Over the last few weeks, we have looked at the reasons for Jesus' birth. What did he come to do? Why was he born? And we have seen that he was born to destroy the works of the devil, he was born to save us from our sins, and he was born to rule the world. Today we want to consider who Jesus is. We've looked at what he's come to do, his work, now we want to look at his person. Who is Jesus? And we will do so from these opening verses from the Gospel of John. Now, if someone asked you, who is Patrick Ramsey, how would you answer that question? What would you say? Well, there are several ways you could answer that question, and how you would answer it would depend upon how you know me and your relationship with me. And so some of the answers might be, well, he's my pastor, or he's the pastor of Nashville OPC, or he's Rachel's husband, or he's the son of Michael and Marya Ramsey, or he's the father of five sons, something like that. I remember taking Luke and Asher to swim practice many years ago, and I was standing in the hall, and two young girls scurried by, and as they did so, I heard one whisper to the other, that is Asher's dad. That's who I am, I am Asher's dad, and proud of it, proud to be Sean, Drew, Aidan, Luke, and Asher's dad. Well, who is Jesus? How do you answer that question? Where do you even begin? Well, John begins by telling us that Jesus is God. Jesus is God. Look at verses 1 and 2. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Now the context makes it clear that the word refers to Jesus. And so John is saying that Jesus was with God and was God. And notice carefully, though, that Jesus, or the word, is distinct from God. He's with God, but he's also equated with God. He was God. And so the word is distinct from God, by which John means here, God the Father. So verse 18 refers to Jesus as the only God who is at the Father's side. And so Jesus is God, but he's distinct, though, from God the Father, who's also God. And of course, that raises the question, how do we reconcile all these things? If you have the Father God, you have the Word God, or Jesus God. How can there be only one God? Because the Bible is very clear, the Old Testament is crystal clear that there is only one true living God. So how do we understand Jesus being God and the Father God in light of that? Well, as you know, the Church has used the word Trinity to explain this or to refer to this. And as we learn from other parts of scripture, the spirit is also God. We could say in the beginning was the spirit, and the spirit was with God, and the spirit was God. So God is one, there's only one true God, but there's also a sense in which God is three. There's a sense in which God is one, and there's a sense in which God is three. God is one in terms of substance or nature or being, only one God. but God is also three with respect to persons within this one God. And so there is one God, and within this one God, there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all equally God, because there's only one God, but three distinct persons within the one true God. And the Word, or Jesus, is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. And since Jesus is God, then that means he's also the creator. The first verse of the Bible, as I'm sure you know, says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Well, John says essentially the same thing here with respect to the word. In the beginning was the word. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. This means, of course, that Jesus made you, and he made the world that you live in. He made the universe. He owns all of it. It all belongs to him. We all live in Jesus's world, and so that means that we should all submit to him, and we should all obey him. Think of it this way. When a person comes to this country, they are subject to its laws and to its government. Now of course they can enjoy the many blessings of this country and they can prosper in it. But they can't come and do whatever they want. They are subject to its government and its laws. Or when a person comes to your house, they are subject to your rules. Of course, they can be blessed by your kindness and by your hospitality, but they can't come to your house and do whatever they want with it. They can't ruin it or take it over. It's your house, not theirs. You, not them, are the king of your castle. Well, this is God's world. This is the Word's world. This is Jesus' world. You are his creature, and you belong to him. Now again, of course, Jesus is good and kind and he's made everything good, very good for us to enjoy. But we are under his authority and subject to him because he is God, the maker of heaven and earth. So Jesus is God. But he's not only God, he's also a human being. He is God who became a human being and lived among us. So John says in verse nine that the true light, referring to Jesus, was coming into the world, and verse 10 says that he was in the world. And then in verse 14, even more specific, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So the word became flesh. He became a human being. He didn't appear like a human being. Now in the Old Testament, God did appear in the form of a human being at various times. An example of that was with Abraham. But that's not what John is saying here. God the Son became flesh. He became a human being, and so he now has a human body, a human mind, a human soul, will, emotions. He became a real, true human being. This also means, by the way, that Jesus didn't inhabit a human body. It's not as if God the Son came and hijacked or took over a human body and controlled it and forced it to do whatever he wanted it to do. No, God himself became a full and complete human being, body and soul. This also means that Jesus did not become a superman. His divine nature didn't somehow change his human nature, so now his human nature is somehow divine or has divine characteristics. No, he's, again, a regular human being. in body and soul, in every way, except, of course, without sin. But this is not to say, of course, that when the Word became flesh or a human being, that he somehow stopped being God or put aside his divine nature for a time. No, not at all. In addition, we might say not a subtraction took place when the Word became flesh. God, remaining God, became a human being. That's what John is saying, when the