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Christ was not created; He came
The
Eternity Before Christmas
“Unlike every
other human birth, Christmas is not a beginning, but a becoming. Christ was not
created; He came.”
The glory of Christmas is that it is not
the beginning of Christ.
Long before that first Christmas, His
story had begun — not just in various prophecies, but in a divine person.
Christmas
may be the opening of the climactic chapter, but it is not the commencement of
Christ.
Christmas does indeed mark a conception
and a birth.
We rehearse Mary’s magnificent song of submission, and the
shepherds’ visit to pay homage to her newborn son, and read she “treasured up all these things, pondering
them in her heart” (Luke
2:19).
For
mere humans, no doubt, such is the stuff of our origins. Prior to earthly
beginnings, we simply did not exist.
But
it is not so with the Son of God. His “coming
forth is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah
5:2).
Unlike
every other human birth, Christmas is not a beginning, but a becoming.
Christmas isn’t His start, but His commission. He was not created; He came.
No other human in the history of the
world shares in this peculiar glory.
As
remarkable as His virgin birth is, His preexistence sets Him apart even more
distinctively, even as He is fullu human.
1. He existed before the incarnation.
Jesus Christ existed before He was made
man at the incarnation.
Jesus Himself made the claim, so stunning — and even offensive
to first-century Jewish sentiments, so offensive that “they picked up stones to
throw at him” — when he said, “Truly,
truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John
8:58–59).
True
as it was, this jarring reality didn’t go over much better in John 6.
“‘What if you were to see the
Son of Man ascending to where he was before?’ . . . After this many of his
disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John
6:62, 66).
But
those who were given eyes to see the glory didn’t turn back; their number would
eventually include Paul and the author of Hebrews.
Melchizedek, who lived a thousand years before Jesus, resembled
the Son of God by “having neither beginning
of days nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3).
And Israel’s wilderness generation “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was
Christ” (1
Corinthians 10:4).
Beyond
that, four New Testament refrains join the chorus that the person of Christ
existed long before that first Christmas.
He Came
Mark’s Gospel opens under the banner of
Jesus as Yahweh himself come to earth (Mark
1:1–3).
He came from outside the created realm, into our world, to bring
God’s long-promised rescue. “The Son of
Man came . . . to give his life as a ransom for
many” (Matthew 20:28; also Mark 10:45 and Luke 19:10).
In John, the language of coming, as in John 6:62, is descending.
“The Son of Man descended from heaven” (John 3:13).
Mere
humans don’t descend; they begin.
Again,
Paul and Hebrews follow in the Gospel wake. “Christ came into the world” (Hebrews 10:5), and
in one of the most terse and potent gospel summaries, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy
1:15).
Related to coming is manifestation. “He was manifested in
the flesh” (1 Timothy
3:16).
“He was foreknown before the
foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of
you” (1 Peter 1:20).
He Became
On its own, “becoming” wouldn’t necessitate preexistence.
The
key is to ask what He was before He became. He was divinely rich, and became
humanly poor (2
Corinthians 8:9).
He was in “the form of
God,” then took “the form of a
servant” (Philippians
2:6–7).
One
who was infinitely high, because he was God, became a little lower than the
angels, because he became man (Hebrews 2:9).
His “becoming” was not a ceasing to be
what he had been previously, but a “taking on” (Philippians
2:7) of human flesh and blood. The fully divine Son added full
humanity to his person.
He Was Sent
Prophets were sent without
preexisting, but not so with God’s own Son. He was sent from outside the world
of flesh, into it, to redeem his people.
The
context is fundamentally different when we’re talking about sending the eternal
Son, rather than mere human messengers.
In the parable of the tenants, the owner
of the vineyard, at long last, sent his “beloved
son” (Mark
12:6), decisively distinct in relationship from the other servants he
had sent prior.
“When the fullness of time
had come,” Paul writes in Galatians
4:4, “God sent forth his Son,
born of woman.”
God
didn’t take an already born human and send him forth; he sent forth his own
divine Son to be human.
Likewise, in the sacrifice of his Son, God did what we
non-preexistent humans could not do for ourselves: “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he
condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).
He Was Given
Finally, and perhaps most memorably, the
preexistent Christ was given. “God so loved the world, that he gave his
only Son” (John
3:16).
The
sacrifice of Christ loses all its force as an expression of God’s love if Jesus
did not preexist his incarnation.
The
Mount Everest of biblical promises presupposes the Son’s preexistence in saying
that God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans
8:32).
2. He
existed before creation.
But not only did Christ preexist that
first Christmas; He also preexisted all creation.
It’s
difficult to imagine the New Testament being any clearer on this account.
When the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) confessed He was “begotten of the Father before all worlds,”
it did so on the firm foundation of Scripture.
John’s Gospel opens with the declaration,
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 anything made that was
made. (John
1:1–3)
Human
flesh didn’t become the Word. The eternal Word became flesh. So
also, Colossians
1:16–17:
By him all things were created, in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
authorities — all things were created though him and for him.
And
he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Christ
was “foreknown” by God, not only
before His incarnation, but “before the
foundation of the world” (1
Peter 1:20).
And so He prays in John 17:5, “Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had
with you before the world existed.”
3. He is pre-existent because He is God.
That Christ existed before His
incarnation, and even before the foundation of the world, is finally a function
of His divinity. He is first and last, Alpha and Omega (Revelation
1:8), because he is God.
As Donald Macleod notes, “No
formal distinction can be made between deity and preexistence” (Person of Christ,
57).
“Jesus is before, and he is better than,
anything in the created world.”
Christmas
is far more than the celebration of a great man’s birth.
God
himself, in the second person of the Godhead, entered into our space, and into
our frail humanity, surrounded by our sin, to rescue us.
He
came. He became one of us. God sent God. The Father gave his own Son for us and
for our salvation.
Jesus Is Better
As a materialistic society marks its most
material time of the year at Christmas, the preexistence of Christ before all
created things reminds us of His priority and preciousness above every gadget
and gismo, every present and party, all the trees and trimmings, lights and
laughter, candles and cookies.
Surely
this is what his preexistence means for us — priority and preciousness above
and beyond anything else not preexistent.
Jesus is before, and He is better than,
anything in the created world.
And His
preexistence calls to us with the quiet reminder that it is only fitting for
such a one to be the greatest Treasure in our hearts.
David Mathis (@davidcmathis)
is executive editor for desiringGod.org and pastor at Cities Churchin Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is a husband,
father of four, and author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.
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