"One Word More" is one of the many Poems dedicated by Robert Browning to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In this poem Browning speaks of Rafael the artist, who felt that he could not express his love for his lady adequately, by painting, so he "made a century of sonnets." Rafael sought "to find his love a language." Dante, the poet, turned from his writing, to the drawing of an angel, to express his devotion to Beatrice, his life companion, "to find his love a language." Browning declares that he cannot paint, nor can he carve statues, that it is not within him to compose musical scores--he can "find his love a language" only in poetry.

      Rafael, Dante, Browning had love stirring within them, a love which looked out to an object of affection; that love had to be expressed, had to find a language "fit and fair and simple and sufficient." So "Rafael made a century of sonnets"; so "Dante once prepared to paint an angel"; so Browning wrote "One Word More."

      But why did Robert Browning stop there? He could have turned to the New Testament, and read of One "Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets," and Who has "in these last days spoken unto us by His Son . . . "

      To find His love a language--is that the meaning behind John's words in the first chapter of his gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we be held His

glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."

      This indeed is the miracle of Christmas, "the Word became flesh," God became man.

"I want someone who has a face."

      A mother put her little girl to bed, and turned out the light. The child anxiously asked, "But, Mother, am I to be left alone, and in the dark, too?" "Yes, my dear," answered the mother, "but you know you have God with you all the time." The little child replied, "Yes, I know that God is here, but I want someone who has a face."

      Exactly! Tell me all you know about God--tell me of His omnipotence, how He holds the lightning in His hand, how like the mastering of a great orchestra, He conducts the symphony of the world's weather, how the cattle on a thousand hills are His--tell me of His omniscience, how nothing escapes the notice of the searching scan of His vision--tell me of His omnipresence, how that "if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea . . . if I ascend up in heaven . . . if I make my bed in hell," God is there, everywhere, ever present, that I can never flee from His presence--tell me all this, speak of God's greatness, His glory, His majesty, His might, tell me that God is Spirit, and I still cry--"Yes, I know . . . but I want Someone with a Face."

      It is the cry of the human heart, and it has been answered. God has found His love a language, and we can see and understand. Stanley Jones put it this way, "Jesus is God speaking to the man in the street." Jesus, God "with a Face like my face," a human face.

      We cannot hope to deal with all of the tremendous message that God spoke in Christ; we simply single out three wealthy words.

      Sang the prophet Isaiah: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name, Immanuel." Matthew gives us the interpretation of Immanuel--"God with us." And the hymn writers have taken up the strain:

      So Charles Wesley; and Fanny Crosby:

      But "Immanuel--God with us" means more than "God in our midst"; it also means "God on our side." As Matthew Henry expressed it: "By the light of nature we see God as a God above us; by the light of the law we see Him as a God against us; but by the light of the Gospel we see Him as Immanuel, God with us, in our own nature, and (which is more) in our interest." God is not against us; He is for us, and with us, and on our side.

      "If ever you told the truth in all your life, I want you to tell it now, to me," he said; and his lips were tightly drawn as he tried to pierce his pastor's mind with his eyes. He was one of the city's important business men and community leaders. He had been a member of the Church for many years, but this was the first time he had ever faced reality. Nothing less than the stark truth would do. "Day before yesterday you buried my son," he went on. "He was all we had. My heart lies buried out there with the body of my boy; and I am not interested in your opinions, your hopes, or your beliefs. I want to know whether or not you know any thing about God. Does He care? Does it make any difference to Him that my boy is dead? Tell me--on your honour! What do you know."

      The pastor, in a voice that was strangely calm in spite of its intensity, answered the stricken

father: "I will tell you what I know. I know He cares!" "How do you know it?" the father gasped, leaning forward across the desk. "Because He lost an only Son, Himself, once. He watched him die upon a Cross, innocent of any evil. He knows what it is to lose an only Son!"

