Christmas Eve is the day when many in the world celebrate the birth of Jesus. For others Christmas Eve marks the final hours of waiting until Christmas Day and celebrate the start of the day at midnight. Others wait until the morning to start the day which, if you have young children, can be very much still the middle of the night!
Whichever day you choose to mark the occasion, in a matter of hours those of us who celebrate Christmas will be doing so to remember Jesus’ birthday.

One of the most obvious yet profound realities which we mark as Christians at Christmas is that Jesus was born. Jesus didn’t just ‘appear’ in the world; he was born into it. He didn’t come to us already fully mature; he started out as we all do in life.
This is something which can be quite hard to get your head around. God becoming man is amazing enough, but to do so by starting out with nothing – that takes some coming to terms with.

What on earth is God trying to tell us by coming in this way?
Why start out with nothing? Why come in a way which would require learning everything when you already know everything? Why make yourself fully dependent on parents for all your needs when you are already entirely self-sufficient?

God did not need to be born to come into this world or to save it, yet that’s exactly what He did. We may never fully know the reason(s) why but the fact that He did is actually all that really matters.

Jesus has modelled for us what it means to be fully human; to fit perfectly the shape that we were made for and to have the relationship with the Father that we were made for.
He started where we all start and opened a way for us to have that same life. When he spoke with Nicodemus (John 3), Jesus told him that he needed to be ‘born again’ to enter the Kingdom of God. We all, like Nicodemus, need to be born again – not as a label, or a status as some would understand and express it – but as a genuine starting over to live the life that Jesus lives. To understand Jesus’ life requires that we recognise that it’s not so much about ‘who’ he is, but ‘whose’ he is. Jesus was, and still is, his Father’s child. A life lived with the certainty and security of knowing you are your Father’s child is one where your personal identity, provision and purpose are all taken care of.

Imagine living a life where you know who you are, indeed whose you are.
Imagine living a life where everything you need to live and flourish is provided for.
Imagine living a life where you know what your purpose is.
This is the life lived abundantly Jesus spoke of (John 10:10), and it’s the life we can all have because we were born in to this world and the breath of life we have is from God. But to take hold of this life we must be ‘reborn’ to know that God is indeed our Father and we have the right and the power to be His children if we follow Jesus.

The new life doesn’t start ‘then’… it starts right now, and again tomorrow and the day after that, and the one after that, forever.

At the close of this Advent may you know that you can have the same life that Jesus has.
May you see in that little newborn baby an invitation to be reborn again today.
May you live life to the full and know who you are by knowing whose you are.

John’s gospel describes Jesus coming into the world in a very different way to the traditional Christmas story. John does not describe Mary’s story, or the birth, or the angels and shepherds, or the magi. But he doesn’t avoid the central theme of the Christmas story altogether and instead describes it in a remarkable and curious way.

Having revealed Jesus as THE Logos and that this Logos took on skin and fat (Greek: sarx) John then includes this amazing verse:
“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:18 ESV)

This is an amazing verse which reveals that Jesus was at the Father’s side and came to us in order to make Him known. Jesus swapped unlimited perfection for limited imperfection so that we might know the Father!

But this verse tells us something much more profound and amazing.
As always, when translating from the original Koine Greek into English certain words throw up a challenge which makes the task far from straightforward. In this verse the word which we read as “side” (Father’s “side”) is the word “kolpos” in Greek.

Kolpos has a number of meanings, none of which seem to be a good fit.
Kolpos is a kind of pocket which is made by creating a fold in your outer tunic and sits at your side. This is the usage which appears to have been used to end up with “at the Father’s side”. But is John really giving us an image of a pocket Jesus?
Another common use of the word kolpos is a gulf or a bay and so the image of the Father’s arms embracing to form a ‘bay’ within which He holds the Son is also used in some translations which read, “in the bosom of the Father”.

But there is another meaning which is just as common as the other two, and perhaps even more so. The other meaning is “womb”.
You can see why the translators didn’t go for this option because it wouldn’t make sense to refer to “the Father’s womb”.
But what if by avoiding what seems to be a nonsense the translators are in fact missing the point? What if John is less about a literal interpretation of his words and more about us grasping something deeply profound?

A father may not have a womb but the womb shows us something about the relationship that the child in the womb has to its mother. In the womb the child has life in itself and yet that life is entirely dependent and sustained by the mother. In order to live the child simply has to be. There is no effort required, no work, no striving, no need for the child to offer anything back to the mother in order that its life is sustained by the mother. The child simply has to be.

So if we insert “womb” into John’s words, and apply “unique son” in the right place too (see this reflection for ‘monogenēs theos’), then this is what they tell us:
“No one has ever seen God; the unique son of God, who is in the Father’s womb, he has made him known.”

The unique son of God, sustained in the Father’s womb, just being: this is the God that Jesus has come to make known.
Jesus moved from the Father’s womb as one with Him to be formed in Mary’s womb as one with us. This is John’s revelation for us.

This Advent may you know that Jesus has come to reveal a God who is a Father who nurtures us in His ‘womb’.
May you know that to be His child and to receive His life and love all you need is to ‘be’.
May you experience the effortless, life-giving kindness of the Father’s womb and, like Jesus, emerge to make the Father known.