Sometimes I think pretty unchristian thoughts.  Last night on TV, there was an atheist on Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor” proclaiming that the winter solstice is what we ought to be celebrating as the reason for the season: the birth of the sun (S…U…N) , not of the Son (S….O….N).   And after spelling the homophones for effect, he grinned with this self-serving little smirk.

Do you want to know my immediate thought? 

It was: “What a moron.”

He doesn’t get it that the Word was made flesh and four little words changed everything when Jesus Christ came to dwell among us.  But that shallow-thinking atheist doesn’t appreciate that the Eternal, yes Eternal, Word created everything, including his beloved sun (S…U…N).   It’s an inconvenient truth that the sun had to arise somehow and its arising ex nihilo (from nothing material) cannot be explained apart from a Creator who existed as completely spiritual/nothing material in eternity past.

The truth can be rather inconvenient and in our day and age, the truth of the Prologue of John is all but disappearing from many sectors of human life.

When Jesus came (as we read in our verse for this week), we see the full truth:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Not a truth.  Not a mixture of truth and myth.  Not a fairy tale created around wishful thinking.  Not a relative truth, true for me but not for you.  He was full of grace, yes, and full of truth.

He is The Truth and He is God, inconvenient as that may be for in-denial atheists who want to persist in imagining a fairy tale world with no God.

Questions for pondering:

1. What does it mean to you that Jesus was full of grace and truth, characteristics He had before time began?
2. How should our lives change because of His grace?  How should our lives change because He is The Truth?
3. What does it mean when we want to ignore parts of God’s Word to us?

Exodus 34:4 So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. 5 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” 8 Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped.

What Moses heard proclaimed is what we see in Jesus. 

The character of God proclaimed to Moses is now seen in Jesus Christ who embodies all of God’s character including two defining attributes, His grace and His truth.  The words in the Greek, chosen by John as grace and truth, reflect the Hebrew words hesed and ‘emet which communicate the ideas of divine lovingkindness and great faithfulness.  What we see in John 1:14 is the surpassing nature of a New Testament reflection of a former grace–the grace in the giving of the Law and the proclamation of God’s character to Moses–now visible to us in the Person of Jesus.

We worship Jesus because He is God, coming from the Father and displaying the very attributes in His person that He proclaimed long ago to Moses.  

God is completely loving and hence, full of grace…and He is faithful and reliable in all He does. He doesn’t just say what is true, and act truthfully, but He is the Truth.  Consequently He tells us the truth when He says in John 15:13,

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

The Word was not made flesh merely to display God among us, to dwell among us, to reveal Him to us.  No, the Word was made flesh in order to die for us, as the perfect gracious demonstration of the greatness of His lovingkindness and to prove Himself reliable in all He does as the supreme example of faithfulness. In John 14:6 Jesus says,

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

He is reliable in everything He does.  He is full of grace and truth.

Let’s continue our Advent series Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person with a return to a panoramic view of the Incarnation.  Back before time began, LOVE was powerfully present within the triune godhead (Father, Word, and Holy Spirit), but at the first Advent, Jesus came from the Father to begin the effective work of saving humanity, foretold as early as Genesis 3 in His Word.

Perhaps it’s a good time to revisit an analogy I like to use regarding Trinity because we must be clear: Christians do not worship three gods, but One True God. 

All analogies to something spiritual (Nothing Material) will fall apart if pressed too far into the material world, but I find this helpful to seeing how One God could have 3 Persons without being 3 gods:

• If God is like a one-room spiritual house (One True God), then the Father is like a window, a sky-light allowing a look inside to see the entire contents of the one room spiritual house.  Inside the spiritual house, Father, Son and Holy Spirit roam freely about all the contents of the house and share fully the same space furnished with character and attributes.  We cannot get inside the house to see.  We take God at His word.
• Furthermore, we can’t climb high enough to get a view through the Father sky-light since that’s God’s holy space.  The Word/Son and the Holy Spirit inside the spiritual house can see the skylight fully, witnessing the light and looking out.  It’s important to know that the window is not the house or even the contents of the house.  The window gives light and perspective to see the sacred space that’s on the inside.
• The Holy Spirit (Spirit of God) is another window to seeing the whole contents of the one-room house, but the Holy Spirit, being spirit—just like the Father—doesn’t allow us a view into God’s character.  We cannot access that window either.  This window also is not the house.  But the Spirit allows us a different view upon the same contents as God chooses to make Himself known.  Specifically the role of the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s character took on a new emphasis after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
• But then there’s the window called the Word. From before time began, the Word existed, sharing that beautiful sacred space and knowing the fullness of LOVE.

