each other.  God robed in light, each thread glowing.  Satan canopied in evil, the very fabric of his robe seeming to crawl.  Satan rose slowly off his haunches.  Like a wary wolf, he walked a wide circle toward the desk until he stood before the volume (the Book of Life) and read the word: Immanuel.  "Immanuel?”  He muttered to himself.  "God with us?” 

The hooded head turned squarely toward the face of the Father. "No, Not even you would do that.  Not even you would go so far.  The plan is bizarre!  You don't know how dark I've made the Earth.  It's putrid.  It's evil.  It's . . ."
    "It's mine," proclaimed the King. "And I will reclaim what is mine."
“  Why?”  Satan asked.  "Why would you do this?"

    The Father's voice was deep and soft.  "Because I love them."

But did the world jump up and down for joy when the Father sent the Son to save them from death and darkness, to give them light, love, peace, joy, eternal life?  Tragically, our passage tells us:  “the light shined in the darkness, but the darkness did not understand the light.”

But not all responded to the light with such hatred.  Our passage tells us: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” 

The Father sent the Son into the world because God knew that there were innumerable numbers of people who would respond in the Holy-Spirit enabled gift of faith and become eternal children of God.
But at what cost?  Why the incarnation, why did the Son of God need to become human, and die such a horrific death for God to accomplish the salvation of the elect? 

If all humankind needed was forgiveness, why couldn’t the almighty God simply forgive all the elect by one divine decree, take all the evil and evil doers, demonic and human, out of the picture forever, and set up the eternal kingdom of God right away? 

If we are to be deeply changed by the Christmas story this Advent season, we must ponder often just what it means that God became Immanuel, God with us in human form, the eternal Word of God taking on human flesh.

And so this morning, we are going to briefly explore Six Redemptive Reasons why God’s plan of salvation included the eternal, divine Son of God taking on the form of a human being.

1.  The Son of God took on human form because God’s judgment against our sin is the death penalty.

The divine penalty for human rebellion against God’s Law was the ultimate sentence, the death   penalty.  Someone had to die!  Because the divine judgment was against human sin the one dying had to be human. 

Because the divine judgment required the death of a sinless human, the one dying had to also be divine since only God is without sin.  God’s remedy then for the human condition?  The Son of God to take on human form and become Jesus Christ, the one who is fully human and fully God.

2.    The Son of God took on human form so that Christ could reveal and restore the glory of humanity

The Savior, whom we now call Jesus Christ, did always exist as God as our study passage reveals.  But also as our study passage reveals, the Son of God did not always exist as the person of Jesus Christ that we know him as. 

We don’t know much about the preexistent Christ. We do know that before coming to planet earth as Jesus the crying infant in the dirty feeding trough, Christ did not exist in human form. 

Yet we also know from the Resurrection appearances of Christ recorded in the gospels that Christ kept his human form after he rose from the dead.  Christ took our human form back up to heaven, and entered right into the inner community of the Trinity in the form of a human being!

And because we are in union with Christ through the Holy Spirit, we also dwell within the very inner community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! 

In order to save humanity, Christ took on a permanent change of form from the eternal logos of God to Jesus Christ the fully God/fully human one. 

Why?  Why the human form?  Of all the forms that God could possibly choose to take on permanently, why human?  Why did God need to take on any new form permanently to accomplish His plans?  Well, we don’t know all the reasons why, but theologians through the ages have pointed out this one powerful and important reason. 

The triune God has decided that the human race, above all other races of beings that God has created in eternity past, and will create in eternity future, is to have the supreme and unique place of dwelling within the very inner community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through our union with Christ’s body! 

So that humans, you and I, will be co-heirs and co-rulers with Christ of all creation!  This is our dignity and our destiny above all other created beings!

3.    The Son of God took on human form to reveal the heart of the triune God

Our study passage in verse 18 reveals that while no one has ever seen God, Christ came to make God fully known.  The one true God has always desired to be fully known by the people of this world.  God is not an absent father, but a God who created us for the very purpose of having intimate relationship with Him. 

God has made himself known through creation, through the nation of Israel, through the revealed Word of God in Holy Scripture.  But all these avenues of revelation still came up short in God’s eyes. 