Word became flesh. God, remaining God, because God can't change, He's always God, but He became a human being as well. And so he is one person, God the Son, who now has two distinct natures. He has his divine nature and his human nature. So let's think about that just for a moment, how God himself became a human being just like you and me. So the one who made the universe and sustains the universe at every single moment was once a helpless little baby. Mary conceived in her womb and then nine months later held in her arms the one who had made her and who is upholding her at that very moment. The one who needed to be fed by his mother was at the same time the self-sufficient, independent, almighty God. John Murray, a theologian that was in the OPC for many years, said it this way. The infinite became the finite. The eternal and supratemporal entered time and became subject to its conditions. The immutable became the mutable. The invisible became the visible. The creator became the created. The sustainer of all became dependent. The almighty infirm. All is summed up in the proposition, God became man. The word became flesh. An amazing truth. A mysterious truth. Emmanuel, God with us. I don't know if this is true, but it has been said that there wasn't a day that went by that Martin Luther didn't think about the wonderful reality of God becoming a man. Now God didn't become a man just because. He did it for a reason. And he did it, as we have seen, to destroy the works of the devil. He did it to save us from our sins. He did it to come and to rule, and so that we might rule with him. He did it to rescue us. And this means, of course, that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is God, Jesus is a human being, and the third thing we see who Jesus is, is he is the Christ. Verse 17, John says that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, Christ is not Jesus' last name. It is a title. So if I say or refer to Joe Biden as President Biden, you understand that President is not his first name. That's the title of the office that he holds. Well, in the same way, Christ is the title of the office that Jesus holds. And Christ is simply the Greek word for the Hebrew term Messiah. And the Messiah, or the Christ, refers to the one who will be anointed by God and who will save the world. That's the office he holds. He's the Christ, Jesus the Christ. And John alludes to the saving work that Jesus will do as the Christ in verses 16 and 17. And in verse 16, We see that from Jesus's fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. Now the NIV, which is probably a better translation at this point, says this, we have all received grace in place of the grace already given. And then verse 17 fills out this point that John is making, and he says this, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now the law that Moses gave was gracious. It was good. It included, as you know, laws that pertain to forgiveness and atonement and cleansing from sins so that God's people might be brought into the presence of God. But these laws that Moses administered and gave in the Old Testament didn't, and they couldn't actually provide forgiveness or atonement for sin. It is impossible, the Bible says, for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So then you ask, well, what did these laws actually do then? Well, they certainly depicted the way of salvation and they pointed forward to the one who would atone for our sins in a similar way that is demonstrated in the laws that Moses gave. And so these laws then were types, they were shadows, copies of the future sacrifice and the future way that God would actually take away our sins. They were looking forward and pictured the sacrifice of Christ who would come and who would die on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins and once and for all take away our sins by that one sacrifice, that one death on the cross. And so what this means, then, is that the only way for the saints of the Old Testament to be saved and actually brought to God and be delivered from their sin, death, and eternal death, the only way for them to be saved was if Jesus were to come and fulfill the Old Testament. They weren't saved by those laws in the Old Testament. They needed Jesus to come and fulfill and do what those laws were talking about. The copy then had to be replaced by the reality. The shadow had to give way to the truth. The model, the way of salvation that was depicted and described in pictures had to be put away and the real thing had to come and do its work. And that's what John is saying here. In Jesus, we have all received grace in the place of the grace of the law. The law which was given through Moses certainly administered saving grace through types and shadows which were ineffective in and of themselves. But grace and truth, now truth here is not opposed to a lie, but it's opposed to the copy or the model that we see in the Old Testament. Grace and truth, the real thing, came through Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus is the very embodiment of salvation and truth, because in him, not in the sacrifice of the Old Testament, but in him, we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. He is the truth, the real thing, salvation itself. Not a way of describing the way of salvation, not a picture of how God is going to save, but he's the real McCoy, salvation itself. Perhaps another way of trying to see the difference between the Old Testament and the coming of Christ in the New is to understand that salvation was not inseparably tied to the ceremonial laws. Just kind of like the same thing today with baptism. Salvation is not inseparably tied to baptism. And so in the Old Testament, you could be saved apart from being circumcised or attending the Day of Atonement or bringing sacrifices and that sort of thing. Even as today, you can be saved apart from being baptized or partaking of the Lord's Supper. All those things are what we might call means of grace. There are ways in which God communicates his salvation, but they are not salvation itself, so that if you just do them, you're going to be saved. No, they are means of salvation, ways God dispenses and conveys, communicates his salvation, but not salvation itself. Jesus is not a means of salvation. He is salvation itself. He is grace. Not a