It’s a Wonderful Life: What if Christ Had Never Been Born? (John 1:1-18)

John 1:1-18 shows us the problem with the question, “What if Christ had never been born?”  It would require a hypothetical world that does not exist but God created His Story (history) the way that He did.  Everything has either been directly or indirectly impacted or influenced by the birth of Jesus Christ.  And if we seriously thought long enough about it (like the way the plot of every science-fiction time-travel book or movie falls apart if you think about it long enough), we would see that the plot problems of such an idea are multiplied by infinity when we are talking about the birth of Christ.  Since everything before the birth of Christ was leading up to the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ in the plan of God, we would be forced into pure speculation about everything before and after his birth if we were to answer the question seriously — which would make this an absurd idea.  A better question is, “Christ was born, so what difference does that make to you?”  The passage shows several ways this was true.  And when you think about it the life of Jesus was a “wonderful” life–it was filled with signs and wonders demonstrating that He is who He says that He is.  And the new life that He gives to those who believe is a wonderful life because we have all of the signs and wonders of Scripture to show us that it is eternal life.  So the birth of Christ makes all of the difference to those who believe and leads us to want to enter the world of the people living around us and to show them the way much like the man who wanted to become a bird to get the freezing birds into the barn of safety.

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