John 1:14

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, This is He of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me. And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:14-17)

What we deeply need this Christmas is not another gift that fades, but the fullness of grace that came when the Word became flesh.

A Hierarchy of Needs That Became a Hierarchy of Wants

In 1943, an experimental behavioral psychologist published a paper in the Psychological Review entitled A Theory of Human Motivation. That paper became the foundational framework for much of the sociological research over the 75 years that followed. It is more importantly known for what it describes: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow portrayed human needs as a pyramid with five layers, the bottom layers dealing with the most basic needs and building up to deeper ones. He argued that these needs must be fulfilled, on up the hierarchy, for a human being to realize their fullest potential.

What is striking is that over that same 75-year period, in the affluent Western society we live in—especially in the United States—the bottom four sections of Maslow's pyramid are largely met. Our psychological needs, safety needs, needs to belong, and needs for esteem are, for the most part, satisfied. When you live in such an affluent society, you move from a hierarchy of needs to a hierarchy of wants.

Desire Factories and Felt Needs

When you move into a hierarchy of wants, you begin to mistake your wants for needs until the two become indistinguishable. A need is something you cannot thrive or survive without; a want is the icing on the cake. Yet living in 21st-century Western culture, our wants feel like needs—what sociologists call "felt needs." The problem is that our catalog of felt needs is an ever-perpetuating list of insatiable desires.

The more we acquire, the more we desire. You would assume that fulfilling a desire would satisfy you, but it doesn't—as soon as one desire is met, another pops up. We are like desire factories, churning out desire all day long, and we live in a commercial culture more than willing to supply things for us to attach those desires to. And this season we've just entered is the playground—or perhaps the battleground—for human desire. Almost everything in our commercial culture is geared around the last six weeks of the year.

The Need Beyond Material Things

Interestingly, in his later years Maslow recognized something beyond the five basic needs he had outlined. He came to understand that human beings need to lay hold of what he called transcendence. He realized there was something more than material needs—there were spiritual needs. We are more than material beings, and because we are more than material, we need more than material things. Until we lay hold of certain spiritual things, we remain restless.

Look around our culture. We live in a time with more available to us than at any point in human history, and yet people are incredibly restless. Have you noticed it in those around you, or even in yourself? I certainly have. This reminds me of the words of Augustine, who lived more than 1,600 years ago: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You." Augustine had been a total hedonist before becoming a Christian, trying to satisfy every appetite with the pleasures of this world, and he found it did not satisfy.

A Record-Breaking Season That Still Leaves Us Wanting

We've now moved officially into the Christmas season—and we know it because the Christmas shopping season has begun. It officially started at about 6 p.m. Thursday night when the Black Friday deals went live. This is a record-breaking weekend; on Black Friday alone, online sales reached $6.22 billion in a single 24-hour period, up 23% over last year's record.

This season is aimed at all our wants that we think are needs. But it will pass. When it passes—the wants filled, the desires met—we will be left with more wants and desires, still restless and unsatisfied, especially when the credit card bills arrive. It will leave us devastatingly wanting, because our heart is restless until it rests in Him.

Over the next five Sundays leading up to Christmas, I want to talk about five specific needs we human beings have—needs that, when finally met, allow us to experience our fullest and eternal purpose. If you've been around the Bible at all, you can anticipate where these are found: ultimately in God. We were created to desire Him, and until we are connected to God in Christ Jesus, we cannot fully experience the potential for which we were created.

Christ's Advent: The Arrival of What We Deeply Need

The first of these needs is spoken of in John chapter 1, verses 14 through 17, where John speaks of the very thing this holiday season is all about—what we theologically call the incarnation. In the liturgical tradition, this season from the end of Thanksgiving until Christmas is called Advent. Christ's Advent is the arrival of that which we deeply need and ultimately desire.

People may not fully comprehend what their deep desire is—that's why they keep applying different things to it, hoping to meet the need—but Jesus's coming is the arrival of what we deeply desire and ultimately need. John 1:14 says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." That is incarnation; that is Advent. Two thousand years ago—and I'll be the first to admit it may not have happened on December 25th, though that's the day we celebrate—Christ came into this world so that God might dwell in our midst.

The prophet Isaiah wrote about this 2,700 years ago: "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel"—which means God with us.

The Word Made Flesh, Full of Grace

The title most often given to Jesus in John's Gospel is Son of God. But before the Son of God was incarnate, He existed beforehand under the title Word of God. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and all things were made through Him." Then verse 14 says that Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

When the Word who existed before creation changes address and comes down to earth, what is the result? "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." The Word of God stepped onto the scene of humanity so that we could comprehend with our senses the fullness of the glory of God—full of grace and full of truth. Today I want to zero in on grace. Whether we realize it or not, what human beings deeply need is the grace that comes from Jesus Christ.

If anyone should know that the things of this world cannot satisfy, it's Americans living in 2018. We've done exactly what Solomon spoke of when he wrote Ecclesiastes nearly 3,000 years ago. Solomon was essentially an anthropologist studying human desire and need, and Ecclesiastes is his research paper. He tried to satisfy himself with wealth, power, and pleasure, and his final conclusion was, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"—or as another translation puts it, "soap bubbles." Here we are 3,000 years later, still grabbing at soap bubbles, our hearts still restless, because what we deeply need is found only in Christ and is accessible only through grace.