The Word is not a wall on the house separate from the other walls.  The Word is a window allowing us to see a bit of who God is.  At Creation, we were given a partial view of God’s goodness—as much as our beings could absorb without killing us.  In the fall of man, human sin made the view foggy, not because of what’s on the inside of the house (forever unchanging), but because of what’s outside the house and human sin changed everything outside.

You know how when a business is taking over a new space, sometimes they’ll paint a whitish paint on the window until they unveil the new store, maybe allowing peep-holes to see bits and pieces of what’s going on inside?  Sin painted something that obstructed our view.  What happened in the Incarnation is that God wiped the paint away so that in Jesus we can clearly see into the character of God—something only the Incarnate Word can show us.

We are eyewitnesses to the glory of the One and Only God through the perfectly clean window of The Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ. 

Had He not come from the Father, we would not be able to see through the window from a human level.

Hebrews 1:1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

In the powerful Prologue of the Gospel of John, verse 14 lays the groundwork for faith.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

We must believe that in Christ, God has given us a glimpse of His glory, an eye-level window into who God is, and Jesus can show us who the Father is because He came from the Father.

Questions for pondering:

1. Why is it important that Jesus came from the Father?
2. How do pictures depicting God the Father and Jesus as men and the Holy Spirit as a dove contribute to misunderstandings about the nature of the Trinity?

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

This week, we’re looking at the powerful verse 14 of the Prologue in the Gospel of John as we see Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person.  Today, we’ve reached one of the most interesting phrases in all the New Testament: the glory of the One and Only.

Not that you particularly care about the original Greek words of the New Testament, but there are instances in which English does not do a concept justice.

The specific word in question is monogenēs and is a word used of other people, too, not just Jesus Christ.

• The only son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:12)
• The only daughter of Jairus (Luke 8:42)
• The only son—demon possessed—whose desperate condition prompted the boy’s father to seek Jesus for healing (Luke 9:38)
• The child of promise (Isaac) whom Abraham was asked to sacrifice to the LORD on Mount Moriah

I bring this up because the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible (the definitive translation for over 1000 years of Christendom still holding a special place for Roman Catholics) as well as the King James and New King James versions all render monogenēs as the “Only Begotten.”

Just a nuance or something more?

I’d argue that it moves the focus from the unique, powerful, divine, and poignant LOVE relationship of Father and Son, evoking a strong sentiment of what a sacrifice this was of God the Father to pursue His Incarnation…and changes it to an emphasis on the Virgin Birth.  This rendering, in other words, takes what is truly divine and brings it down to a human level. It sees the Incarnation more from Mary’s and our human point of view and less from God’s.

That monogenēs is used of other people’s children, too, reminds us that in the Incarnation, the simple act of being born human–as Only Begotten–is not completely what it’s all about.  (This human error leads to the idea–common among Mormons, for example—that we can all be elevated to godhood someday basis our good lives.  It’s an error of biblical proportions.)

It’s not simply about the humanity of Jesus Christ as God’s “only begotten” Son. 

It’s an important distinction that His eternal divinity’s being made flesh is what makes the Incarnation the Incarnation.  We see the glory of the One and Only God.  We see Jesus and we see the Father.

It’s about the unique divine relationship of LOVE existing from before time, sacrificially set on partial-hold, as Jesus added our humanity to His eternal divinity in order that—by His unique, holy, and divine relationship to the Father—He might save us.  Monogenēs points out that this sacrifice is even more powerful because of the divinity of the unique (One and Only) Eternal Word sent in the flesh to save us.  It was a huge sacrifice on the part of God to condescend to save us and powerful evidence of the divine eternal LOVE that showed up at Advent in the Person of Jesus Christ.

A fertilized egg in the womb of a young virgin is not the full miracle of the Incarnation. 

Stop and think about it for a second: God could have done that without giving us Himself. 

Just another human baby—even being uniquely born to a virgin–couldn’t save the world.

The true miracle of the Incarnation is the eternal divine Word became flesh as God’s most poignant display of the greatness of His LOVE by sending Jesus—a wholly and holy unique Son—to come, to be born, to live, to teach, and to die that we might be able to be saved by believing in Him.