      How did the pastor know that? Calvary! But before Calvary, Christmas: Immanuel, God with us! Roland de Pury, a Swiss-French pastor was arrested by the German Gestapo in Lyons, France. He spent, five months, largely in solitary confinement, in the prison of Fort Montluc. His diary which he kept was later published under the title "Journal from My Cell." De Pury found that the prison became the stage for a bitter struggle between God and His twin antagonists: Satan and hell. He found himself at the centre of this struggle. As day followed day--slowly, relentlessly, emptily--despair would flood through his heart, and then hope would battle to regain possession. The combat might abate, but it was never over. The real enemy was not the Gestapo, nor was it the fear of being killed. The real enemy was despair . . .

      "You sink into a bottomless abyss", he writes, "down, still down. Is this the Biblical place at last? The place of the Psalms, the place where Jesus prayed at Gethsemane when His heart was sorrowful unto death, the hell into which He descended? Jesus is indeed there . . . God with us to the very bottom of the abyss."

      Immanuel! God is not against us, He is for us, and with us, He knows and cares and understands our pains, pleasures, problems. His love has found a language: Jesus.

      Did you notice that the quotation from Isaiah begins "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son?" While it is true that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke give us independent accounts of the birth of our Lord, both agree on the fact of

The Virgin Birth

      The manuscript authority for Luke 1:34-35 and Matthew 1:18-25 is absolutely trustworthy. Some reject the story of the Virgin Birth because apart from Matthew and Luke, the New Testament has no reference to it. But arguments from silence are notoriously precarious. Others argue that the Virgin Birth was suggested by Isaiah 7:14. But is this likely? Scholars agree that "this Isaianic prophecy had no prominence in Jewish thought or expectations." It was the fact and circumstances of the birth of Jesus which directed attention to it: the fame of the prophecy rests upon the Virgin Birth of Jesus, not vice versa.

      A mythological (e. g. Greek or Babylonian) origin for the Virgin Birth stories is sometimes advocated. But the point is well made: "All these various stories of supernatural conceptions and births, which we meet with in folk-lore and the history of mythology have this one thing in common--they serve to point not so much to the similarity as to the complete contrast and dissimilarity which exists between the Christian Birth-story and the tales which were current in various pagan circles."

      If the story of the Virgin Birth was invented what would be the motive? The answer usually given is: a desire to provide an additional argument for our Lord's divinity. But the fact is that, at the time when the legend is alleged to have been invented, the great need was not to prove our Lord's divinity--all Christians accepted this--but to prove His humanity. The records of the Virgin Birth were cherished because they were true!

      As A. W. Argyle says in his paper "The New Testament Doctrine of the Incarnation" (Expository Times, Feb. 1949)--and I am indebted to him in this section--"That the Eternal and Infinite Son of God should become man is in itself a miracle so astounding that it is not surprising if it were attended by miraculous circumstances."

      Dr. Howard A. Kelly, who was Professor of Gynaecology and Obstetrics 1889-1899, and Professor of Gynaecology 1899-1919, at Johns Hopkins University, and then emeritus Professor, had no difficulty in believing the Virgin Birth; this he makes clear in "A Scientific Man and the Bible." Nor had Rendle Short M.D., B.S., B.Sc., F.R.C.S., writing in "The Bible and Modern Medicine." (1953).

      Dr. D. M. Blair was, at one time, Professor of Anatomy and Dean of the Medical Faculty of the University of London. When he wrote "A Doctor Looks at the Bible" in 1936, he was Regius Professor of Anatomy in the University of Glasgow. His words are well worth pondering: "Luke was a product of the Greek medical school that flourished from the time of Hippocrates in the fourth century before Christ to the days of Galen in the second century of the Christian era, and is recognised as having been imbued with a true scientific spirit. Diagnosis in this school, meant logical deduction from careful observation . . . Has it ever struck you that the only circumstantial account of the Virgin Birth of our Lord is found in the one Gospel written by a medical man? Luke goes into extraordinary detail, It is as though his professional instincts were aroused and he said to himself, Here is a marvellous thing; it is my duty as a medical man, to see that a careful record is made of all relevant details . . .'"

