When I was young my grandmother used to speak to me about the importance of the 3 R’s. When I was old enough to spell I pointed out that from Reading, writing and arithmetic only one was actually spelt with an R!
Today I want us to think about the 5 R’s of God’s affirmative action plan – and they all begin with the letter R.
I want us to consider Reason, Reconciliation, Revelation. And as we see the Reality what is our Response?
In the US in 1965, the federal government initiated their own affirmative action plan, the idea was that businesses could right some wrongs, balance some imbalances, correct some faults – ultimately to bring reconciliation.
God also had an affirmative action plan designed to bring Reconcilliation – another R – reconciliation between God and man. I want us to consider together God’s affirmative action plan as expressed in the prologue to John’s gospel in John 1:1-18.
The first thing for us to consider is the reason for God’s plan.
Why did God need one?
Because humans had sinned against their Creator and broken fellowship with Him, God had to make a way for them to come back into a right relationship with him.
God showed His love for mankind by initiating a plan to restore them to a position of right standing.
Just as we say, “I love you,” with words and actions, that is how God communicated His love to us. He sent his Son, the living Word, to earth. John 1:1, with words reminiscent of Genesis 1:1, says, “In the beginning was the Word…”
So the first Reason is that God has a word for us.
This word of God is communicative.
When the writer of the fourth Gospel wanted to tell us of God’s Word to us, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to choose a concept that would communicate to all people who would receive the Gospel.
The concept was “Word”. To Jews, Greeks, Christians and the world at large this was a concept that would communicate what God had done in Christ Jesus.
(Power). To the Jews the Word of God meant power.
In Genesis 1 - God spoke a word and the world came into being.
In Jeremiah 23:29 – the Word of God could burn like fire or shatter like a hammer.
Isaiah 55:11 speaks of the Word of God accomplishing the divine purpose.
The Hebrews who would read this Gospel would immediately understand the power of God when they understood that the Word was at the beginning with God and was God.
Principle.
But to the Greek reader “the Word” would mean a rational principle. It had more to do with philosophical thought than personal power.
The Jewish apologist Philo had adopted this Greek philosophical concept to refer to the projected thought of the transcendent God, the clue to the meaning and purpose of life.
Proclamation.
The early Christian church viewed the preaching of the Gospel as a “ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). The entire event of Christ’s life was a divine declaration, a redemptive proclamation.
We are told in Revelation 19:13, “His name is the Word of God”.
In preaching the Word, the early Christians were proclaiming the redemptive message of Jesus Christ.
Person.
The unique conviction of the prologue to John’s gospel is that the Word of God is a person.
The Word is not just power or principle or proclamation but person.
When truth becomes personal, it becomes meaningful to us.
God had a word for us, a word that communicates to us in a personal way that we can be made right with God.
The second reason is that the Word of God is Comprehensive.
The Word relates to God. The Word is not just identified with God; He is identical with God.
When you want to see God and know what God is like, you look to Jesus Christ. He is related to God in being. He gives us an accurate communication of God.
The Word relates to the world. The Word of God relates to the world in that God was the agent of creation.
He is revealed and known by His creative activity.
John and Paul both wanted to make sure that we understood that creation was as much the work of Christ as was redemption.
God relates to the world in creativity.
The Word relates to mankind. But the comprehensive Word God spoke also relates to all of mankind.
It is expressed in two terms: life and light. These translate to redemption.
Jesus Christ is related to human kind redemptively.
So the reasons for God’s affirmative action plan is that God had a Word for us, a Word that was both communicative and comprehensive. By this word God spoke the last word to us.
Listen to the opening words of the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 1:1-2: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom He also created the world”
God had a witness to us.
If the Word God has spoken to us shows us that Christ, the Word, is, it also shows is what Christ does.
Through this Word that had become flesh, God gave a witness of himself in this world.
Christ came into the world to reveal God and to redeem people.
That witness is expressed in two key words in John’s Gospel: Life and light.
Life.
