Why Christmas? 3: Come to the Light (John 3.14-21)

Christmas is one of the few moments when our culture still talks openly about light. Lights on trees. Lights in windows. Lights in the darkness of winter.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people like Christmas lights because they’re decorative, not because they’re revealing. They soften the darkness; they don’t expose it.

John 3 does something very different. It doesn’t say the light came to make us feel warm. It says the light came to show us what’s really there.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night—not just because it’s quiet, but because night is safe. Night hides things. And Jesus immediately tells him two things no one wants to hear at Christmas:

1. You are more broken than you think.

2. God loves you enough to do something about it—at terrible cost to Himself.

This passage forces us to see that Christmas is not primarily about comfort, nostalgia, or moral uplift.
It’s about rescue.

Last week, we saw a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a well-educated teacher of Israel, comes to see Jesus at night, to find out more about who he is and why he came. And Nicodemus surely wasn’t ready for that conversation. Jesus explained why he came, and it wasn’t because Israel needed liberation from Roman occupation; it wasn’t because humanity needs improvement.

Jesus came because humanity needs new birth.

That night, Jesus told Nicodemus that religion cannot save him; effort cannot save him; heritage cannot save him.

But that leaves a question hanging in the air: if none of these things can’t save him, what possibly could? How can anyone be born from above?

New birth sounds beautiful, but it also sounds impossible—because as we saw, it’s not something we do, but something God does in us.

So Jesus continues.

And what He says next tells us that his coming—the event we celebrate at Christmas—is not only about birth—it’s about death.

1. The Manger Already Points to the Cross (vv. 14–16)

We’re going to go back over two verses we saw last week, because they’re an important introduction to what he says here. He said that he, Jesus, the Son of Man, descended from heaven, and then he says in v. 14:

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

This is a startling thing to say.

Nicodemus is still processing everything Jesus has just said about new birth, and Jesus jumps straight to this Old Testament story of judgment and death, from Numbers 21.

God had sent judgment on Israel because of their sin, judgment in the form of venomous snakes that were biting people. The solution wasn’t an anti-venom; it wasn’t medicine, or reform, or discipline.

God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole, and anyone who looked at it would live.

It’s a strange story, whose meaning was a bit unclear until Jesus said in this verse that the story of Moses and the bronze serpent was about him. Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert, Jesus would soon be lifted up. He would be lifted up on a wooden cross, where he would carry the sins of all of his people, and suffer in their place.

So let’s think of this in the context of Christmas. The baby in the manger wouldn’t just grow up to be a teacher or a healer. The baby in the manger would grow up to be the man on the cross.

Jesus does not come merely to teach life. He comes to be lifted up so that others may live.

And the way to benefit from his sacrifice is belief. He was lifted up “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Imagine being bitten by one of those serpents in the desert.

You’re in pain. You’re panicking. You want to do something. Apply pressure. Suck out the venom. Run somewhere. Fix it.

And Moses tells you: “No. Look.” Not work. Not improve. Not understand. Just look.

This is precisely why the gospel is hard to swallow for some of us. We don’t mind a God who helps those who help themselves. We resist a God who says, “You are dying—and I will save you, but you must stop trying to save yourself.” That’s belief—it’s not admiration, and it’s not agreement. It’s dependence.

The Israelites who lived weren’t the smartest ones, or the strongest ones. They were the ones desperate enough to trust God’s solution instead of their own. We want something to do. God gives us someone to trust.

That is the context of what is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, which we spent a lot of time on two weeks ago. V. 16:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Just a reminder in case you weren’t here for our Christmas service: when Jesus says that “God so loved the world,” he’s not talking about sentimentality or emotion, he’s talking about intention, and action. He’s not saying that God feels good about us—ask any parent whose kid has just painted the walls how they feel about the kid in that moment. That feeling isn’t important.

Jesus is saying that God made the decision to move toward us in love, despite everything in us that makes loving us difficult. His love is intentional, and it is costly.

God loved a world that did not love Him. He didn’t give advice, but his Son. And he gave his Son to bring life to those who deserved judgment.

Despite all the sentimental Christmas movies that would want us to think the opposite, humanity is not lovable. Christmas isn’t proof that we “all deserve love”.  Christmas is proof that God is merciful.

For some of you, I know that hearing that may feel like a bummer. Recognizing our guilt before God sort of drains Christmas of its good cheer.

But the truth is completely the opposite. At Christmas, we celebrate the grace of God, and grace does not deny guilt—it overcomes it.

If you want to understand the manger, you must look forward to the cross.

2. Come to the Light (vv. 17–21)

Then Jesus continues and tells Nicodemus more about why he came. V. 17:

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

This sounds nice, but this is often misunderstood.

Jesus doesn’t say there is no condemnation. He says that naturally, we are already condemned. “Condemned” is our default mode.

If you walk into an emergency room, no one assumes you’re healthy. You’re not there to be diagnosed as sick—you’re there because something is already wrong. The doctor doesn’t condemn you by naming your condition. He names your condition because treatment is possible.

Jesus functions like that physician. He doesn’t enter the world to announce bad news. The bad news is already true. He comes because the diagnosis has been made—and a cure exists.

Rejecting Jesus doesn’t make you condemned. Rejecting Jesus means you refuse treatment, and let the disease runs its course.

That’s why neutrality is impossible. Not choosing is still choosing. But those who do trust in him, who do believe in him, are not condemned—they are rescued.

The point is, Christmas is not Jesus coming down to judge humanity more effectively or more harshly. It is Jesus coming down to save those who are already condemned.

Neutrality is not an option.

So the question is, if we are condemned, and if Jesus is the rescue we need, why would anyone refuse him? It’s easy to think that it’s simply a matter of intellectual assent—I don’t think he’s the Savior, I don’t think God exists, so I won’t trust him.

And there’s a little truth to that. But there is a deeper truth motivating that refusal. Intellectual belief isn’t the real problem. Jesus tells us what the real problem starting in v. 19.

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

This is brutally honest. People do not reject Jesus primarily because of lack of evidence. They reject Him because of misdirected love. It’s not that they believe in the darkness, but that they love it.

And it’s easy to see why. In the dark, we can do what we want, because we think no one will see it. We can do what we want, because we feel hidden and secure and autonomous.

In the light, we can’t do that. Light exposes. Light reveals. Light threatens our autonomy.

Christmas is comforting only if you want to be saved. If you want to remain hidden, it is deeply unsettling.

No one stumbles into darkness; we love it. Most people say they want transparency—until it’s real.

Think about security camera footage. You’re fine with cameras when they protect you. But the moment footage might expose something you’ve done wrong, the tone changes.

“Do we really need to check that?”

“Let’s not overreact.”

“Context matters.”

Jesus says we avoid the light for the same reason. Not because it lies, but because it tells the truth. Darkness lets us curate ourselves. The light takes away our editing power.

And that’s what makes Christmas unsettling. The child in the manger grows up to say, “I already know the worst thing about you—and I still came.”

Christmas—and the whole of the Christian faith—doesn’t divide people into religious and irreligious, but into those who will be honest, and those who won’t.

Coming to the light means no pretending, no performing, no hiding. Christmas invites us out of illusion and into reality.

And reality, in the gospel, is not rejection—but grace. The illusion is that we can be okay on our own, that we have in ourselves everything we need in order to do and to be what we’re here for; the idea that we are self-sufficient is the illusion.

The reality is that we need help; we need God’s grace.

And the only way we can get that help is to come to the light.

That’s a frightening idea for an adult, because we’ve spent our whole lives doing our best to obtain the skills we need to survive and be successful. And we can do a reasonably good job at that, in certain areas. But when it comes to the deeper levels of the heart, when it comes to our eternity, we are woefully lacking. We need help. We need the light.

It’s scary, but it’s also profoundly restful. The light reveals sin, yes—but it also reveals a Savior who has already dealt with it.

The hard work has already been done. Our job is to trust it.

Conclusion

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Later in John’s Gospel, we will see him step into the light—slowly, imperfectly, but genuinely. He’s one of the two men who take Jesus’s body from the cross to bury him.

Christmas, if we actually take it seriously, always forces this decision—come into the light, or stay in the dark.

Christmas—the life and work of Jesus Christ—divides humanity, not into good and bad, but rather into a) those who come into the light, and b) those who retreat into the dark

The question Christmas asks is not whether Jesus is impressive, or whether we feel good.

It is this:

Will you come into the light, knowing what it will reveal—and trusting what God has already done to save you?

Christmas is God’s declaration that the Light has come.

The only remaining question is whether we will step into it.