“We declare to you what was from the beginning,” wrote John: “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life” (I John 1:1). Today on Christmas, we specifically recall that this is a day of remembrance and reflection of the incarnation of God the Son as a genuinely human person: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him” (4:9).

Then as now, there were people who thought it unimaginable that God would step all the way down from heaven to take on our human reality. Yet this truth is so central to the message that John insisted on this as the real test for whether someone is speaking by the Spirit of God: “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (4:2-3). It is all about Jesus: “he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (2:2)

“We love because God first loved us” (4:19), with a love so great that we are now the children of God (3:1), with the promise that we will be transformed to be more and more like Jesus, as we learn to purify ourselves according to his example (3:2-3). If we take hold of this truth in faith, this is the victory strong enough to overcomes all the things in this present age that would tear us down (5:4).

Let us declare our faith this day, with open hearts and clear voices: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come in the flesh for the forgiveness of all our sins, and indeed for the sins of the whole world: he has loved us with a love that has made us the children of God.

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We come to you, Lord Jesus, grateful for your decision to take on our human flesh, and thereby to transform it and us: so that we could have fellowship with you, and with the Father and the Spirit, and so that we could love one another according to the example of how you have loved us.