So much more than just a Virgin Birth, is it not?

Let’s continue our look at the “Prologue” of the Gospel of John during our Advent series Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person, in the Person of Jesus Christ, that is.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14).

Yesterday we saw that the first result of the Incarnation was Jesus became the earthly tabernacle in which God dwelled among His people.  Starting with the point of Jesus’ humanity (the Incarnation), our eternal God dwells right among us, in Jesus Christ.  God’s presence was formerly hidden in a cloud and pillar of fire.  Now, He’s not hidden anymore.  He’s visible in Jesus.

So, today we see a second result of the Incarnation: Revelation of who God is.  We have seen His glory.

Back in the days of Moses, this glory being seen directly would be unheard of.

Exodus 33:7 Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the LORD would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. 8 And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. 9 As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses. 10 Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to his tent. 11 The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent. 12 Moses said to the LORD, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ 13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” 14 The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” 17 And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” 18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” 19 And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

No one may see Me and live.

Remember earlier in our devotional series where we talked about the magnitude of God’s love being so much we simply couldn’t take it?  No one could “see” the full expanse of God’s love and goodness and live to tell about it.

In some mysterious way, Jesus is kind of like a filter.  His humanity veils the full grace and glory of God, allowing just enough through to be what we can absorb, but not so much that it would kill us.  When we see Jesus, we see the Father.

Like an eclipse of the sun would burn our eyes to look at directly, God is too much for us.  Jesus provides that human filter allowing us to see God…perfectly and safely.  In Jesus, we are beholding His glory.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

We’re looking at the Gospel of John during Advent and seeing Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person, in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Yesterday we saw that Four Simple Words changed everything.  From that starting point of radical transformation for humanity’s condition, God’s being “with us” (the meaning of Emmanuel) continues the powerful impact of the Incarnation.  It was a factual and precise moment with ongoing powerful results.

He made His dwelling among us. 

Literally LOVE “pitched His tent” or tabernacled with us, evoking images of the days in which God’s glory filled the tabernacle during the days of Moses.  Wherever the Israelites went, God’s presence went with them.  Now, Scripture tells us that God—in Jesus Christ—is now present among His people in a whole new way.  He is Emmanuel.  He is the Christ.

Jesus did NOT grow into godhood. Scripture is clear on that. 

This is the dividing line between real Christians and those pretender religions.

From the moment of the fertilized egg in Mary’s womb, the eternal God was made flesh and began dwelling among us.  He didn’t become God when His heartbeat was first evident.  He didn’t become God when He was viable to survive outside the womb.  He didn’t become God when He was birthed.  He didn’t come to tabernacle with us as a fully-formed baby stuffed under Mary’s shirt.  He didn’t become God only after He’d lived an impeccable life.

Yes, He was fully human only from the singular moment of the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing Mary. 

But, He was eternally God. 

Fully, eternally God.

Questions for pondering:

1. Ponder the many ways in which the Incarnation is the pivot point of all history.  How is the Incarnation at Christmas a necessary prerequisite for Easter’s true meaning?
2. Looking for a Messiah among men has been a chronic misunderstanding for faithful Jews.  How do the Four Simple Words of the Incarnation present the biggest stumbling block—and the KEY—to understanding of salvation?
3. Jesus’ humanity was the earthly tent in which God dwelled among us.  What light does this shed on 2 Corinthians 5:4 For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life?
4. In Jesus was life and that life was the light of men (John 1:4).  What does the Incarnation have to do with mortality and eternal life?
5. How can any Bible-believing Christian reasonably be pro-abortion given the Incarnation?

Four simple words that changed history: The Word became flesh.

The Incarnation is a miracle without a doubt.  Not only for the mystery of how it happened, but also the results.

• Without the Incarnation, there would be no redemption.
• Without the Incarnation, there would be no heavenly hope for us or eternal life.
• Without the Incarnation, there would be no peace with God.
• Without the Incarnation, there would be only best human efforts that come up short.
• Without the Incarnation, death would still have victory as the final word in anyone’s life.
• Without the Incarnation, the grave would laugh each time death swallows another victim whole.
• Without the Incarnation, fear would rule.  Fear of death.  Fear of the future.  Fear of the unknown.

