The Word Became Flesh

 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14a).

 

For the first thirteen chapters of John we see what the “Word became flesh” looks like with respect to our Lord Jesus Christ, but then this mysterious subject takes a turn that is so unexpected that to this day many of us deny it even though “it is written.” For in John 14 Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will come to live within us and that He and the Father will also come to live within us (John 14:16 – 17, 23). In other words, the Word will not only tabernacle in the flesh of the Son of Mary, but He will also live within His People.

 

This radical transposition was demonstrated on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) when the Holy Spirit filled the Temple of God, the People of God, and inaugurated an expanded Incarnation which finds its climax in the manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:19), the ultimate breaking forth of the New Jerusalem, the Bride (Revelation chapters 21 – 22), and the maturation of the Mature Man (Ephesians 4:13).

 

Paul, whose life was once orientated and dedicated to the Temple in Jerusalem, came to see the Greater and Eternal Temple in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:19 – 22) and preached what he heard from St. Stephen, that God does not live in temples made with hands (Acts 7:48; 17:24). Peter also saw the expanded and ever-growing Incarnation when he wrote that we are “being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). And of course the Apostle John writes, “Greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

 

Now if a hallmark of the Incarnation is “grace and truth” (John 1:14, 16, 17), then a hallmark of our lives must be “grace and truth.” We must not have grace without truth, for that is subjective promiscuity. Neither should we have truth without grace, for that is dead legalism and pedantry – that is scribal Christianity.

 

Not only must we have grace and truth, just as Jesus Christ we must “realize,” manifest, and demonstrate grace and truth (John 1:17), and in Christ we are called to manifest, explain, and display the Father (John 1:18; 14:7 – 9).

 

The enemy desires to blind us to our birthright, our inheritance, and our calling. If the enemy cannot keep us from the Kingdom, he will attempt to keep us from realizing the fulness of the Gospel and our calling as the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. While we may have been delivered through the Red Sea, our hearts and minds and identity are often found back in Egypt.

 

Jesus has given us His glory because we are His brothers and sisters (John 17:22; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10 – 13). It is surely a cosmic tragedy that we refuse to accept His glory, our calling in Him, and our identity as the saints of God in Christ. The world awaits deliverance through the Body of Christ, creation groans and travails for our unveiling (Romans 8:20 – 23), and yet our hearts and minds remain in Egypt, in the house of bondage. What does it matter if we gather on Sundays if our hearts and minds are elsewhere?

 

I fear that just as ancient galleys chained slaves to oars, that we are chained to pews; we row and we row, but we row in the waters of perpetual sin consciousness – a characteristic of the Old Covenant (Hebrews chapters 7 – 10), and we make myriad excuses for why we do not soar with eagles in our inheritance, our birthright, and our calling in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Dear, dear friends, both the world and the professing church need to see the reality of John 1:14 – 18 in us…not just as individuals, for no one person can contain the glory of God, but rather in us as the Body of Jesus Christ, the Bride, the true and everlasting Temple of God.