      But is this a miracle in the realm of biology only? Is there not a deeper message? Joseph was told by "the angel of the Lord," "that which is conceived in her (Mary) is of the Holy Spirit." Would you agree that there is this message for us in the story of the Virgin Birth: "Every child of God must have his virgin birth in order to become joint heir with Christ, for that which is not born of the Spirit is not the child of God"?

      The poets have long since seen that our lives should be Bethlehems. Wrote Scheffler:

      And who has not prayed with Phillips Brooks:

      "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

      "Thou shalt call His name Jesus," said the Annunciation Angel to Mary. Jesus is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew, Joshua, which is itself a contraction of Jehoshua, "Jehovah is Salvation." "Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins" declared the angel of the Lord when he appeared to Joseph in a dream.

      "Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" was the message of the angel to the shepherds. "A Saviour", and the message is for "all people" (Luke 2:10). Let us never forget the missionary emphasis of the Christmas message!

      "Is born . . . a Saviour" here Christmas is linked with Calvary and the Resurrection.

      Jesus makes it clear that His life did not begin when He was born; His life on earth did, yes, but this birth was an Advent, it was the coming into the world as Man of One Who had been from all eternity. We hear Him say: "For I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me" (John 6:33, see also 8:42).

      In His "I have come" sayings, we have

Christmas According to Christ,

      and all these indicate a Saviour's work culminating in His being "delivered for our offences, and

raised again for our justification." They can be conveniently grouped under three headings:

      1. Jesus came not to steal, kill, and destroy, but to give life, to fulfil.

      (a) Matthew 5:17: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am come not to destroy, but to fulfil." G. A. Buttrick suggests several ways in which Jesus did this: "He redeemed the old Sabbath in the new Lord's Day, the old Passover in His new table of the Sacrament, the old law of sacrifice in His cross."

      (b) John 10:10: The thief comes "to steal and to kill and to destroy: I am come that they might have life . . . " "Youth is a blunder, mid-life a struggle, old age a regret", gloomed Disraeli. But not so Christ! For the Christian, youth is a time of glad decision and adventure, mid-life, a struggle indeed, but an honourable, victorious struggle, old-age, a quiet serene fulfilment. All this--and heaven too!

      2. Jesus came to disturb, to confront and challenge, to call for decision, and He does this:

      (a) By bearing witness to the truth. John 18:37: "I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." And He, the Truth, spoke it, "unveiled undistorted"; and truth is always disturbing, whether received or rejected.

      (b) By being the Light, John 12:46: "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness" (see also 8:12 and 9:5). Light, probes, and reveals as well as heals.

      (c) By being One about Whom a decision must to made. Matthew 10:34-39: "I came not to send peace, but a sword . . . " "Why should not the Gospel come peaceably?" asks G. A. Buttrick, and answers: "Because darkness in the ethical and spiritual realm hates the light, because anti-Christ is always intent to defeat Christ." I am for Christ!

      3. Jesus came to seek, to serve, to save.

      Luke 19:10: "For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." Mark 10:45: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give His life a ransom for many."

      The New Testament makes it clear that

Jesus Christ is "God's Appointed Saviour."

      (Romans 3:28, J. B. Phillips). "Neither is there salvation in any other," declares Peter (Acts 4:12) "for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." We may well ask, "From what does Jesus save?" The New Testament makes the answer: from sin, from fear, from being lost.

