There is something about Christmas that is wonderful—in spite of the frantic pace of the days leading up to Christmas, the anxious flurry of pre-Christmas buying and the undisguised commercialism and materialism that is so much a part of Christmas in the West. I suppose it is the sheer magnitude of the event itself, the grandeur of what Christmas means: the birth of the Savior.
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I began this week’s study of John’s version of the Christmas story by speaking of Jesus as the Word before all words, and I want to end by adding to that in this way. Jesus is not only the first word, that is, the Word before all words. He is also the last word in the sense that he will have the last word. His word where we are concerned is final. Or, remembering the hymn Silent Night, let me put it this way: Everything was silent when he spoke the first time, thus bringing everything we know and see into being. Likewise, all will be silent again when Jesus speaks the final word of judgment or blessing upon us.
Silent Night is probably the best known and most deeply loved of all the Christian carols. But the greatest of the carols at least from the point of view of its splendid theology is Charles Wesley’s Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Do you remember the words of the last verse? They say,
Hail, the Heav’n born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
The “Word was with God.” To say that Jesus was “in the beginning” and that he created all things might be construed to mean only that Jesus is another name for God. But while that is true in one sense—Jesus is God—it is false in another, because the logos about whom John is writing is not simply identical with God, the first person of the Trinity. Jesus is a distinct person in the Godhead. Following the statement that Jesus was “in the beginning,” John has therefore added a phrase affirming the existence of the logos as one who was “with” God. In other words, John understood the doctrine of the Trinity, and he has given us a subtle but accurate statement of the doctrine of the Trinity here.