copy, not a type of or picture of the way of salvation. He is the real way of salvation. He is the truth. So salvation was given or ministered through Moses based upon the coming of Christ. Salvation, though, now came through Jesus Christ because, again, he is the real thing. He is salvation. He is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Not a lamb from the Old Testament, but what that lamb in the Old Testament pointed to or talked about, the real lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who is Jesus the Christ. And that is why nobody can be saved apart from Jesus, apart from belonging to him and being joined to him by faith. Because, as he says in John 14, he alone is the way, the truth, and the life. No one, including the Old Testament saints, comes to the Father except through him. Salvation, Paul emphasizes, is not through the law or the works of the law. It is by faith in the Lord Jesus. Jesus is, therefore, the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Moses, Jesus says, wrote about him. All the promises of God, all the promises of salvation and forgiveness, they all find their confirmation, they all find their fulfillment, they all find their yes and amen, as Paul says, in him. He is the Christ, the Savior of the world. And so, we ask the question, who is Jesus? And we have seen that Jesus is God, Jesus is a human being, Jesus is the Christ. Now, in coming to know who Jesus is, as we have done this morning from John chapter one, we cannot but have some kind of response to him. We might ignore him, we might reject him, we might embrace him. We might have different responses to who Jesus is, but we will have at least some kind of response. It will either be positive or negative. And in verse 10, John says and refers to one negative response that people had. And he says that God incarnate came to the people he had made in his own image, and they did not know him. They did not recognize him. They ignored him. They rejected him, or some took no notice of him. Which is an amazing, a tragic, but an amazing response. I mean, imagine growing up Imagine a son growing up in his father's house, being supported by his father and living a good life, all because of his father. But the son refuses to acknowledge his father. He ignores him, no relationship with him. He acts as if his father doesn't exist. You see, that's what people are doing when they refuse to acknowledge God and refuse to acknowledge Jesus as God in the flesh. Paul says in Romans 1 that all people know God because God reveals himself to them through creation and through their own created human nature. But they reject God. They do not honor him or serve him, and they suppress the truth that they know in unrighteousness. And now God has revealed himself in the most intimate and personal way through Jesus God incarnate, God in the flesh. And instead of seeing, as John did, the glory of God, they did not know him. You see, here we see the power of sin. It blinds us to the truth. It keeps us from seeing the truth. And we only see what we want to see. And we end up then refusing to acknowledge our creator and the savior of the world, even when he is right there in front of us. Well, in verse 11, we have another negative response to Jesus. Jesus not only came into the world, he also came to his own people. Of course, the nation of Israel were set apart from all the other nations in the Old Testament. They were God's chosen people. And so Paul says in Romans, to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. They had the written word of God. And the covenants, they had a relationship with God. They had those promises that all spoke about the coming Christ. God knew them and revealed himself to them in a way that he did not know anybody else or reveal himself to anybody else in the Old Testament period. And so out of all the nations of the world, Israel should have recognized and embraced Jesus. But they didn't. Jesus came to his own and his own people did not receive him. And again, we see the blinding power of sin. When we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we can't even see the God we claim to know and serve when he is incarnated right there in front of us. And unfortunately, the same two kinds of responses happen today. There are people who don't grow up in church, but they come to hear about Jesus, but they reject him or ignore him when they are confronted with him. And there are some people who grew up in the church, and they experience all the privileges of being a part of the church, and yet they don't know Jesus. They don't love him, serve him, obey him, and follow him. They ignore him. They don't really care about him, and they just simply do their own thing. I truly hope and pray that none of you here today respond to Jesus in either of those ways. I surely want you all to know him, believe in him, and receive him, because look at what verse 12 says, what happens when you do receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God. When you believe in Jesus, you're not only rescued from the kingdom of darkness, you're not only saved from your sins, you are adopted into the very family of God. You become a child of God. You receive all the benefits and the privileges of a son or daughter in the house of God. You have an eternal inheritance. You have access to God. You have grace, mercy, forgiveness, love, dignity, blessing. You receive everything as a child of God. You become a co-heir with God the Son, the Son of God, who inherits all things. But do notice that you do need to become, or rather you do need to believe to become a child of God. You don't become a child because of your parents or because of your grandparents. You don't become a child of God because you've been baptized or you are a member of the church. Verse 13 makes this very clear. You need to receive Christ, be married to him, and join to him, because salvation is only found in him. So who is Jesus? Jesus is God, Jesus is a human being, Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world. And if you receive him, he will give you the right to become the children of God. So come to him if you haven't already. And if you have, then take heart, be encouraged, knowing that you have been saved from your sins, saved from death, and you have been adopted into the family of Almighty God.