      Firstly, then, Jesus saves from sin. "He shall save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21 see also 1 John 1:7). Angus Dun in "The Saving Person" seeks to define sin. A full quote is impossible here--I cull: "Sin is that in us which separates us from God . . . It is our not hallowing God's name, not willing His will. It is our obscuring the glory, contradicting the meaning, profaning the sanctity God gives to life . . . it is our coming to life and dealing with life as though God were not real; our faithlessness, our godlessness . . . It is the putting of ourselves, our families, our race, our nation, in the place of God. It is our refusal to accept death and our fanatical striving to give a fictitious eternity to things that pass away . . . Sin is all that divorces us from our neighbour . . . Our dealing with him as less than a brother . . . our lovelessness . . . It is all that weakens and dissipates and disorders

      the self that God has honoured . . . "

      Every one who has faced his own sins, and the sin that blights the world, knows his need of a Saviour. And Jesus does save from sin--its penalty, its power, its practice.

      The penalty of sin is two-fold: alienation from God, shown in the sinner as uneasiness, indifference, blasphemy, active hate, concerning God and the things of God; and deterioration of character, the result of neglecting and flouting the laws of God.

      God accepts as righteous those who believe in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:26, 5:1; Mark 16:16 etc.)--that ends the alienation from God. Christ works within the life of the one who welcomes Him; His transforming miracle ends deterioration of character, and commences Christian education; the fruits of the Spirit begin to appear.

      Let the story of Percy Rush testify that Christ "breaks the power of cancelled sin." There was a time when Percy Rush took a wild delight in the company of women who become the sport of men; at the same time he was a victim of the drink habit; he also took to drugs; he regularly beat his wife, and made his home a hell. Once in sheer desperation he tried to commit suicide; two tramway men prevented him. Jesus Christ confronted that man, he became a Christian. Ten years after his conversion he wrote: "From that minute I was released from all my bonds. My diabolical hatred of my wife, of other people, my insatiable craving for drinks and drugs and even my desire for tobacco, were taken clean out of my life . . . "

      And millions of fine Christians, young and old, would gladly say, "Jesus saves from the practice of sin." These folk have never been licentious, riotous, drunken, drug addicts, sinners in the vicious sense, not because they were never tempted, not necessarily because they were stronger in their own strength to face the tests but because, having committed their lives to Christ, He has empowered them against the Wicked One. Jesus is a wonderful Saviour, His blood can make the foulest clean, and He is mighty to save and mighty to keep.

      Secondly, Jesus saves from fear. Dr. Paul Tillich maintains that man has three fundamental fears.

      (1) The fear of death. Paul asserts that our Risen Saviour "hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10, see also Hebrews 2:14-15). Isaac Watts, the hymn writer, said in his dying hour. "It is a great mercy to me that I have no manner of fear or dread of death."

      (2) The fear of guilt or judgment. The Christian rejoices, "there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1, see also 5:1, 9;1 Thess. 1:10); we are saved from this fear through faith in Christ's sacrifice.

      (3) The fear of meaninglessness. Tillich calls this the demon possessing the modern world, the despair of modern man. Christ gives us significance, purpose, direction. Sings John in the Revelation 1:5-6: "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever."

      Surely every fear is swallowed up by the great fact: Christ is able!

      --able to succour them that are tempted (Heb. 2:18).

      --able to save to the uttermost (Heb. 7:25).

      --able to keep you from falling (Jude 24).

      --able to subdue all things unto Himself (Phil. 3:21).

      --able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day (2 Tim. 1:12).

      --able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think (Eph. 3:20).

      Thirdly, Jesus saves from being lost. As He Himself said: "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). A person is lost who doesn't know his way through the maze of his sin problem, who is wandering aimlessly, who is out of touch with God, who doesn't know Christ--the Way, the Truth, the Life. "I was lost, but Jesus found me!"

      Hanging in a Danish church is a famous painting of the incident in the New Testament where John the Baptist first caught sight of Jesus, near the River Jordan. Having seen Jesus coming, John has raised his arm and is pointing towards Him while people around turn to look. All this is not unusual, but there is one strikingly different feature--John's pointing finger is very much enlarged and elongated. It seems to demand that everyone shall turn and see Jesus. It seems to say: "Look, look, there is the Lamb of God who is to remove the sin of world--look, there is Jesus Christ, the Saviour!" Yes, and He's a wonderful Saviour'.

