John 1: 14, 16+17 And the Word was made 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....And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
	The passage under consideration is not an unfamiliar one, it has been before us on many occasions, yet it is always new in the sense of how pregnant it is in the glory of the Love of God. There is much that could be said, will be said, and should be said in relation to this passage. We cannot spend sufficient time to exhaust the aspect of the fulness of Christ. That will be the joy of eternity in His revealed place in creation. Rather, this evening, let us focus for a brief time on the fulness of Christ in us in light of the celebration of His incarnation some 2000 years ago.
	Christ Jesus states, in His High Priestly Prayer, as recorded in John Chapter 17 verse 23, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. This is the message that Christendom should be celebrating this time of year. It is not the message of Santa Claus and gift-giving and any of that ilk. It is not even the sentimental aspects that are so often associated with this season of goodwill, as it is sometimes called. There are those aspects of goodwill toward each other, which can never be overdone, but nonetheless detract from the reality of what God has accomplished. There are those elements of family gatherings and family traditions, again, which are nothing to demean or to suggest doing away with. Family is important. Times of gathering together are necessary and vital to the development of all of us, but that is not what needs to be at the forefront of our time of celebration in the course of the remembrance of the advent of Christ.
	Please don’t consider me a Scrooge or a humbug. I am not at all advocating a doing away with this time of year, unlike the Puritans of many years ago who did not celebrate Christmas. Rather, we need to come to our responsible awareness of what it is that we are rejoicing in as we gather together, corporately, as families, and as loved ones who know the Lord Jesus Christ.
	Over the past years, I have read commentary after commentary about both Christmas and Easter in relation to the church’s role in trying to win back these holidays. They were once considered bastions to the Christian world, to show the piety and the separateness of Christianity from the pagan realms. Now, they are a complete mixture, often over mixed in favor of the world order to corrupt anything of Christ. Even here, I am not trying to advocate a winning back of anything. Let this world have the holidays, if that is the course of things. We have Christ, and Him crucified, and Christ triumphantly resurrected, and Him eternally glorified! Why waste our time with any effort to seize the time of year, when we have, in Christ, eternity to celebrate the glorious Love of God so manifested in Him?
	This is what our focus needs to be, and it is a daily focus that should be part of our every waking moment. Not in terms of legalistically trying to live in the awareness of the One Who now indwells us, but rather in the living relationship that is ours as we seek after the Holy Spirit to establish a greater knowledge of Him in our daily walk. This is life, and life everlasting, to know Him and Him alone. 
	 This is what the Lord came to establish and to express in the Love with which He so fully loved us. He didn’t seek to have a time of year that would celebrate either His birth or His resurrection. He sought to bring life, where only death existed. He sought to bring healing where only disease and infestation abounded. He came to deliver joy and peace to a realm beset with pain and suffering and strife. He brought the very being of God into the world in order to redeem the world and to establish the kingdom of God in grace and truth where only self and anguish and hatred had reigned in anarchy. 
	The world will never allow itself to celebrate the triumph of Christ. Why should it? In His victory, this realm was sentenced to eternal damnation. What is there for the world to celebrate in that truth? Rather than joyous commemoration, this world order has cast itself thoroughly into the paganization of Christ, in a vain attempt to strike at the heart of His victory, His Church. It has attacked the celebration of the Church, while not in the least affecting the basis of its celebrant. The true church recognizes the value of Christ, not in holidays, but in His life of fullness.
	Our life is Christ! It is not based on ideas and remembrances and statutes that create a religious organization. Rather, while many of the true church may be seen to practice religious observances and rituals, nonetheless, the very life of the Church is the person of Christ Who fills it with Himself. We are not, in any manner, stating that we are to become gods unto ourselves, neither will we ever be christs in our selves. There are some religions that teach a striving after godhood for the most devout of believers. We must never allow ourselves to be so persuaded by the lies of this realm to even consider this falsehood for one moment. 
	Rather, we are fully blessed by having God indwell us with Himself. It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that sets us apart from the religions of this realm. It is the person of Jesus Christ, living His life out from us, shining forth in His perfection, that shows the world the Love of God through these earthen vessels. We are fully blessed by God, because He so chose to love the world through His Beloved Son, and in that Love, He chose to fully incorporate us into His Beloved. 
