We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Myth Become History
The Gospel of John tells of the coming of Jesus in an unusual way. John writes:
In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Everything came into existence through him. Not one thing that exists was made without him. He was the source of life, and that life was the light for humanity. The real light, which shines on everyone, was coming into the world… The Word became human and lived among us. We saw his glory. It was the glory that the Father shares with his only Son, a glory full of kindness and truth. —John 1:1-5; 9
Jesus is the eternal one who has been with the Father since the beginning. He is not merely a human who was born into history; he is actually the “source of life” and the glory of God. In this sermon clip, Greg connects the story of Jesus’ birth with the deep longings, the inner yearnings of our heart, for something that is greater than this world. He illustrates this by demonstrating that the great legends and myths from a variety of cultures point to Jesus. While today we often equate myths with something that is not true, in fact they often tap into very deep realities. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, two experts on mythology and on Christianity, spoke of the coming of Christ as the myth that became history. Christ became the very thing the greatest mythological stories have pointed to.
If you are interested in the entire sermon, it can be viewed here.
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Christmas, Jesus, Myth
Related Reading
The Revelation of God in the Cross
The cross cannot be understood apart from the resurrection, just as the resurrection can never be understood apart from the cross. They are two sides of the same coin. If you consider the cross apart from the resurrection, then the crucified Christ becomes nothing more than one of the many thousands of people who were…
Jesus, the Word of God
“[T]he standing message of the Fathers to the Church Universal,” writes Georges Florovsky, was that “Christ Jesus is the Alpha and Omega of the Scriptures both the climax and the knot of the Bible.”[1] It was also unquestionably one of the most foundational theological assumptions of Luther and Calvin as well as other Reformers. Hence,…
How God Changes the World
God’s hopes for us began before the creation of the world. And what God intended from the beginning gives us insight into how God works to bring about what he intends. In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul teaches that God “chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and…
Crucifying Transcendence
The classical view of God’s transcendence in theology is in large borrowed from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their experience of God acting dynamically and in self-revelatory ways in history, the concept of God at work in ancient Greek philosophy…
The Longing of Advent
The Advent season is a time of anticipating the coming of God, in Christ, a time of turning our imagination toward the revelation of God’s love for us. This after all is the deepest longing of our heart, and our natural longings always point us to something real. We grow hungry only because there’s such…
Lighten Up: The Jesus Eraser
“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…” Ephesians 2:14 Image by David Hayward @ www.nakedpastor.com.