Why We Need Grace: The Law Was Given Through Moses

So what is grace, and why do we need it? Grace is the merciful kindness God has given us in spite of our sin, as a result of what Jesus did for us on the cross. As Romans 5:8 says, "God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." John 3:16 declares, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." That is grace.

But why do we need it? John 1:17 tells us: "The law was given through Moses." Romans 3:19-20 explains: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." The wrong way to understand the law is to think that keeping it makes us right before God. The law was not given to make you right before God; it was given to show you how wrong you are before a holy God.

Then Paul continues: "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed... even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

No Greater Gift Than Grace

There is no greater gift than the grace given to us in Christ. A lot of gifts will be given this holiday season—maybe you've already finished your shopping. But among all those gifts that we think will bring satisfaction, we know they won't, because they break, they get old, and a better version comes out the day after Christmas making yours obsolete within 24 hours. Those things cannot satisfy. Our hearts will be restless until we experience the grace that comes through Jesus.

How does Jesus bring this grace? John 1:15 says, "John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, 'This is He of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'" A helpful note: the Gospel of John was written by the apostle John, but he writes about a different John—John the Baptist. John the Baptist bore witness to the Word made flesh, declaring in verse 29, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

John the Baptist and the Lamb of God

Why was John the Baptist dunking people in water 2,000 years ago? He tells us himself: "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.'"

God had told John the Baptist to preach repentance, baptize those who came, and watch for the one upon whom the Spirit descended like a dove. So I imagine John baptizing person after person—"Nope. Next. Nope. Next."—until one day Jesus came, a man whom Isaiah said had nothing in His form to make Him stand out, looking like an average Jewish man of the day. Yet when Jesus came up out of the water, the Spirit of God descended on Him and remained, and John declared, "That's Him!" The next day, looking at Jesus, he said again, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

Jesus gives grace by giving Himself to take away sin. To a Jewish hearer, the language of the lamb that takes away sin was familiar. In the Levitical sacrificial system, dealing with sin required a sacrifice—a lamb without spot or blemish, offered in the place of the sinful person to cover their sin. But that covering only lasted until the next sin, requiring sacrifice after sacrifice, because the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin. Jesus came as the Lamb of God to take away sin, not merely cover it—dying as the sacrifice in our place. That is grace.

Who Receives This Grace, and How

Who receives this gift? John 1:16 says, "And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace." Does "all" mean every person on earth at all times receives the fullness of His grace? Some read it that way, but the surrounding text says otherwise. John 1:11-13 says, "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name."

So there were some who did not receive Him, but to those who did, He gave the right to be called children of God. The "all" in verse 16 refers to all who receive Him. And how do they receive this grace? By believing in His name. God's grace is given freely to those who trust in Jesus. The simple way to receive the fullness of God's grace that we desperately need is to trust in Jesus.

Grace Upon Grace From Infinite Stores

Finally, how much grace do we receive? "Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace." The New Living Translation says, "From His abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another." The ESV says, "From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace."

When we give gifts, they come from limited, finite resources—there's a limit to what we can give. But God has infinite stores of grace. There is never a time you come to God for grace and find Him tapped out. This is why Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." And Lamentations 3 says, "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." The renewing resource of God's grace is poured out freely and abundantly upon those who believe.

Don't Miss the Reason for the Season

Maslow researched and discovered that human beings have basic needs, but as time went on he realized man needs transcendence—something spiritual—because he is more than material. Every atheist you know is a materialist, believing every need can be met through material satisfaction. Yet we've been living in a vast experiment in this country, and we've all concluded that material satisfaction is not enough. For us to experience our fullest potential, we need transcendence. And we come into contact with that transcendence only through the grace Jesus gives, through trusting in His finished work—which is ultimately what Christmas is all about.

Many things can distract us from that main point. Maybe you remember those buttons from the 1990s: "Jesus is the reason for the season." There's still a sign along the 78 in San Marcos that says it every year. It's a simple reminder, but amidst all the parties, bonuses, and gift-giving—all the good things—we can miss that what we ultimately need and desire is the grace of God. Without it, something huge is missing from our lives.

Those of us who know this have the opportunity to share that gift of grace with others. The worst gift is the one we forget to give. So this holiday season, let's not miss it—because all that we want is ultimately found in Christ, not in the trappings of the season.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, we thank You for the revelation of the fullness of grace that comes as a result of Your coming to this earth. I pray that every one of us has received the fullness of Your grace by putting our trust in You—and that having freely received, we would freely give it to others. There will be opportunities this holiday season to interact with neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family members who don't know this grace and are not satisfied with the new car, computer, raise, or position they've received. Stir us to share Your grace with them.

But, Lord, I realize there are people here today who have received Your grace yet are still restless because they're not resting in it. Bring us into a place where we rest in the finished work of what You've done for us on the cross, that we would experience the fullness of Your grace.

And if you've never trusted in Jesus and received the grace of God, you can do that today. Pray with me: Dear Jesus, I need Your grace. I need Your forgiveness. I pray that You would come into my life, forgive me of my sin, and help me to follow You by faith and rest in Your finished work. In Jesus' name.

Now may the Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.