Becoming a New Kind of Family: An Advent Reflection on the Gospel of John
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
– John 1:1–14 (ESV)
Everybody loves Christmas. Even many people who would not call themselves Christians enjoy the beauty of the season and its message of joy, peace, and hope. Our familiarity with Christmas is not without its problems, though. As believers, we tend to think we already understand it. We already “get it,” so Christmas no longer astonishes us. It no longer shocks our sensibilities. It no longer makes us stop and consider the course of our lives. Yet, this is just the sort of impact Christmas—which celebrates the infinitely sublime incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ—should have on us and on our lives. If we would stop to consider exactly what Jesus’s coming to this earth really means, our lives should never be the same again.
On a purely human level, one of the things we love most about Christmas is its association with the idea of family and the traditions we share with our families. We all have them. It might be a certain meal you always have together. It might be a particular order in which you open all the presents. It might be a specific carol you always sing. Whatever it may be, these family traditions become important to us. They shape us as families and as individuals in ways we’re not even aware of. And it’s this aspect of family I want to focus on as we reflect on the opening verses of John’s Gospel. In particular, I want to zero in on verses 11–14 to guide our thinking about family during this Advent season.
To begin, let’s summarize what John has said in the earlier verses of his prologue to chapter 1. He tells us that Jesus is the Word of God who was with God in the beginning and is himself God. He has come into the darkness of the world as the Light of Life. As Immanuel, our God is with us, full of grace and truth. Yet Jesus is also hidden because he “came to his own and his own did not receive him.” Even so, for those who have been given eyes to see and ears to hear, he is the source of all life and hope. Returning to verses 12–13, John writes, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
These verses are important because they tell us outright the purpose of the incarnation: it is for family. God is making a new family for himself in and through the person of Jesus Christ. This is evident in the way verse 11 can be translated. Many translators render it as Jesus coming to “his own,” implying his own creation or his own people. But others render it as Jesus coming to “his own home.” The idea is that Jesus is coming to his first family, the Jewish nation, which then rejects him. As a result, God begins to build a new family that transcends one national ethnicity and will last for all eternity.
This is why Christmas is so important. We cannot fully understand the idea of family without understanding our part in the divine family in Christ.
What Is Family?
This leads us to ask: What is a family and how is it bound together? At the most basic level, of course, are the physical ties of flesh and blood, race or ethnicity. People meet, marry, have children, then grandchildren, and the generations go on. Yet, strong as these ties are, they are not enough to hold people together in an unbreakable bond that lasts forever. In a fallen and sinful world, husbands and wives divorce, siblings fall out with one another, parents sometimes disown their children, and children neglect their responsibility to honor and care for their parents. Our plans for our families don’t always work out the way we hoped they would. But God has bigger and better plans for us than we do.
What we are offered in the gospel is something more durable than human family bonds. John reminds us that the family constituted by Christ will not find its strength in ties rooted in human genetics or human effort. We cannot approach God and his family with the expectation that our heritage or accomplishments will provide the strength we need to be a family or to make ourselves right with the one who made us. Rather, John contrasts human efforts in building our way toward God with God’s divine plan in rescuing us from ourselves. God’s family is created by his gracious birthing of a new way of being a family in Christ. John simply says we must be “born of God.”
C. S. Lewis once wrote of his own journey toward faith: “I never had the experience of looking for God. It was the other way around: He was the hunter (or so it seemed to me) and I was the deer. He stalked me . . . took unerring aim, and fired. And I am very thankful that this is how the first (conscious) meeting occurred. It forearms one against subsequent fears that the whole thing was only wish fulfillment. Something one didn’t wish for can hardly be that.” Lewis helps us understand that Christmas is ultimately not about our plans for our family, but about God’s plans for his, plans that include us even when we weren’t expecting it.
Tim Keller also has noted that “Our lives are so chaotic because in our arrogance we dwell on how our plans have been skewed. God had plans too.” It is because of God’s plans that there is a Christmas. The strong cord of God’s grace is what creates and sustains the family of God. It binds us to him and to other believers in a way we could not conceive of or implement on our own. And it makes us brothers and sisters with others with whom we might not otherwise have had anything in common.
Understanding this about Christmas should change our lives: the awareness that we are not our own, that we have been bought at the price of the eternal Son, who was rejected by men and by God so we might be saved and made part of the everlasting family of God.
Who Is Our Family?
The biblical idea of family, then, transcends mere human bonds. According to John, our membership in this family is rooted in grace and comes about by faith. He writes in verse 12: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name.” God’s divine grace toward those he calls his own always manifests itself in a saving or trusting faith.
The family of God is a family of grace. What marks us as members isn’t ethnicity, background, or accomplishment. Rather, it is our reliance on Christ. Only by forsaking all other fleshly familial marks and looking in faith alone to the Light of Life can we know that we have passed from death to life and have entered into the grace that makes us part of God’s own family. Only then can we see that our true brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers are those who also confess the name of Christ in faith, and that we are bound to them in a deeper, richer, and more lasting way than we could ever be bound by merely earthly ties.
Our natural families are indeed important, and we are called to love and honor and care for them as part of our faithfulness to our Lord. But it is our loyalty to Christ above all else and our absolute dependence on him in faith that makes us children of God in a new family of grace. When by his grace we recognize our need for a Savior, and our eyes and our hearts are opened to the reason that Jesus took on human flesh and came to dwell and to die among his own—that we might be delivered from our sins and made whole and righteous in God’s sight—that we truly begin to live and truly begin to be the people God intended us to be.
What is more, because the incarnation redefines familial bonds according to grace, we are now summoned to redraw our earthly boundaries accordingly. Though we cherish our families of flesh and blood, in Christ God’s people must resist being defined solely by natural and fleshly markers that ordinarily underly communities. As the redeemed people of God, gathered from every tongue, tribe and people (Rev. 7:9), Jesus has made us a beautiful community in which we gather around the table of his mercy. At this table, as those clothed in the glorious righteousness of Christ, we are all welcome and we all have a voice. Friends, this is the true purpose of the incarnation, the true meaning and greatest gift of Christmas. And it is the only foundation for any kind of family life—for now and for eternity.
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This reflection is adapted from a sermon that Dr. Gibbs preached several years ago as part of a series on the Gospel of John while serving as pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in San Antonio, Texas.
