God Enters the World as an Infant
Christian News, Vol. 49, No. 47
December 12, 2011

The Final Secret of the Universe
By Dr. Kurt Marquart
John 1:1-18

John opens his majestic prologue to his Gospel with the very first words of the Bible: “In the beginning …” (Genesis 1:1). When God started to make everything, “the Word” (Christ) was already there, because “the Word was God.” Christ is the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

Christ is God’s Self-Expression, Mind, Reason, and Pattern by whom everything was created. Against the idea that Jesus only became God’s Son in His Baptism or by the Resurrection, John makes it quite clear that Christ was God all along, without beginning and without end.

Verse 3 (just like Colossians 1:15-17) draws a clear line between Christ and the whole created universe, visible and invisible. Christ, as God and Creator, is on one side of the line, and all else is on the other side, as His creation.

And then comes the most mind-boggling miracle and mystery of all: “The Word became flesh”! In Christ, God became Man-and still is. Some think that Christ put away His manhood when He ascended into heaven-or that He “Filed it away” some where in heaven, so that He is now with us only as God, not as Man. But after the Word has become flesh through His miraculous conception and birth of His blessed Virgin mother, it is impossible to tear Him apart, as if God were here and His flesh there. No, wherever He is as Man, there also He is as God, and vice versa. In Colossians 2:9 (after the Ascension!) Paul uses the present tense: “In Him all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily.”

Luther: “So it is final, says St. Paul, the whole, total Godhead dwells bodily, that is personally, in Jesus Christ. Therefore the fellow who does not find or get God in Christ shall never again and nowhere else have or find God outside of Christ, even if he goes, as it were, over heaven, under hell, or into space!”

Millions of dollars are spent every year to spy or “eavesdrop” on the universe with sophisticated electronic gear. Scientists are straining every ounce of their ingenuity to find evidence of meaningful signals, indicating the presence of intelligent forms of life somewhere deep in space. And all along the central riddle of the universe, and its self-solution, are largely ignored: God the Creator/Communicator freely opens and offers Himself to us in the Baby of Bethlehem! This is the secret or mystery long hidden, but now made plain through the preaching of Christ’s apostles (Romans 16:25-27; Colossians 1:26, 27:2; 2:2; 1 Timothy 3:16) – and even the angels have to learn it from them (1 Peter 1:12)! And Christ still has “communication centers” all over the world – wherever two or three gather in His Name (Matthew 18:20), especially as His communicants (1 Corinthians 10:16)!

“He lived among us and we saw His glory” (v. 14). His flesh is still a kind of Shield which protects us from that divine Radiation which no man can see and still live (Exodus 33:20). Even high heavenly beings have to cover their faces before Him (Isaiah 6:1.2; compare John 12:41). Christ’s human flesh is like a screen: it “filters out”, for those who believe in Him, the death-dealing rays of God’s justice and anger-yet lets through the life-giving light of His love and grace, vv. 4, 9, 14, 16, 17! For while the Law came through Moses, grace and truth, that is God’s free favor, came by Jesus Christ. Moses and the Old Covenant are shadow and picture. Jesus and His New Covenant are fullness, body, reality (Colossians 2:17; 2 Corinthians 3:6-4:6).