“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him should not perish BUT HAVE eternal life.”[1]
What we call
the Christmas story is surrounded with the contrast between the Haves and the Have-nots.
When Nicodemus came for his late-night visit with Jesus, he was a Have-not
wondering what Jesus had. When Jesus described the necessity of knowing God in
the born-again kind of way, it was clear that everyone was a Have-not in need
of having this gift.
One way this
makes sense to me is in the difference between a menu and a meal. A menu
describes and pictures things we don’t have. It shows that any of those menu
items is a possibility, something we could have, but with the knowledge that we
do not have any of those items while only holding the menu.
Once we have
placed our order, and the server brings out our choices, everything changes
from what we don’t have, to what we do have. Having the food that was pictured
and described is far better than having a menu full of options.
There is no
doubt that we know the difference between having and not having. While we see
presents appearing under the Christmas tree, we do not actually have the gifts
that are labeled for us. They are like the menu. In fact, they are like a menu
with no descriptions or pictures. It is like a menu that says, “Gift 1” and
then specifies the dimensions of the package. It is waiting for us, but it is
not yet ours in the way of “having,” and we can’t even be sure that we know
what it is.
The gift that
is under consideration determines much of what it means that we have the gift. To
have that pair of socks we have been dreaming about all Christmas season is to
add some comfort to our feet. To finally have that young lady some young man
has been dreaming of marrying forever (it seems) means something far more
wonderful than a mere item of clothing.[2]
It is not only
that the value of the gift adds something special to the experience of having
that gift, but so does the nature of the gift. A young lady may place great
value on her beautiful engagement ring, but the difference in nature between a
glittering stone and the beau that offers it affects how she feels about what
she has. To have a ring is the promise of having something better than the ring.
She can delight in the experience of having the ring, wearing it, enjoying what
it looks like on her finger, but with greater anticipation of what she will
have when the one who gave her the ring also gives her himself.[3]
It is
distinctive to me that Jesus said there was something God gave that we can
have. In the same way as children don’t think it is Christmas until they have
what has been given to them, we don’t really appreciate the first gift of Christmas
until we truly have it. Reading about it doesn’t mean we have it. Singing songs
about it doesn’t mean it is ours. Giving credence to the Christmas story, and
accepting the details of history, may bring people together in some
inexplicable feeling of Christmas cheer, but we really have nothing until we
have everything. There is a gift given, and it only means something to us when
we have it.
Another way
God’s book describes having the Christmas gift God has offered us begins with
two examples of have-not-ism, meaning, ways that people did not and do not have
this gift. God wrote: “The true light,
which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world,
and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to
his own, and his own people did not receive him.”[4]
Here Jesus is
called “the true light,” because he
is the image and expression of God shining into our darkness. This light in Jesus
“gives light to everyone,” because “God so loved the world,” and “whoever” believes in Jesus sees this
light. He was “coming into the world,”
during that thirty-plus years because God
gave his Son to the world he loved.
However, even
though Jesus “was in the world,” the
baby born in a manger, “the Word”
that “became flesh and dwelt among us,”[5]and
even though “the world was made through
him,” there was this terrible, strange, experience of have-not-ism. The
world that Jesus created, “did not know
him.” Even though “All things were
made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made,”[6]
and “by him all things were created, in
heaven and on earth,”[7]the
very world Jesus had made did know that it was him.
In fact, the
world still does not know that it was him who came. The world does not know
that the answer to the question of our origins is not in Darwin’s book, but in
God’s book. The world does not know that Jesus answered the question of where
we are from when he came into his world, expressing his Father’s love for the
world they had created. They do not have the gift because they do not know him
who came, their Creator, their Savior, and their God.
A second
expression of this have-not-ism was seen when Jesus “came to his own,” the Jewish people, the ones who had been told by
prophets that God would send the Messiah into the world, born of a virgin, born
in Bethlehem, the light shining in a dark place. God’s word says that “his own people did not receive him.”
After all the
centuries the nation of Israel had waited for Messiah (the Christ) to come,
they did not welcome him when he arrived. They did not come to him in
Bethlehem. They did not welcome his message during his few years of public
ministry. The leaders of the nation called for his crucifixion, thinking by this
they would rid the world of him. Instead, the fulfilled God’s plan that his Son
would die so that his people could live, and so many people have come to have
the gift of God through a nation that would not have what was so lovingly
given.
Now, while God’s
book describes two ways that people would not have this gift, here is how it
describes the wonderful way that people would have it. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the
right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of
the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”[8]
Remember that Jesus
said that “whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life”? Here it elaborates that “all who did receive him,” meaning, all “who believed in his name,” were given
the gift that God offered in his Son. What they received, or what they came to
have, was “the right to become children
of God.”
Now, notice
the way God clarifies this. He says that, when people are given the right to
become children of God, this does not mean they were born of “blood,” “flesh,” or the “will of man.” Those phrases summarize
everything to do with natural birth.
What God was
saying was that people come to have the right to become “children of God,” by being born “of God.” This is what Jesus was telling Nicodemus; that people had
to come to know God in that born-again kind of way because, only through the
new birth where we are born of God can we become the children of God who know
God.
All of this is
to emphasize that Christmas is not about simply knowing something happened two
thousand years ago, but knowing God today. It is not a matter of singing about Jesus,
but singing to Jesus. It is not about celebrating something from the past, but
something from the past that changes the present into a wonderful hope for the
future.
By now we
know very clearly that there are the Haves and the Have-nots. This is given to encourage
us to take the gift of God by faith until we know we have it, because then we
can know the true blessing of this wonderful “About Christ” Day.
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures
are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
John 3:16
[2]
I mean this in relation to God’s design of a young couple living as two
single-people until their wedding day. God has written much about the
differences between singleness and marriage in his book, so I will let the
illustration stand with its emphasis on the contrast between not-having the person
we long to live with for the rest of our lives, and the wedding ceremony as the
beginning of the “to have and to hold” experience.
[3]
My idealism-by-the-Book thinks of the way God teaches husbands to give
themselves to their wives in the same way that Jesus loved the church and gave
himself for her. While a young husband may be very immature in his ability to
express such love, this is the grandest hope a young lady could have, that her
husband would seek to love her the way Jesus has loved his church, a central
part of the Christmas story.
[4]
John 1:9-11
[5]
John 1:14
[6]
John 1:3
[7]
Colossians 1:16
[8]
John 1:12-13
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