In my last blog I talked about the light of Christmas, reflecting on a text of Scripture that has been a source of my Christmas meditation and reflection for over fifty years; For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)
This is the gospel in a nut shell, and there is only one word for it- incredible. Lest we leave Christmas too quickly behind let’s think more about the incredibility of the gospel.
“The radiant glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ.” Incredible! We call it Incarnation. At Christmas, God walked down the stairway of heaven with a little baby in His arms. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory” (John 2:14). It helps us get a measure of the impact of this by contemplating the thought, what if there was no Christmas? Reflect on that: if God had not come to us in Jesus?
Then there is this second dimension of incredibility: The light of the knowledge of the glory of God, shining in the face of Jesus Christ, has shines in our heart— this is the incredibility of the Christian experience, our salvation.
This is what it means to be a Christian. Taking a cue from Jesus’ word to Nicodemus, many people talk about it in terms of being born again. The New Testament talks about it in terms of freedom and deliverance. One of the most powerful expressions of it is in Colossians 1:13-14: God “has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of the sins.” Eugene Peterson has paraphrased that: “God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons, He’s set us up in the Kingdom of the Son He Loved so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.”
However, we state it, whatever image we use out of our own experience, the word is redemption; God’s action in Jesus Christ sets us free from bondage of sin, guild and death. Delivered from drugs, sexual addiction or some other addiction, transferred from that kingdom where we are on the throne to a Kingdom where Jesus is Lord.
Then there is the incredibility of the Christian witness. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God, shining in the fact of Jesus Christ, which has shined in our hearts, is ours to declare. Witness is the vocation of every Christian.
One of our greatest weaknesses as Christians is that we don’t share out faith. Too many of us have been embarrassed by the claims, and the way some Christians “witness.” So, we simply “keep quiet.” How do we do it? If we have claimed Christ’s forgiveness and have been delivered from guilt and shame, who would want to keep quiet? If Christ has done His mighty work in our life-then let’s share that good news with others. But more than that, let’s live that good news and demonstrate the incredibility of the gospel. Don’t let the light go out.