      Two soldiers were seated in a coach returning to camp. Their conversation was chiefly about their escapades, frolics, narrow escapes, love affairs, furloughs, and the folks at home. Then one of them said "Yeah, life's a funny game." Replied the other: "I've always figured it was just a gamble." Neither is Christ's view. How loosely we use the word "life." A sick man "fights for his life;" one who has lived a sheltered existence "has never seen life;" a youth "wants to see life," and he seeks it in some unsavoury night club where, as W. E. Sangster says, "every joke is suggestive and no decent man would leave a turn unstoned."

      How often it is thought that the wicked have the "good times," and the righteous miss the fun! Roy L. Smith takes up the challenge: "The simple fact is that the most severe limitations and restrictions on life are those which sin imposes." The libertine is a slave to his passions, and how free is a victim of alcohol? Lies produce suspicion and fear. Cynicism robs life of joy.

      Does "Life" appear in the Christmas story? Yes, in John's Gospel. "In Him (the Word) was life; and the life was the light of men" (1:4). B. W. Bacon translates verses 3 and 4:

      All created life is an expression of that life-giving power eternally existent in the Word.

      Verses 12 and 13 speak of the new birth--the new life: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

      "I am come," said Jesus "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." But what exactly is this life Jesus gives? Everlasting Life, Eternal Life. Everlasting, eternal, not merely in the sense of duration, but in the sense of quality. This is a symphony of good tidings, the music of the Spheres is in it, for as William Barclay says: "What Jesus offers us from God is God's own life. Eternal life is a life which knows something of the serenity and the power of the life of God Himself." Hear the carillon: pardon, peace, destiny; power, purpose, victory; joy, love, and obedience; God within . . . And it is eternal life now, here, in the midst of time. It is as Percy Ainsworth says:

      The New Testament uses three mighty metaphors to bring home to our hearts the wonder of this new life:

      1. Darkness to Light. "I am come a light into the world" said Jesus, "that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness." (John 12:46). Life on the instinct level, life on the duty, strained-piety level, is darkness compared with life in Christ. John Masefield does not exaggerate when he makes the converted Saul Kane rejoice:

      2. Defeat to Liberty. "Verily, verily, I say unto you" said Jesus "whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin;" slaves, in bondage, in prison; let him who thinks he is free try to throw off a habit! But thank God, Jesus went on "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:34,36).

      3. Death unto Life. "Verily, verily, I say unto you" said Jesus, "he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). John uses the expression in 1 John 3:14; and Jesus said of the son who "took his journey into a far country," he "was dead"--it was only after he came home again that he was alive!

      Henry Drummond, at one of his great student meetings in Edinburgh, read a letter he had received from a man who had made shipwreck of life, a letter full of hopelessness and bitterness. It was signed "Thanatos"--Death. But there was another night, a year or two later, when Drummond was facing a student gathering again. He reminded them of the story he had told of the man who was a moral, social, and spiritual wreck; and then went on, "Gentlemen I have in my pocket tonight a letter from 'Thanatos,' which he sent me this week, and he says he is at last a changed man--a new creature in Christ Jesus."

Darkness, Defeat, Death--Light! Liberty! Life!

      And this life can be ours! Yes, here is the way of Salvation in Christ's own words:

      "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me" (John 14:1) --faith; Jesus said "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations" (Luke 24:47)--repentance and remission of sins; "whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 10:32)--confession; "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you . . .--baptism and Christian continuance.

      JAMES A. LUFF comes from Maylands, S.A., and graduated from the Woolwich Bible College in 1947. His ministries have been at Enmore (N.S.W.), Margaret Street, Launceston (Tasmania), and at present at Coburg (Victoria).