In Christ there is life. One thing Jesus did was to impart life to people who lived with no hope of eternal life.
For all the hopeless, helpless, confused, wandering people in the world, Jesus gives the promise that there is life – life with worth and meaning.
In 1977, in Argentina, a newspaper publisher called Joseph Timmerman was taken prisoner by the revolutionary government.
Because of his writing he was placed in a prison and tortured. He told his story in a book entitled Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.
One night the guard failed to close the peephole in his cell door. When he looked out the peephole, he saw that the peephole in the door facing his was also open.
Then he saw an eye behind it.
Looking through the peephole was forbidden. Thinking it was a trap; he stepped back,
waited,
and then returned to the peephole.
The eye on the other side of the hall did the same.
Through that night they looked through the peepholes at each other. They never knew who the other was.
But that blinking - that flutter of movement proved to Timmerman that he was not the last human survivor amid that universe of torturing custodians.
The two of them invented games that night,
moving away,
then returning,
creating movement in their confined world.
And there was the blink,
the acknowledgement that there was life.
That night in his solitude,
in his pain,
he knew that there was life.
In the Word,
God has a witness to us that there is life.
This life is also described as light.
Christ brings light into the world –
light about our darkened ideas about sin,
self and salvation.
The light of God’s love shines about us in Jesus Christ.
Twice in John’s gospel, in John 8:12 and 9:5, Jesus made this claim about himself – “I am the light of the world”.
Notice something about this light:
darkness can not put it out!
The light of God’s grace shines with such power that the depths of darkness can not put it out.
In fact, darkness can not even dim it. God’s light in Jesus Christ is brighter than all the accumulated darkness of the world’s sin.
God’s witness to us is that the Word has become flesh and lived among us. This gives witness to both what we can know about God and what we can experience with God – life and light.
REVELATION
Revelation is a word we use to describe the disclosure of the truth. The great revelation here is that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Unlike the other Gospel writers, John does not start his book with the scenes of Christ’s birth. Instead he starts at the very beginning.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1)
As part of God’s affirmative action plan, God became one like one of us. Through His son, Jesus, God came into the world to fulfil His plan to bring people back to himself and provide all mankind with an equal opportunity for reconciliation with him.
God chose John the Baptist to act as a witness to this great revelation.
John was used as an instrument to reveal God’s plan of reconciliation.
John’s birth was no accident. Notice how the Gospel expresses it in John 1:6 “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John”.
John was under commission from God himself. John the Baptist was called to reveal the Promised One sent by God.
God sent a man to tell us that God had sent His son.
John was also a man on a mission.
He was called to bear witness to the light that would shine on the world.
Notice the Gospel makes a clear distinction between Jesus Christ, the Light of the World and John the Baptist, who was sent to bear witness to the light.
John’s mission was to introduce people to the one whose light could lead them to life.
John submitted himself to God’s awesome plan for his life; “He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through Him all men might believe” (v7).
Through his witness many people came to faith in Jesus and accepted him as personal saviour.
Like John the Baptist we too are called to be instruments of God and to bear witness to His Son.
Jesus was the light of God’s revelation.
John the Baptist was not the light that would illuminate the world. But he would bear witness to the true light that would illuminate the darkened lives of people everywhere.
Have you ever stood in pitch blackness, trying to get your bearings, when suddenly a flash of light illuminated where you were sufficiently for you to see?
God’s light flashes into our lives in Jesus Christ.
William Barclay spoke of three areas where the light of Jesus illuminates the shadows of life.
Doubt, Despair and Death.
Doubt.
Many people doubt that they can know God.
God seems so unreal and so unknowable to them. But Christ’s coming into the world has removed the shadows of doubt.
We don’t have to wonder if God is real or what he is like. We have Jesus Christ to show us the character of God.
Since the Word was with God from the very beginning and the Word was God himself, then the Word is what God is. Any doubts we may have had about God are gone. We can know God.
Despair. The world into which Jesus came was filled with despair. But Jesus gave hope.
