David Crews Ph.D. Publications

“Christmas is God with Skin-On”

The message of Christmas is God ‘tabernacled among us’ (John 1:14). God ‘moved into our neighborhood’ in Christ. Personal, approachable, inviting us into a relationship of unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness. To the ancient mind, it was scandalous, incomprehensible and a mind-stretch to say the least….God becoming a man? What? Yet, God lowered Himself in His Son and did what no religion, no philosophy, and no Greek mythology could conceive……”He became…..so would could become.””If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. If our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer. If our greatest need had been science, God would have sent us a scientist. BUT….Our greatest need is FORGIVENESS, so God sent us a SAVIOR.” … God sent “a Savior” … “for all the people.” His name was Jesus Christ.”

“Did Jesus Really Exist Before Bethlehem?” [The Christmas Confusion About Christ]

A new study from Lifeway Research finds close to 3 in 4 Americans believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago. Even more say Jesus is the Son of God the Father, but less than half believe Jesus existed prior to being born on that first Christmas!

“Most Americans consider Jesus’ birth a historical fact,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “It can be easy to only evaluate Jesus like you would any other historical figure—thinking about when He lived and what He did. However, the Bible also describes Jesus in a way that one must evaluate who you believe He was. Most Americans believe His origin was from God the Father, but half as many believe He existed before His birth.”

It’s one of the deeply strange truths of Christianity—that the Son of God became man and, as the Scriptures say, “dwelt among us.” But while many may have heard those words before, they don’t always connect them to the fact that Jesus existed before He was born in Bethlehem.

While it may seem like splitting hairs, it isn’t: Jesus’ existing eternally before He became man is part of the incredible news of Christmas. We were not merely sent a sacrifice from God—we were sent God Himself in human form. Fully God and fully man, He lived and died so that we might be reconciled to God and have eternal life.As we celebrate this Christmas season, let’s remember—and even tell our children—that our hope is as secure as can be not only because Jesus walked on the earth temporarily, but because He has existed eternally.

The glory of Christmas is that it is not the beginning of Christ. Christmas is the great Promise Fulfillment made by God to our first parents, Adam & Eve, to Abraham and all the O.T. saints, to King David and so on. It’s interesting to trace where Jesus is prophetically referenced in every single book of the Old Testament. But, it’s true. God has always been. Jesus told the Jewish religious leaders (who didn’t believe He was who He said He was), “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” The cosmic “I AM” statement refers back to Moses when Moses asked God at the burning bush experience. “Then Moses said to God, “But if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors sent me,’ then the people will ask, ‘What is his name?’ What should I tell them?” Then God said to Moses, “Tell them, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ When you go to the Israelites, tell them, ‘I AM’ sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:10-13)

Long before that first Christmas, His story had begun — not just in various prophecies, but in a divine Person, the Son of the Living God. Christmas may be the opening of the climactic chapter, but it is not the commencement of Christ. It is the beginning of what is marked in all our Bibles separating the old and new covenant (or testament); the Old Testament, and then with the coming of the God-Man, the New Testament. This is the Good News a weary world awaits for even if they don’t realize it yet.

Christmas does indeed mark a divine conception and a miraculous, supernatural birth, but the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God and has always existed along with His Father. The Scriptures are crystal clear about this fact and the great church creeds of the past two thousand years strongly highlight this inescapable truth that Jesus told His disciples shortly before His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, “I and the Father are One” in John’s gospel.

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 fully human.

He Existed Before Time
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).“

Unlike every other human birth, Christmas is not a beginning, but a becoming. Christ was not created; He came.”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, prophetically 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).

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) Whole false religious cults have been built on the falsehood that Jesus was merely a man, a religious teacher, a good example, that He was only created by God. Did you know that? Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that. It’s called the heresy of “Arianism” and was condemned by the Council of Nicea in (A.D. 325).

Human flesh didn’t become “the Word.” The eternal Word became human flesh, yet without sin. 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.”

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. We can also be assured, because just as surely as God fulfilled His promise to send His only Son that first Christmas that the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ will come again to judge this world, radically transform earth to a better beauty than even the Garden of Eden and allow us, His people who have placed their hope, faith and trust in Him to rule and reign with Him forever!

Jesus Is Better
As a mostly materialistic, happy holiday society marks its most material sales 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.

“Do you really know this Christ of Christmas as Lord and Savior of your life? Are you totally sure you’re ready to meet Him? Do have a doubt about it?”

I’m not talking about knowing ‘about Him.’ I’m talking about a real, daily, dynamic, growing personal relationship with Him. Has there ever come a time when you surrendered your life to Christ and made a clear decision to follow Him? The future belongs to His people. Don’t be left out. Open your heart to His love and make your way to His manger this Christmas. Humble yourself, like the Wise Men who gave Him his best, and say, “Lord Jesus, I want You to be my Savior from this point forward. I believe You died for my sins and rose the third day. Forgive me and save me right now.” This pre-existent Christ is God. He created us, knows us intimately, loves us and desires to save us from ourselves, from our failures, our brokenness, our sins. He came to save us from ‘the dead works of religion.’ HE is the Gift that perpetually gives eternal life to all who turn to Him. You don’t have to ‘clean up your act first.’ He will accept you just as you are right now no matter what you’ve done. Will you do that right now?

Christmastime is here and I love it!
But, of course, it all has it hassles, holly and hopes, depending on how you see it.
Besides the absolute need to re-tell the grand story of the birth of Christ, why God sent Him and what He means to us today (or should), there’s all the holiday tradition we cram into this season. It used to start after thanksgiving, no questions asked. Now, a growing population has Advent and Halloween rubbing shoulders; an odd sort of marriage if you ask me. Regardless, this post is not going to be some deep theological treatise on the incarnation of God in the baby Jesus. This is going to be about something else, for now.

No matter where you fall on the Christmas Interpretative Meter, there’s ole St. Nick. What to do about the jolly, round, ho-ho man in the red suit. Well, no doubt one cannot deny, aside from the spiritual meaning of the birth of Jesus, that the traditions of Christmas have a special kind of “magic” all to themselves, no matter what. I mean ‘how could Santa’s reindeer even fly without some stardust from Santa’s workshop at the North Pole?’ (And, no we’re sorry but it’s not available on Amazon this year) And, we hope you don’t get aspirations to ‘fly’ using cocaine, because that could ruin your Christmas and a whole lot more too. Stick to eggnog please.

If you have small kids, here’s a holiday idea you might consider regarding Santa.

A couple of years ago I saw a suggestion floating around on the internet that I think offers an ideal solution for those who celebrate Christmas. When a child starts questioning the Santa myth and seems old enough to understand, take them aside and, with utmost seriousness, induct them into the big grown-up secret: Now THEY are Santa. Tell the child that they have the power to make wishes come true, to fill the world with magic for others, and as a result, for us all. Then help them pick a sibling or friend, or better yet, look outside the family circle to find a neighbor or person in need for whom they can secretly “be” Santa Claus, and let them discover the enchantment of bringing uncredited joy to someone else. As Francis Pharcellus Church wrote to Virginia O’Hanlon more than 100 years ago, the unseeable values of “love and generosity and devotion” are in some ways the “most real things in the world,” and that seems like something that all kids —whether they’re age 2 or 92—can believe in.