This is Part Two in a series of meditations on the incarnation from John chapter one. If you are new to the series, check out the Intro and Part One.
How are we to know God? Psalm 19 describes how the heavens are telling the glory of God, and how His word works in the heart of man. Psalm 119 is another ode to the word of God, while Psalm 104 praises the Lord for His creation. Romans 1 teaches that His invisible attributes are seen in all that He has made.
And yet…
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…
The Creator now converges with creation. The Infinite enters into finitude. God becomes a man.
But unlike the written word of God which is powerful and yet not personal, and unlike the Creation which reveals aspects of God’s nature but is not inhabited by Him in any sort of pantheistic sense–no, unlike how God had revealed Himself in His word and in Creation, He has now revealed Himself in a Man–in whom all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). This cosmic intertwining of the spiritual with the material, the eternal with the temporal, is the chief way in which God has chosen to reveal Himself.
“He’s a person not a plan,” Michael Card reminds us. Jesus isn’t just a ticket into heaven. He’s the reason you want to be there, the One who created you, the One with whom your soul, if awakened, longs to be.
Jesus isn’t just a means to an end, but He is Himself the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega.
How does this impact the way we view that Babe in the manger, so seemingly small, so apparently needy?
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…
Have you caught your breath yet?
More tomorrow…
Kept and Keeping 