With Christ we have forgiveness, strength, and help for living. The light of Christ dispels despair.
We no longer have to live in despair with no hope or help.
Death. The ancient world feared death.
At best, death was annihilation.
At worst, death was torture by whatever gods there were. People were afraid of the possibilities.
But Jesus – through his coming, His life, His death, and His resurrection – revealed that death was only the way to a larger life. People did not have to fear death any longer.
Christ defeated death, and we can live in the victory of Jesus.
God’s Revelation is inclusive.
Notice how inclusive God’s revelation is – verse 7 – “..so that through him all men might believe”.
The ancient world was rather exclusive. The Jews hated the Gentiles, and the Gentiles stayed away from the Jews.
The Greeks were smug – self-admirers, considering themselves far superior in knowledge and intellect; they raised their noses in disdain at other cultures.
The Roman world despised the other peoples whose language they did not understand and called them barbarians. But Christ’s coming gave light to everyone.
John’s witness was for all people, he was to tell the world that Jesus Christ gave both light and life.
God’s love and forgiveness are for everyone.
No person or nation is outside the circle of God’s love.
Christ’s coming into the world assures us that God’s love and salvation are intended for everyone that will accept Jesus as Saviour.
A missionary volunteer once testified that one of the things that sharpened her call to mission was observing an automatic door in a department store. One of those with an electric eye.
She noticed that the door opened for anyone who came to it. Any person who was touched by the beam from the electric eye could enter in. She realised, the doors to the kingdom of heaven open to any person who approaches them in Christ.
God’s love is for everyone.
The Response
When you have something to say, you use a word to express it.
God expressed His love for us, his life in us, and his light to us in a Word – Jesus.
That word became flesh and dwelt among us. Through it we see God and respond to His love in faith.
During the Christmas season we remember God’s affirmative action plan.
God the Father took affirmative action in sending His son, Jesus, into the world to make himself known to us and to die on the cross to redeem us from our sin.
John the Baptist was a witness to this revelation. God used John to reveal God’s plan for mankind as he pointed to the Christ.
How have we responded to this revelation? Do we live in the light or do we live in darkness?
Because God took on human flesh and became a person in Jesus Christ, everyone is confronted with the Christ and forced to make a choice.
The light that can illuminate every life in the world has to be received.
God did not force himself into the world, nor does he force himself into human lives.
People must choose for themselves to reject Jesus or accept Jesus.
People can choose to turn away from the light.
They can refuse the life that he offers through faith.
Christ came into the world that He had created, but the world did not receive him.
He came to the people whom He had made and to whom He had made himself known, but his own people did not receive Him.
People can choose to turn towards the light.
John writes that those who accept Christ are given the right to become the children of God.
Those who become the children of God do so through the miraculous means of new birth, not by human will or effort.
God’s grace has made redemption possible. We become part of God’s family by grace through faith.
In conclusion the Reality.
God’s affirmative action plan became a reality on a cold winter’s night when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
When the eternal Word took on human flesh and came to dwell among us.
Because of the incarnation of Jesus, we can know the fullness of God.
We can know with confidence that God is not just something or someone “out there”.
He is right beside us and shares life with us fully.
Verse 16 – “From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another”.
We will never exhaust the blessings of God.
Instead, they come rolling upon us one after another.
Verse 17 – “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”.
To Jewish minds Moses was the great hero of faith.
Moses had led them to the promised land. God had given them His law through Moses.
Moses gave the Law, but Jesus gave grace and truth.
Through Jesus came the realisation of the grace of God and the reality of the truth of God.
Jesus Christ has made God known to us.
By Jesus teachings and actions we can know what God is like. Jesus’ life is the divine disclosure of God.
When we want to know about God, we look to that Word who was from the very beginning with God, who was God himself.
From the Son we can see the Father – our Father.
God’s affirmative action plan worked!
It’s reality is seen in the incarnation.
The eternal Word took on temporal flesh and shared life with us.
As we celebrate the birth of Christ this month, may we thank God for his unspeakably great mercy and love.
