You may have seen some books of puzzles, quizzes, and brain teasers; normally they have the explanations and answers at the end section of the book. Where is that final explanation of the whole puzzle of human existence? 

The Bible is an amazing book. Penned by about 40 authors over more than a millennium, who would have thought it could contain a unified message about the most abstruse issues imaginable? But that is what the Bible is and does. And it’s not just a boring book of religious theories; it is the most wonderful love story ever written, recounting the infinite love of God for the most undeserving of species – lost humankind. It’s story has a beginning in paradise, a drama of human rebellion, a development of divine love searching for unfaithful people, the revelation of the most superb person who ever lived, Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, his life and teaching, his unmerited condemnation to death and his astonishing resurrection, complete with explanations as to how his coming can bring us the forgiveness of our sins, a new life here and now, and an eternity in God’s glorious heaven.

This worldwide best-seller is God’s Book of Answers. All other attempts to write such a book pale in comparison with the Bible’s elevated tone and divine authority. No other book offers such beautiful truth, such elevated moral teaching balancing holiness with peace and self-denial with joy, and furnishing us with such satisfying answers to all of our deep existential questions.

“I the Lord speak the truth” God himself declares to his prophet (Isaiah 45.19). “I made the earth and created man on it… There is no other god beside me” (Isaiah 45.12, 21). Here we are at the very source of true information about all the big issues that concern us!

When the Gospel of John starts with the affirmation, “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God… All things were made by him” (John 1.1, 3) this echoes the first lines of the Bible where God is revealed as the almighty Creator. But further on, John, an apostle of Jesus, continued: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth”. The eternal Word, the creator of all things, came to earth in Jesus, who said “I have come down from heaven” (John 6.38); “I speak what I have seen with my Father… the truth that I heard from God (John 8.38, 40).

Christmas celebrates God the Creator coming down among us – indeed, he was walking on this earth exactly 2,000 years ago, in Palestine, communicating eternal truths that are the answers to our profound questions. Is there a God? Yes, “I came from God and I am here”; it is “the Father who sent me” (John 8.42, 16). You know him? Yes, “I do know him and I keep his word” (John 8.55). Are you telling us the truth? Yes, “He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him” (John 8.26).

Apart from telling us truth, why else have you come? “I came that people might have life and have it abundantly” (John 10.10). “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5.24).

Rightly did another apostle, Peter, exclaim: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed” (John 6.69).

Clive Every-Clayton