Nativity - A Devotional Commentary On The Birth Of Christ - By J. Michael Herron

Chapter 1: IN THE BEGINNING (December 14)

he Good News of the Kingdom of God begins in eternity with Jesus Christ existing in endless life with The Father and the Holy Spirit. He precedes the act of creation in Genesis; He was God the spoken Word who brought the worlds into existence. There never was a time when the Son was not. The first five verses of John 'stand out as the one paragraph that is most profound, most lofty and incomparable in every way.' 1 We start at the pinnacle of heaven and follow the Son of God as he humbles himself in human birth to bring us the light of eternal life. 1 In the beginning was the Word. (NIV) The Word , is the Greek noun (Logos). ‘a…collection both of things in the mind, and of words by which they are expressed.’ 2 The thoughts and words of God is the person Jesus Christ who was there when time began, uncreated and co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He has an existence that is 'distinct from God...yet inseparable from Him.' 3 His uniqueness does not mean He is another being, He is in absolute unity with the Father and The Spirit. The tense of the Greek word was ' is the unchanging past, reaching back indefinitely beyond the instant of the beginning.' 4 By using the name (Logos) as the final revelation of God, John connected with a universal awareness in Greek civilization. Their philosophers described The Logos as: 'the principle order under which the universe continues to exist.' 5 ' Logos does not only mean word; it also means the reason.' 6 To the Greco/Roman culture, The Logos was the reason for all existence. The Jews translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Aramaic, the language spoken at the time of Christ. In these translations called Targums, they replaced every name of God with The