During Christmas the church celebrates the most glorious event in human history: when God made his dwelling among us. This glorious presence of our incarnate Lord is what we sing about in Psalm 84, too: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!” This psalm is really a Christmas song – one of the finest, to be sure!

In the Old Testament God’s dwelling place was the tabernacle and later the temple. For the psalmist there was scarcely a longing as intense as the longing to go up to God’s dwelling-place to be where God Himself was.

It is one thing to go up to God’s dwelling place. It is quite another for God’s dwelling place to be brought close to you. That’s what happened when the Word became flesh. God brought his dwelling place close to us in the person of Jesus. Now He is the loveliest of all places to be – and He has come right to us in human flesh!

To most people, there was nothing all that special about Jesus. He was just another man. But not to John and the other eye-witnesses of Christmas; “We have seen his glory!” they announced.

We are confronted here with an astonishing and holy mystery. Jesus appeared in the flesh, not to conceal, but to reveal, God’s glory before the eyes of all! The Hellenistic Jews, to whom John wrote, would often call the temple the Shekinah, which means “glory.” That’s what the tabernacle represented to God’s people: the glory of the Lord.

So when John says that God has made his dwelling among us – literally that God has tabernacled among us – God’s glory instantly came to mind. To think of God’s dwelling place apart from his glory was inconceivable!

What is your response as you behold the Lord Jesus, God’s dwelling place brought near? Will you join the choir of angels and shout “Glory to God in the highest!” Will you join all the other temple pilgrims who cry “Glory!” in the presence of King Jesus? Will you belt out that ancient Christmas song: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty!”

As believers cry “Glory!” over Jesus, others scratch their heads, even if they’ve heard his story. Where are the royal robes? We see a naked man on a crude cross! Where’s the crown of gold? We only see one made of thorns! Where’s the palace? We’ve heard He didn’t even own a pillow!

When we read John’s gospel such responses aren’t surprising. For John tells us that Jesus revealed his glory in unexpected ways. He attended the poorly planned wedding of a poverty-stricken couple and there He revealed his glory by turning tepid water into choice wine. He went to the sick and healed them. He visited the helpless and delivered them. He went to the ignorant and taught them. He came to the hungry with food. He washed the feet of twelve men He knew would abandon Him and later even sent them out as his spokesmen.

Where is the glory? Precisely in all those things, John tells us in his gospel!

That was nowhere clearer than in his death on the cross. For John tells us something else that one would hardly expect, namely what Jesus said when the time had come for Him to die on the cross. “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified!” (John 12:23)

Christmas is all about the loveliness of God’s glory, dwelling in Jesus. But only when Easter is kept on the horizon does this divine glory shine its brightest. When you have come to know the Christ-child as the Christ crucified – that is when you have beheld the glory of God! When you have come to know Jesus as the Lamb of God, pierced and scorned and slain as the victim who was punished for your sins and in your place – that is when you have seen his glory! When the Spirit of God brings you to your knees in humble repentance before the altar of the Lamb of God – that is when you will notice the glorious loveliness of God’s house and discover it as the only place to be!