	And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,... The Son of God, the One by Whom all things are created and held together, chose to give up His rightful place and position to take upon Himself the flesh of this creation in order to bring about the end to the chasm between God and man. The usurper had, as was fore known to God, brought enmity with God into this creation. It was the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ Who chose the only path by Whom this enmity could be set aside, to restore the union of God and man, in Himself. For that cause, He chose to come to earth, born of a virgin, born in demeaning circumstances in order to show forth the magnificent Love of God. The angelic hosts heralded His birth, not fully understanding the significance of all that Christ was to accomplish. The earthly forces, set forth in an immediate uproar to eliminate the Heir of Creation. The heavenly choruses sang and the demonic forces fomented because of the cataclysmic work of God set into motion by the incarnation of the Son. Christ’s birth set forth in irreversible action the plan of God to bring an end to the separation of God and man. He put an irrevocable end to the seeming domination of this world order. All of this was accomplished, not as this world would bring forth revolution, with violence and bloodshed and destruction in hatred and desolation. No, Christ, the Word came not as a conqueror with legions upon legions of angels to annihilate His foes. He came as a swaddling babe, a gift of love, full of grace and truth. 
	This was indicated of old. In Habakkuk 2:12-14, God declares
that the violent establishment of a domination will lead to naught, and that His glory will be seen in manners not known to flesh and blood. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity! Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. That which is established by the means and methods of this world is in vain, and doomed. It has no standing before the glory of God. He will accomplish His glory in His own way and by His own superlative means, in His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
	This is the key to our life, if you have never seen it before. We are the recipients and the vessels through whom Christ, even today, is brought unto others in grace and in truth. It is in His Church that the Glory of God is even now filling all the universe in the knowledge that God has accomplished that after which His heart has been eternally set. That is the fulness of Him Who fills all in all. That is the reason we shine forth in this earth, because we are not using worldly principles and methods and ideas to make the world succumb to our ideology. Rather, through His Body of believers, Christ has continued access to love this world in His fulness of grace and truth.
	We are reminded of this wonderful reality in Eph. 1:22+23 as the Apostle Paul relates the heavenly position of glory into which we, in Christ, are now placed ...And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. When we see the unity of being in Christ, we can not but be completely amazed at the great love with which we have been loved by God. Consider the passage in John 17, the oneness of Christ and the Father, and Christ and the church, and the church and the Father in Christ. The bonds are those of precious blood that cannot be broken by any effort of this realm. There is no avenue of separation now that we are in Christ. This was not established by warfare, but by a love so fully expressed in Christ, that even the full forces of the enemy could not prevail against it in any measure. Consider how the early church was utterly persecuted by the whole legions of Rome. The Christians were being cruelly sacrificed as entertainment in the Colisseum, and yet the outcome was that even more people accepted Jesus Christ. His love and peace and forgiveness and mercy and grace shone forth through all the wickedness of this realm that sought to completely annihilate His glorious name. Rather than forcing the Church to deny Christ, His glory flourished and flooded the Roman empire through this persecution.
	Oh the glory of God in Christ Jesus that washes over us in truth and in grace. The amazing grace of God to so love us to give His only begotten Son, that through His death and resurrection, the universe of all creation will see life, the life of fullness in the Word made flesh, the glory of God. We are part and parcel of that glory of Christ! It is nothing of us, and yet it is all of us in Christ Jesus. We cannot produce it, yet, in our beings, it flows forth eternally in the living Word of God to show this world just how fully Christ Jesus has perfectly expressed the Heart of God in Love.
	Eph. 4:13 gives expression to the place into which Christ has put us in Himself, Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Not many of us would even begin to claim this truth in our lives, but the fact is that we are steadily and faithfully being put into those situations which are bringing forth the working of this principle in our individual and corporate lives in Christ. Each passing day is filled with the fullness of Christ, if our eyes would but behold Him in all His glory. Every conflict of our time and energies and efforts and personalities are all being perfectly fit together to create the avenue through which Christ can supremely express His Being of Love. It is an ongoing process in which Christ is ever more evidenced and we, in our self-lives, are ever increasingly crucified. Quoting the Apostle Paul once again in Gal.2:20, I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 
	We need to have this same realization at work in us by the Holy Spirit. It is no longer my life to live, it is Christ’s life that is evidenced unto this world in order to show forth the Love of God. That is how this world order is undone, not by force or by treachery or by revolution, but by Love. It is by Christ as He daily exudes forth from His Body unto those about us. Whether we are at home, at work, at school, at play, in trouble, or out of trouble, in dire circumstances, or leisure, nothing else matters but the knowledge that Jesus Christ is alive and living forth from us in the glory of God. This was ordained in the eternal ages of the ages before creation. That is the perfect plan of God to express His love to the world. He gave Christ to redeem those who would believe on Him, and then, through each of those redeemed, the very Beloved of God, others witness the effectual life of Christ and are drawn to the difference, the heavenly life that is far above the earthly decay that infests this present age. As the heavenly reign of Christ is evidenced, so the difference is marked by believers, by non-believers, and by the rest of this realm.
	We are not functioning in isolation on this earth. There are many creatures watching to see what God is doing in His established placement of Christ as the Lord of all creation. His fulness is evidenced by spiritual entities, and all of creation alike. The enemy is striving to undo what cannot be undone in Christ. Creation moans in anticipation of what God has accomplished in Christ. The angelic hosts and those that have gone before are earnestly witnessing the culmination of what God has established in Himself, in Christ and His Church. It is the fulness of God’s glory that is pervading all the realms of created beings, and it is being accomplished because Christ gave Himself up for the Church, and the Church gave herself up for Christ.
	Col 2:19+20 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; And having made peace through the blood of his cross, unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or in heaven. It is the Church that is the fulness of Christ, as Christ is the fulness of the Church. The whole God-head is seen in relation to each other in this same manner. The Three are One, with no separation. The Father indwells the Son by the Holy Spirit, as does the Son in the Father by the Holy Spirit. While it is imperative to reiterate that we are not brought into any type of godship unto ourselves, nevertheless, we are brought into a relationship with God by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is in that manner that we are made partakers of Christ, and part of the very Beloved of God in, through, and by virtue of Jesus Christ alone. We, of ourselves, have no part in any of this glory. We can do nothing to earn it or to deserve it. It is all because God so loved us that He brought us into this relationship as the fulness of Christ. The completeness of the Love of God is fulfilled in the acceptance of that love of Christ in our hearts. Without acceptance, there is no fulness of the glory of God in Christ. His very redemptive work lacks substance without a redeemed being, the Church, His body. In that Body, He establishes the preeminence of the Father, and the glory of God in a very evident manner.
	The peace that passes all understanding, emanates forth from the heart of God, by the Holy Spirit into our very beings, not because we deserve it or earn it, but because we are indwelled by it in Christ. The joy surpassing that blossoms in the working effectiveness of the Holy Spirit is part of our beings, not because we will it to be so, but because Christ is now our very essence and source of life. These are not things to be bought or strived after, they are the natural working of God in us as His glory permeates our beings, our lives, our hearts. And be very clear on this point, this doesn’t take place at a pace that we set for ourselves, it takes place as Christ’s fullness is instituted and desired and worked and established in our daily walk on this earth by the design and plan of God. It is His will and His plan that is accomplished, not ours. That is one reason that we are not instantly removed from this realm when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. Many of us may prefer that scenario to what the Lord has to take us through, but that would not complete the work of God in all of this creation. It is the Church, the redeemed Body of Christ, in whom the Lord has the freedom to express the fulness of Himself in witness to this creation. As the believers live on this earth in Him, so does the effectiveness of our relationship with God find a tested and tried expression of His Omniscience in so loving us unto Himself.
	Have you ever considered the fact that it would not be difficult for God to just tell creation what to do and how to do it? It would not take much for our Omnipotent Creator to command things to be set right by His might and power. But, as previously indicated in Habbukuk, He chose a manner in which brute force could never find fulfillment. He decided to show His Love in His creation, mankind. In so doing, the eternal ages will resound with the Glory of His Preminence over all creation, not as the all-powerful One, but as the Father from Whom Love emanates forth and fills all in all.
	Col. 2:9+10 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: Just as the fulness of creation is evident in the Body of Christ, so the Body of Christ is the fulness of Christ, as we previously mentioned. It is as we come to know Christ, not as a person of history, not as a doctrine, not as a hope for the future, but in life, in our lives, as our very life, that we will find fullness in Him. Over the years, we have been taught and encouraged to seek Him on the basis of whatever road, whatever avenue, whatever means necessary for the Holy Spirit to use to establish Christ in us. This is just the beginning of our coming to know the fullness of Christ. Our lives will never be the same, because they will never again be ours. They are His to fill with Himself unto the uttermost of the eternal ages. His glory will overflow in Himself in us, through us, about us, and out from us. That glory is full of every expression of Himself, and will take us to the depths of human depravity in order to meet the demand for Him. We will be face to face with the dredges of this realm in order to express the most miraculous fulfillment of the Love of God. Our lives will be marked by this realm, as was Christ’s very life, and those lives of His Apostles and faithful servants, yet through every experience, through every trial, through every battle and every martyrdom, there will be a more and increasingly full expression of Christ filling this realm. What a life we live in Him! What a life He lives in us! What a joy to know that we are incorporated in Him by His work and by His Love, eternally secure and eternally part of the plan of God to so love this world unto Himself.
	Let this world have this month, this time to try to pervert the history of what God did two thousand years ago. We are not warriors to strive with figures and doctrines and theologies. To be honest, we have no time to waste on fruitless conjecture and arguments. We have the love of God to enjoy in our lives. We have a daily walk in Christ to celebrate. We look to the fulfillment of God’s plan that was started long before the ages of the ages were even put into place by God. We look to Christ. We celebrate the Word Who was made flesh and now indwells us! We glory in Him and in Him alone!

And the Word was made 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....And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.