God created us in such a way that we always learn best when someone shows us not tells us.  So God knew that the ultimate way to reveal who his is would be to show us in person.  So God the Son took on human form so that when we look at Christ we see the heart of God. 

There is no hidden God behind Christ.  The God of the Old Testament is the same God we see in Christ.  God is a God of love and holiness, of grace and justice, a missionary God who loves us so much he was willing to become one of us so that we might know him fully. 

4.    The Son of God took on human form so that Christ could model for us a life of faith, hope, and love.

The idea of Christ being a moral and ethical example of how to live a good and godly life has been one important understanding of the life of Christ through the centuries of Christianity.  The danger is when this purpose of the life of Christ becomes the main purpose. 

This kind of teaching reduces Christ to only a good example and Christianity to only living a moral life. This is the danger of the WWJD model that really came out of the liberal social gospel movement. 

Now there is nothing wrong with trying to model our life after Christ.  Indeed it is commendable even commanded by God to do so.   The danger is when we think we can act like Christ in our own power, or when we forget that Christ did not come primarily to model morality. 

Christ came to die for humanity because humanity is absolutely incapable of living a moral life according to God’s standards of morality!

 So yes, we can model our life after how Christ lived when he walked the earth.  But we must not do so with any drop of self-righteousness that thinks that we can behave good enough to earn God’s love or forgiveness, or that we can think, feel, and act like Christ apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in us. 

The life of acting like Jesus is possible only in the power of the Holy Spirit living the life of Christ through our sinful but surrendered self.

5.    The Son of God took on human form so that Christ could do perfectly everything that God requires us to do, but that we are unable to do because of our sinfulness.

Far more than just modeling for us a godly life, Christ came to live the godly live that we are incapable of living.  Then, and here’s the amazing gospel, God counts all the obedience of Christ to us just as if we were the ones who actually obeyed God perfectly! 

This truth is so hard to explain, and yet it is an essential, mandatory, absolutely a must-get-a-hold-of truth to live out the Christian faith in power.  So please listen close as I do my best to explain this life-giving, destiny-defining truth.

In theological terms, this is called vicarious participation in the life of Christ.  Vicarious usually carries the meaning of “experiencing through another by imagining that you’re the one doing it.” 

For example, when you see a good movie, or read a book, you can often feel as if you are having the experience described.  Or sometimes people talk about a parent vicariously living the life they wished they had lived through their children’s life.  

But when we say that we vicariously participate in the life of Christ, it goes far beyond just doing so through our imagination.  Because the Holy Spirit actually lives inside of us, we are connected to Christ so closely that the Bible tells us that we are the actual Body of Christ, and that God looks upon us just as if we were Christ in terms of being God’s forgiven, adopted, holy child of God. 

So Christ had to take on human form, not just to have a body capable of dying for our sins, not just to model for us how to serve God, but to serve God perfectly in our place, and then God counts everything that Christ did and still is doing to our account just as if we were the one doing it! 
Let me try to give an analogy.  Now when God created me, he completely left out any musical or athletic gifts!  I mean I didn’t get a drop!  Now just imagine if I woke up tomorrow and the National Football League and all the media started to give me all the fame, and all the credit, and all the praise for all the football records currently held by Brett Favre!  Or to use a music example, suppose everyone started giving me all the music royalties and fame of say a Josh Groban or Steven Tyler. 

That’s what God does with us in relation to everything that Christ has done and is now doing!  You see our salvation, which includes:
 - being restored to a friendly relationship with God from God considering us enemies,
 - our being progressively made more like Christ,
 - our receiving from God eternal life,
 - an eternal inheritance of riches in heaven,
 - and our being made co-rulers with Christ of the universe.

This incomparable, inconceivable salvation given to us as pure gift from God, required far more than just the forgiveness of our sins.

Because God’s standards of holiness requires perfect obedience to all of God’s holy Law, salvation requires not just God’s forgiveness of our utter and compete failure to obey God’s Law perfectly.  Somehow a way had to be made that we could obey all of God’s Law perfectly.

