Is The Word Becoming Flesh?

 

It is Advent and a new year, the Lord willing, will soon be upon us. I have two burdens this morning, the first is that the People of God embody the Word of God, that they live as the Temple of God, acknowledging that the Incarnation continues in them – for the Trinity lives within them. The second is that we see the Bible as God’s Word, God’s Law, and submit ourselves to it in obedient love. Of course, these two burdens cannot be separated, for God’s will is many faceted and is one in Jesus Christ.

 

Limiting the Incarnation to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem to His Ascension is to truncate the Bible’s teaching on the Incarnation; for if the essence of the Incarnation is captured in the phrase, “And the Word became flesh…” (John 14), and if Jesus Christ lives in His People, if He is indeed the Head of the Body, if we are “growing into a holy temple in the Lord…a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21 – 22); then to be sure the Incarnation continues in us.

 

As the Word lives in us we are able to say, “I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8).

 

“The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in Him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him; the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked” (1 John 2:4 – 6).

 

“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

 

Perhaps we live in the church of the turtle? What I mean is that when we start to believe the above, sticking our necks out in faith, we are intimidated to quickly draw back within our shells, hearing that such passages cannot possibly be for "poor sinners" like us – we dare not move toward living in our inheritance and in the fulness of life that we have in Jesus Christ. We dare not believe that Jesus Christ is actually the organic Head of His Body, we dare not presume to live in the realization that the Trinity lives within us.

 

There is a sense in which the Word becomes flesh in us, and we become (are transformed into) the Word; that is, we eat the flesh of Christ and drink the blood of Christ and so live by Christ (John 6:41 – 58). There is a lot to be said for the adage that we are what we eat; we don’t know how true that is!

 

I want to attempt to reflect on the Bible as the Word of God, the Law of God, the revelation of the Son of God. When I was working through Romans 1:1 – 7 recently I was struck by the term “holy Scriptures” in verse 2 (see also 2 Timothy 3:15), and I wondered, “Do we view the Bible as “holy Scripture”? Do we view the Bible as “holy” and “sacred”?

 

Let me say at the outset that there is much about the Bible that I don’t understand, most of all the great mystery of its nature, for its nature is God’s Nature, and its words are God’s Word. I cannot explain this, but I know it is true and its truth resonates within me, and I have seen it affirmed again and again within the People of God, both in my lifetime and in ages past. This is what the Bible testifies about itself and it is what God testifies about the Bible (we will ponder this in a future post, the Lord willing).

 

Yet, one of the things that has puzzled and concerned me the most over recent years has been the erosion of the authority of the Bible within the professing church. Again and again I have been in small groups, Sunday school groups, and congregational gatherings in which professing Christians have sat in judgment on the Bible, rather than submit themselves to the judgment of the Bible. I have seen Bible curricula produced from once pretty reliable denominational publishing houses (and others) that call into question the reliability of holy Scripture and our obedience to God’s Word. It is as if our audience is the world and not God; we seem to be more concerned with being acceptable to the world rather than living lives pleasing to God. We echo the serpent’s, “Has God said?” rather than our Lord’s, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

 

Would we do this if we were before the Throne of God? Would we question the Word of the Creator of all that there is? Would we look the King of kings and Lord of lords in the Face, in the Eye, and say, “You can’t really mean that”?

 

I am not compelled to answer all the questions I have about the Bible. I am not obligated to understand all that I read. I might as well try to take in the Grand Canyon with one glance, or even with ten thousand views from ten thousand vantage points; that great wonder of the world will always be deeper and larger than I am, it will always overwhelm me. By God’s grace I will allow the clear portions of the Bible to clarify, to whatever degree possible, the portions that are obscure. By God’s grace I will seek communion with God and my brothers and sisters in the Bible. By God’s mercy and grace in Christ I will obey His Word. By His help I will approach the Bible as holy, and I will submit myself to the Bible and not participate in the serpent’s rebellion which continuously attacks what God says and the way He says it.

 

While I may not always understand Paul, I will affirm that it is ultimately not Paul speaking but Christ in Paul, and I will not stand in judgment of Christ and His Word; rather I will bow my knee and my understanding and submit myself to my Lord.

 

Along with a deep desire for us to know and obey the Bible as the Living Word of God, is a desire to see us put distance between ourselves and the lawlessness of this present age. For if we are not obeying holy Scripture, if we are not drinking from the cup of obedience to the Bible, then we are drinking from the cup of the serpent, and this is the “man of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:3; 1 Cor. 10:21; 2 Cor. 6:14). It is especially disturbing to me to see professing Christians engaged in disrespect of legitimate authority, to hear vicious vitriol, to see us engaged in toxic “culture wars” when we are not called in Christ to any such thing – but rather to be witnesses to Him, as individuals and especially as an identifiable People, as His Bride, His Church, His Temple. How sad to see professing Christians enabling and affirming lawlessness both in the professing church and in society. (Please consider 2 Timothy 2:24 – 26; and James 3:13 – 18. Are we displaying James 3:17 and 18?)

 

We do not have the capacity to live autonomously; we will either serve God or we will serve the devil – we will either surrender our will to Jesus Christ or to the destroyer of the souls of men. The only lasting antidote to lawlessness is a life of obedience to Jesus Christ.

 

Let me ask you to please consider Proverbs 28:4, 7, 9; and 29:18. What do you see? We’ll come back to these verses in a future post.

 

Is the Word becoming flesh in our lives?