By Fr. Paul Jannakos (December, 2004)
Jesus Christ - Savior
The central feature of the Christian message is that it is God Himself, Who has taken the initiative for the salvation of the human race. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). We return to this first teaching of the faith during this Christmas season because we so easily lose sight of its significance. The Son of God has descended from the bosom of His Father and has entered into the very fabric of human existence. In our Orthodox vocabulary, this is what we mean by the “incarnation” of the Word of God. Or, as the Holy Fathers say, “God has become man so that man might become divine by grace.”
The religions of world history tell us something quite different. The purpose of religion, as a universal phenomenon, is to uplift humanity to a higher morality. Those who are religiously observant, for example, seek to make themselves worthy of the God’s presence by either observing His “law,” (Judaism, Islam, etc.,) or by observing disciplines of spiritual enlightenment. (Hinduism, Buddhism, et al). Despite the difference in emphasis between these two Western and Eastern religious traditions, they both betray the principle of the religious works. Human beings can better themselves if only they would “do” the right things.
The scandal of the gospel is that it believes in none of the above. St. Paul in his writings goes to great lengths in order to prove that “no man is justified before God” by works of the law.” (Galatians 3:11). The purpose of the law, rather, is to reveal to us as human beings the truth of sin. “For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes know-ledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20). Instead, we are saved by placing the whole of our faith in the person of Jesus Christ and the grace that the flows to us through Him. “Therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1).
Each of us begins our life in the darkness of this world. The world we live in has been engulfed in the spiritual darkness of sin, ignorance, and death. The darkness has overtaken us on every side. We are oppressed by it for the entirety of our existence. As children, we sense how foreign this darkness is to our human frame. Yet by the time we reach adulthood, the darkness (of sin) has seeped into us through every hole and pore. Every once in a while, a flicker of light shines forth - the flicker of human reason. Yet the gloom abides and we are unable to find our way out. We grope and stumble our way through life until “we are no more” as it says in the book of psalms.
Jesus Christ is born into the darkness of the world in order to be the light of salvation. We believe in Him because we know that He is the One who leads us out of the shadows of our death filled lives. This is the source of the joy that we experience during the Christmas feast. This is the hope that shines forth from the cradle of the child born from Mary. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” (Isaiah 9:2).