God’s grace did not remove the requirement of perfect obedience to the Law in order to receive eternal life.  Rather, God’s grace provided a way that this requirement could be accomplished!  And that way is through the perfect obedience of Christ continually being applied to our account. This is what it means that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us. 

You see Christ had to take on human form, beginning as an infant, because our salvation required Christ to live a sinless life so that each act of his obedience could replace every act of our disobedience. 

Thus, we are just as much saved through the sinless life of Christ as we are through his death and resurrection.  The great theologian of early Christianity St Gregory put it this way: “what is not taken up by and into Christ is not healed.”

We are born into sin—so Christ was born a sinless infant, and so our original sin was taken up and healed by Christ.

We fail to honor our parents—so Christ perfectly obeyed his parents and so our disobedience was taken up and healed by Christ.

Even our baptism was inadequate because we receive it in sin and it’s done by sinners—so Christ was baptized to fulfill all righteousness so that our baptism then is a baptism into Christ’s perfect baptism.

We fail to live a life of perfect love of God and neighbor—so Christ lived such a life, and each of our attempts to love are taken up into Christ and presented as perfect to the Father.

And on and on this process went, each perfect act of Christ while he walked the earth was done to replace and redeem every area of our sin-stained life so that the life of Christ took up and healed every aspect of our humanity.

Moreover, since salvation is both an event and a process, as we continue to sin and so really need to be saved over and over again daily, this act of the righteousness of Christ being attributed to us continues every day.  Christ is at the right hand of God the Father right now, still attributing his righteousness to our account. 

Christ engaged and is engaging in perfect acts of prayer, worship, evangelism, discipleship, and mighty acts of faith, so that each of our attempts as such, no matter how sin-stained, are taken up by Christ and made perfect before the throne of God.

Every aspect of our following Christ comes from our ongoing participation in the life of Christ.  The Christian life is a life of absolute dependence on Christ and utter surrender to the Holy Spirit! 

We do not possess within ourselves any faith, hope, love, or holiness, instead we are to live in a perpetual state of surrender to the Holy Spirit so that Christ’s faith, Christ’s hope, Christ’s love. Christ’s holiness is lived through our weak, sinful vessels of clay!

6.    The Son of God took on human form so that Christ could relate to and heal our sorrow and struggles.

A literal translation of the original Greek in verse 14 is “The Logos, the creative, revealing, Word of God became flesh, and pitched his tent among us.”   The translation called The Message says it this way, “God moved into the neighborhood!” 

No matter what neighborhood you are currently living in physically, emotional, relational, or spiritually, Christ wants to move into your neighborhood and bring divine peace, joy, healing, and hope. 

This is what the incarnation, the first visit of Christ, was all about.  Christ participated in humanity that we might participate in divinity. 
I don’t know what “neighborhood” you are living in today relationally, spiritually, emotionally.  But whatever it is, Christ wants to move into your neighborhood today to bring His light and love!

Christ loved us enough to take on a permanent change of form by taking on the form of a human being that God might take into himself every corrupt and wounded part of our life to redeem and heal it! 


Christ knows what it is like to be lonely, tired, anxious, scared, sorrowful, betrayed, abandoned, misunderstood, rejected, bullied, falsely accused, have his reputation smeared, his motives questioned,
to be tempted by lust, power, fame, and all of that while he walked the earth! 

Because on the cross He took on every injustice, every disease, every sin, every evil, every weakness, Christ knows what it is like to suffer every disease you face, to struggle with a failing body because of age, to be a victim of injustice or oppression, even to feel abandoned by the Father!

No matter what you face as a human being, Christ faced it as well, yet with more intensity and without ever wavering from full obedience to the Father!  So no matter what neighborhood you are dwelling in today, no matter what you are going through, no matter how hard the trial, how overwhelming the sorrow, how overpowering the temptation, or how impossible seems the challenge, Christ has been there and conquered it!

Christ not only knows what it is like to experience what you are going through, but when you go to Him you not only discover a heart that understands, but an almighty Savior who has the power to do far more than just sympathize or empathize.  Christ has the desire and the power to heal, to save, to deliver, and to overcome! 

Will you allow Christ to move into your neighborhood today?