To the atheists who put up a sign in Times Square asking “Who needs Christ at Christmas?” and then crosses out Christ  and answers the question with “Nobody,” the picture describing a world without the Incarnation is their reality.  No redemption.  No hope.  No peace.  No effort is good enough.  No victory over death.  No life after death.  No security in life, in death, in the present, for the future or in the past.  No confidence in what one knows.  Victims of nature.  Victims of their born to dying bodies.  Victims of minds that are too small to absorb how Four Simple Words changed everything: The Word Became Flesh!

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.  He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:10-12)

Amazing. You who created everything by the power of your eternal Word would be LOVE’s coming down to enter the space and time of what you created.

Unexpected. You who rule over all would arrive as a baby.

Shocking. Eternal riches of life and light in a poor girl’s womb.

Incongruous.  King of Kings in swaddling clothes.

Mysterious.  Lord of Lords in mother Mary’s arms.

Awesome.  That such magnitude of love could fit in a baby-size frame.

Blind. That we would not see you for who you are.

Insulting.  That we would look for something better.

Inexcusable.  That we would have rejected you.

Astonished. That your nature would extend grace in spite of our ongoing sinful response to you.

Hallelujah.  That you gave us this right: we can be called children of God by believing the baby of the first Advent is who Scripture says He is.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

Faith.  The only acceptable response to such a gift of God.

Amen?

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

The Gospel of John tells the story of Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person from a totally different perspective than the accounts of Gospel writers Matthew and Luke.  Matthew and Luke tell of angelic announcements to Joseph and Mary and both of them refer to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation.  John takes a different approach.

John’s perspective is from an even higher altitude.  Unlike the ground-level human view showing God’s coming down to bless us with His love, John’s focus is on the Incarnation from a more transcendent perspective.  His goal was not to show a Jewish Messiah to be born to a Jewish girl, or a Deliverer to be raised by a righteous Jewish man and his wife who obey the angelic message in fulfillment of Messianic promises to God’s covenant people.

No, John intends to show the Savior coming into the world… with the same true light that He had/was with God in the beginning…the same true light that conceived and brought forth life at Creation…from the other side of that Nothing Material dimension of God’s presence and now to our sinful and fallen created order of everything materially broken.

It’s like yesterday’s “aperture of the invisible” (flashing open once to create life and pour out God’s love in a material way) was now preparing to come into the world in such a similarly powerful way that it would be a moment of unfathomable true light.  This LOVE light and life would give us personal revelation of God in His One and Only Son.  Arguably, God is pouring out His love in an even more dramatic display in the Incarnation than in Creation itself.

He’s not creating things this time, though.  He’s giving Himself as true light coming into the world.  Emmanuel, “God With Us.”

Questions to ponder:

1. Is the Incarnation something we will ever truly grasp?  Why or why not?
2. How far does the “every man” go?  What does it mean that the true light was coming to “every man?”

Probably a little-known fact about me is that I’m a sucker for space photography.  The images never fail to inspire awe in me.  The Hubble Gallery—featuring the photo used in today’s graphic—lists it in their exotic category: Picture Album: “X” Structure at Core of Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

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I thought it was perfect because it may look like an “X” to NASA, but it sure looks like a Cross to me.

Now I know that Jesus is not a galaxy or exploding supernova, but He’s so much more than who we have recreated Him in our minds to be.  Hence the exercise early on in this devotional series

… to open our minds to floating about in Nothing Material

… to witness there may be a dimension we’re overlooking in the beginning with God and

…to begin to imagine

• the magnitude of LOVE being so expansive,
• the power of LOVE being so inexhaustible,
• the depth of LOVE within the Godhead so unfathomable,

that we simply couldn’t see it with our naked eye and live.  If we were to see this kind of Über LOVE in its full force, we couldn’t handle it.  I don’t know if our hearts would stop or if we’d be so afraid that our nerves would fry or if we’d become so full so fast in our tiny human bodies that we’d explode into a bazillion bits and fall like glitter in the glory left behind.

So, I guess I imagine it this way:  It’s like God opened the aperture of the invisible for a flash of a moment so that LOVE’s life and light could burst on the scene in a measured dose so as to reveal what we could absorb of Himself and know this powerful LOVE in a real and personal way.

Questions for meditation:

1. Read Luke 1:35 “And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.”  How does Jesus’ showing up as a baby put God’s LOVE into a form we can understand?
2. How does the Incarnation make God’s holiness something we could grow to see as revelation rather than as a startling vision?
3. All this was in the plan of God before anything was ever made.  How do you feel about the Giver of all life (the Word) becoming a Life Given for us? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)