Pioneer Christian Monthly - December, 1984

The Word Became Flesh
Siebrand Wilts

Friendly pranks are sometimes played on others by taking an object of small value and putting it in a beautifully giftwrapped package, spending more on the packaging than the gift merits. Or, sometimes a very small, expensive gift is wrapped in a large box in the hoi3e of producing a surprise for the person receiving the gift. Or, it may also happen that a gift is so beautifully wrapped, tied with pretty ribbons and decorated with bows that the recipient is hesitant to open it because of the attractiveness of the wrappings.

This may happen to Christmas. Christmas is packaged in such beautiful sounds and colours, excitements and associations that we are in danger of becoming so absorbed in these that we miss the real gift of Christmas. The real meaning of Christmas is not found in the wrappings, but in Jesus Christ. Our cause for joy and celebration is not our gaily decorated homes and churches, the gifts and sharing of friends, but in God's Gift to mankind.

Nowhere is this made clearer than in the opening lines of the Gospel of St. John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ... The Word became flesh and lived or a while among us. We have seen his lory, the lory of he one and only Son, who came rom the Father, full of race and glory. " (John 1:1,14 NIV)

It is John's great thought that Jesus was none other than God. He tells us that Jesus was eternally God, He was equally God, and He was essentially God. All that God is, the man Jesus is. All the attributes we associate with God we must associate with Jesus. He is both omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing). He is God.

Jesus is eternally God. "In the be ginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." The Word was already there at the very beginning of things. John's thought is going back to the very beginning of the Bible. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. " (Gen. 1: 1) What John is saying is this - the Word is not one of the created things; the Word was there before creation. The Word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the Word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and before the world began.

John's thinking about Jesus as the Word has its roots in both Hebrew and Greek philosophy. The Greek term for Word is "Logos". The Greek philosophers used this term to refer to the creating, the guiding and the directing power of God, the power which made the universe and which keeps the universe going. The Hebrew philosopher went beyond referring to "Logos" as the creating thought, by directing us to the Thinker. So when John uses the word Logos to describe Jesus, he is describing Him as the original Thinker behind the universe, the One whose omniscient genius lies behind every law in the physical universe. The idea that Jesus is eternally God is reinforced by the imperfect tense of the verb "was". In the Greek, I am told, in each case the verb "was" is in the imperfect tense. It is the tense used to express not so much something past as something continuous. The verb "was" Word has its roots in both Hebrew and then, suggests a continuous state. In other words, the Person described. by the John as the Word never had a beginning. He is eternally God.

When we think of Jesus, therefore, we must begin not with the prophecies, not with the annunciation, not with his birth, not even with his ministry, but with eternity. Jesus is eternally God.

Jesus is equally God. John goes on to say that "the Word was with God and was God". Nathan Wood in his book, Secret of the Universe, writes: "Before even He clothed Himself with human clay and condescended to be born at Bethlehem, Jesus existed in an eternal state as co-equal with the Father and the Spirit in the trinity of the Godhead. He was equally God."

Jesus is essentially God. John says that the "Word was God". This means that the Word was, as we might say, of the very same character, quality, essence and being as God.

Everything God is or does or has, Jesus is and does and has. He is God. Does God exist in his own right, independent of any creature, without beginning or ending of days? So does Jesus. Does God have the wisdom and power to create the universe? So does Jesus. He is essentially God.

So right at the beginning of his Gospel, John deals with the essential deity of Jesus. He reminds us that Jesus is fully God. This Jesus then became fully man. In verse 14 John tells us that "the Word became flesh and for a while lived among us". In these few words, John describes the miracle of the incarnation. That little Babe, wrapped in cloths and lying in the manger was the eternal, uncreated, self- existing Word made flesh. Jesus, who was and remained perfectly God , became perfect man.

So staggeringly new and unheard of was this conception of God in human form that it is not surprising that there were some, even in the church, who could not believe it. John's word for "flesh" is the Greek word "sarx". Now sarx is the very word that Paul uses over and over again to describe what he called "the flesh", human nature in all its weakness and in all its liabilities to sin. The very thought of taking this word and applying it to the Word, to God, was something that their minds staggered at. John, however, gloriously proclaims the full manhood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is at one and the same time perfectly God and perfectly man, "and for a while lived among us". The clause "and lived among us" may imply far more than the English verb suggests. A literal translation is, "and pitched his tent among us". John may well have been thinking of the tabernacle in the wilderness where the Lord dwelt with Israel (Exodus 25:8 -9; 40:34), and more particularly of that pillar of cloud above the tent of meeting, typifying the visible dwelling of the Lord among his people. He who was in the beginning, put on human flesh, put on human nature; and he who from eternity has dwelt with God, has tabernacled among men, sharing their difficulties with them, like God dwelling in the desert with his wayward and impossible people all the long empty years which their foolishness had brought upon them.

Here we have the true cause for Christmas joy; here we have God's gift to us. God is no longer the distant, remote God, hidden behind a thick veil, but Emmanuel, God with us.

"We have seen his glory," says John, the glory of th -e one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." Again and again, John uses the word glory in connection with Jesus Christ. The glory of the Lord means quite simply the presence of God. Repeatedly in the Old Testament we come across the idea that there were certain times when God's glory was visible among men. In the desert, before the giving of the manna the whole Israelite community "looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud" (Exodus 16: 1 0). When Solomon's Temple was dedicated "the priests could not perform their service, because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his Temple" (I Kings 8:10). And when Isaiah had his vision in the Temple, he heard the angelic choir singing that, "the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6:3). In the Old Testament the glory of the Lord came at times when God was very near.

When the Word became flesh, God was present among his people in all splendour, might and majesty. With the coming of Jesus into the world, men and women saw the glory of God and felt His nearness.

Today, thanks be to God, we too can see and experience the nearness of God. We can know that he is Emmanuel, God with us. And because he is Emmanuel, th ! @ord made flesh, we can rejoice and celebrate. "Alleluia, Amen."