December 24, 2025
In Him Was Life
John 1:1-14
John says, “In him was life.” I want to think with you about the search for life.
If you’ve seen the movie Home Alone, you know the setup. The McAllister family is chasing the perfect Christmas. They’re flying to Paris—fancy hotel, beautiful city, to make memories as a family. But in the chaos, they leave Kevin behind. As the story unfolds, while Kevin is back home having adventures, the family is miserable in Paris trying to find Kevin.
The McAllister’s had the destination, the luxury, the experience they planned, but they didn’t get what they wanted.
Life, the good life, can be hard to find.
A woman, in her 40’s in Philadelphia was interviewed recently about the economy and affordability for her generation. She was disillusioned and told the reporter: “I don’t have the life I thought I was going to have.” She had dreamed of birthday blowouts and luxury vacations; instead she was trying to make ends meet for her kids. Life seemed pretty far away.
Life she was dreaming about is maybe the life of a rich and famous person, but I’m not sure that’s really the life she was looking for either.
Earlier this year in an interview around the time of the U.S. Open, Scottie Scheffler—the world’s number one golfer who has fame, money, and success at the highest level—stirred controversy when he said that his life wasn’t that great. He just wanted to be home with his family and his friends.
What does it mean to have life? Not just to be alive, breathing and functioning, but to actually have life?
All of us search for life, and we do it in different ways.
Some folks here are younger, and we’re chasing life. We’re raising kids and trying to get them ready to launch. Making family memories while there’s still time and we’re still together. We’re accumulating—maybe not stuff, but experiences. Trying to collect memories that will prove one day, when you look back, that you lived your life well. That you didn’t miss it.
Some of us here are older, and when you’re older it can feel like the best parts of life are behind you—back when you were younger, healthier, raising kids, building a career, going to weddings and graduations instead of funerals. Now, you seek friendship, and serving others, and experiences, and the joy is real, but so is the nostalgia.
All of us, old or young or in the middle, have this question just under the surface: Am I alive? Am I living? Or did I miss it? And if I missed it, can I find it?
Trying to have life is a lot like trying to have fun or trying to have friendship. You can’t just have fun. You do something else and fun happens. You can’t just make a friendship. You do something together and friendship develops. Fun is a gift. Friendship is a gift.
It happens along the way.
Life is like that. Life is a gift we receive along the way. Life is received as we live and move in a certain direction, as we do things, and attend to things, to people, and to God.
You can’t go get it. You can’t gather enough achievements or experiences or memories to say, now I’ve got a life.
You can’t produce a life you can only receive it.
John’s gospel is trying to tell us about how to have life. In the opening chapter, describing who Jesus is and why he came, John writes: “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
Let me tell you what John means by “life” here, because it matters. The Greek language has two words for life. There’s bios—that’s biological life, the life of breathing and eating and functioning. We get the word “biology” from that. But John doesn’t use that word. He uses zōē—divine life, eternal life, abundant life. Real life.
The life you were made for, the life your parents wished for you when you were born, the life you really want to have.
John uses this word zōē thirty-six times in his Gospel. It’s one of his major themes. Later Jesus will say, “I am the bread of life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
And here in this reading on Christmas Eve, John tells us where this life is located: “In him was life.” He is the embodiment of life.
It is a statement about location, not achievement. Life exists in Jesus, and you can receive it by being connected to him—by orienting your time and attention and heart and soul and strength toward him.
Think of it this way. You can power your house with batteries or a generator, but it constantly needs to be recharged. Or you power your house through the grid, and it’s a limitless supply and it never runs out.
Jesus isn’t like the generator that needs to be constantly recharged. He’s like a power plant. He is the source. Life flows from him.
And when you’re connected to the source, when you’re oriented toward him as a friend, when you are following his teaching and living his ways, life happens as a gift.
Not because you’re trying to produce it, but because you’re receiving it from where it actually exists.
I reflected this week on where I felt most alive this year. If you have some quiet moments in the days ahead, as you prepare to start a new year, you might want to do this for yourself.
When I felt most alive it was consistently in times when my anxiety about life was quieted and I was focused on the present moment.
Playing with my kids, on a date with my wife, having a Zoom call with my friend, working with my colleagues, laughing together at a church retreat, taking food to a family who needed a meal, pressing the donate button for an organization that was making life better for other people.
I wasn’t trying to create a memory to prove I was living a good life. I was just there. Present to the gifts of God, to the needs of others, to the mercy and way of Jesus. That’s when life in him became life in me.
Life is in him. And it comes to us when we walk his way. And it’s not about accumulation. It’s about presence. Connection. Love. Being fully here, fully now, fully with God and with others.
This is the good news of Christmas: you don’t have to go somewhere else to find life. The Word who became flesh and pitched his tent with us. Grace and truth is in his face, and life is in his way.
You don’t have to wait until things get better to have life. You don’t have to accumulate more to have a life. You don’t have to prove yourself worthy to be rewarded with a life. Life is here.
The Word became flesh that we might have life and have it to the full.
Not as something to chase, but something to receive. Friendship with him. Fellowship with his people. Good work to do on his way, songs of thanksgiving to sing.
It is life here; it is life everlasting. It can begin now.
Life has come to us. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina