Zeal…Zealot.  Not words we often associate with anything good.  It’s ironic because many of the synonyms of zeal are remarkably positive.  Only fanaticism and mania can be considered negative among a whole listing of positive words like ardor, eagerness, perseverance, passion, sincerity, diligence, etc.

Zealot on the other hand has synonyms like activist, diehard, extremist, fanatic, maniac, militant, nut, radical, and fiend.

So, what do we think of Jesus when we read John 2:17?

His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me”

The Scripture is a quotation from Psalm 69:9 and it is likely that it wasn’t an immediate response of the disciples to the cleansing of the temple but probably only occurred to them after Jesus’ death. Otherwise quoting this Psalm of deliverance seems kind of random and like the disciples are stretching things a bit, looking for Jesus under every Old Testament rock.  But in the theme of deliverance from persecution, this Psalm makes sense, especially since it is mentioned in the Crucifixion scenes.  Like the Psalmist, Jesus would pay a high price for being passionately concerned for God’s honor, therefore, this Psalm makes sense.  Jesus wanted the Temple to be His Father’s house–a place of sincere worship and prayer–and nothing less.  Jesus would pay the ultimate price for that devotion.

Emmanuel: When LOVE showed up in-person means that Jesus came to be God with us.  Consequently, Jesus was a revolutionary in every sense of the word—His actions upset the broken world’s chaos that had existed since the fall of man.  Then after turning the religious status quo upside down, He embarked upon instituting a new sense of order in our lives.  Jesus spent His days living, teaching and then dying to help us remember to have an order with God in charge, not sin.  An order in which God has the last word, not death.  And an order with God receiving worship, not man.

The covenant people had become corrupted and that’s why God’s glory left the Temple. In Jesus, God’s glory was returning, Jesus’ own body would be the Temple, and He’d deal with mankind’s corruption on the Cross.  It’s no wonder Jesus was consumed with the mission for which He’d been sent.

Jesus was zealous about our proper worship of the Father, our Creator God, and He was fixed upon the Cross, making it possible for us to have a relationship with Him.  Maybe we could all be a bit more zealous for this.

Questions for pondering:

1. How would you feel about being called a zealot or any of the synonyms?
2. What are you zealous about?  What hills would you die on?
3. What makes being a zealot good or bad?

John 2:12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”

This is one of those pictures of Jesus that doesn’t quite jibe with the Jesus who loves little children and the Good Shepherd who carries little baby lambs on His shoulders.  Yet this picture of Jesus is recorded in all 4 Gospels (although admittedly in different places).  I like this picture of Jesus because it’s thoroughly Messianic.  The Jews of Jesus’ day were looking for a revolutionary figure…just not the variety of revolutionary Jesus was sent to be.

John’s Gospel specifically points to this as being a second Christological sign, Jesus’ displaying His divine glory.

The Jews of Jesus’ day probably compartmentalized their lives into religious and secular/political just as many of us do today, reserving our spiritual lives for Sundays and keeping that part in a drawer Monday through Saturday while we go about our daily lives.  For many Jews, Jerusalem was far away from daily thoughts.

At the time of the Jewish Passover, tradition would awaken and men would travel from far away lands, coming to Jerusalem to go to the Temple to participate in the annual sacrifices there.  Rather than try to bring and preserve one’s own sacrificial animal in good shape on the long journey, they took a short-cut and bought one there on-site.  Of course, it involved exchanging money and paying a premium for the convenience of a suitable sacrificial animal.  Consequently, the courts became more like a theme-park than a place to offer devotion to God.

Of course, it had been a long time since God’s glory left the former temple known as Solomon’s Temple, famously ornate and opulent.  We read about the glory of the Lord departing in Ezekiel 10:1-18 and His doing so because of the spiritual corruption of the covenant people.  Later, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed and it was many years before two other temples would be built on that same site (the Temple of Zerubbabel followed by Herod’s Temple which is the one in existence at the time of Jesus).

God’s glory didn’t come back to dwell simply because structures were rebuilt.  God wasn’t waiting for a temple extravagant enough before He’d come back in all His glory and dwell among His people.  That said, the practices of sacrifices went on, the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary, the Court of the Israelites, etc.

Never mind that God’s glory wasn’t there.  Until Jesus…

So Jesus, who is the very glory of God—the One and Only, looks at what is going on.  He is Emmanuel (God With Us) and LOVE showing up in-person.  He sees the buying and selling and exchanging of money and all the commerce going on in the courts that were supposed to be places of prayer.  Prayer was the way God met with His people even when His glory could not dwell among such a corrupted covenant people—but now even this place of prayer had become something far less than holy.

It had become commercialized.  God wasn’t at the center.  Ritual had become the center.

Now in Jesus, the Word made flesh, God was making His dwelling among us.  The glory of the LORD is in Jesus and shows up at the temple built by Herod and what does He see?  People going through the motions.  People who preferred convenience over devotion.  People who would rather have salesmen hawking goods and changing money for a convenient sacrifice instead of keeping this place of prayer sacred (as it ought to be).

Jesus displays His glory—in a Messianic revolutionary way—by overthrowing the status quo of theme park religiosity and by calling people back to genuine worship of God. 

Worship that involved true devotion, honest and humble prayer, and truly committed personal sacrifice.  He called them to personal holiness as His revolutionary act in this Christological sign.  He does this as the glory of the LORD back at the temple, the glory of the LORD who dwells among His covenant people in Jesus Christ.

Questions for pondering:

1. In what ways do we turn Christmas into a bunch of rituals and traditions and forget (conveniently) about God and His demands of personal holiness upon His followers?
2. What kinds of conveniences do we substitute for a relationship with Jesus?
3. How do we overlook the glory of the LORD dwelling among us as we surround ourselves with competing images of Christmas trees and angels and reindeer and Santa, etc?
4. If Jesus looked at your Christmas celebration, would He see God at the center or that it had become a commercialized ritual?  Pray and ask God to reveal what He’d like for you to change.

Years ago, I worked in the garden department at Home Depot.  One early morning in the midst of what was to be an all-day downpour, I got a call at work from a couple who were understandably desperate.  They were hosting their child’s wedding at their home and it was supposed to be an outdoor wedding.  Given the time of year, all the rental places had tents already rented and they could not get any more tents to help to overcome the rainy day.  I found a few white pop-up tents in stock and found other ones at other area Home Depot stores on the computer and we called and secured them for this couple.  After the wedding, the couple wrote a thank you to the store entitled, “Barbara Saved the Wedding.”  It was a very nice thought and made many people happy to read it, but it wasn’t a miracle.  I didn’t really save the wedding.  I was just doing my job–with prior practice, some computer know-how, and a bit of decent follow-through.

Jesus, however, did save the wedding!

John 2:1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4 “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” 11 This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

He performed His first miraculous sign at a wedding feast, turning water into wine.  This is not something that with practice and know-how any of us could do.  Jesus didn’t make a quick run out to the liquor store or the mini-mart with a divine debit card.

Jesus did a miracle that only God could do.

To those who were paying attention to what was going on, He revealed His glory (remember that this is the glory of the One and Only God) and as a consequence of doing so, His disciples put their faith in Him.

Jesus saved the wedding (and prevented a huge embarrassment to the bridegroom), but more than that, He demonstrated that He is Emmanuel (God with us) and that LOVE showed up in-person when Jesus came.  His miracles–including this first one–proved He is the Messiah, that His ministry that would be attested to by miraculous signs, and that our rightful response to such LOVE is faith.

Questions for pondering:

1. How did a miracle attest to Jesus’ coming from the Father?
2. Who showed faith in this story?  Was each person asked to show the same level of faith?
3. The passage doesn’t tell us when the water was turned into wine.  Knowing what you know of faith, how did the servants show faith as they brought what they had drawn out to the master?  What if it was still water?  What would have happened to the wedding festivities?

John 1:34 “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” John 1:35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” 37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour. 40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). 42 And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter). 43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote– Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.” 48 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” 50 Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.” 51 He then added, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

John the Baptist is not the same person as the Gospel writer John, but they have one thing in common: both can testify to LOVE’s showing up in person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.

John the Baptist is recorded here (v. 34) as saying that he has seen and he testifies.  At the end of John’s Gospel, the evangelist John says this:

This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. (John 21:24-25)

Interestingly, testimony doesn’t end with believing.  Testimony begins with believing and continues with sharing.  It doesn’t end until we see Jesus face-to- face in eternity. 

John the Baptist shared with two of his disciples (Andrew and an unnamed other, according to tradition perhaps the evangelist John who wrote this Gospel) who became Jesus’ disciples.  Andrew shared with Simon (Peter) and Philip’s testimony was shared with Nathanael.  They were eye-witnesses who shared that Jesus was the Christ–this was their testimony.

Toward the end of the Gospel of John (the evangelist), John writes,

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.  But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

Being an eye-witness, having seen the Son of God as we do in His Word recorded for us, means a beginning for us. It also means a willingness to share our testimony with others.

To whom can you reach out today, sharing the Gospel that brings life?  Will you testify to LOVE?

Have  you ever been to a show and received one of those programs telling you about the production and the biographies of the actors, etc.?  You might feel like you know a little bit about the event and have a sense of appreciation for the performers in the production.  Now imagine for a moment that one of the ushers silently comes up to you out of all the people in the theater and gives you a backstage pass.  You get to meet the writers, the producers, the directors, and all the actors in the show!  Face-to-face and eye-to-eye, you will have a better sense of the event and be able to interpret it with better understanding because of the encounter.

This is what John tells us happened in our receiving one blessing after another. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, the giving of the Law through Moses was a huge blessing. 

It set them apart and made them feel like they had insider’s knowledge of who God is and personal encouragement from God Himself to follow what He said so that everything would go well for them.  It was their program telling them about who God is and the blessing to come from obeying what they’d been commanded.  They knew to love the One and Only God, something they would recite as part of the great Shema of Israel (Deuteronomy 6:1-9) and their response to this gracious revelation of God was supposed to be obedience.  It’s something righteous Jews took very seriously.

Deuteronomy 6:1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Now imagine that in Jesus Christ, you’ve not only been given a program, you’ve been invited backstage. 

You can see into the face of the Son of God and see the author of all history, the very glory of God present in His being, and have the opportunity to see that the program—true as it was—could never substitute for such an awesome face-to-face encounter.  You have become an eye witness, seeing the character of God as only a witness can.  No words, no matter how numerous and true, could tell about Him adequately enough to replace the living testimony of seeing the One and Only revealed.  To see God as only Jesus—the eternal Word who has actually seen God, been with God and came from God—can reveal Him is a great blessing of the Incarnation.

Questions to ponder:

1. Read Matthew 5:17-20.  Can you see why Jesus said He didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it?  Would you say that Jesus replaced the Law or just became a clearer testimony by being seen in action instead of just heard in the words of the Law?
2. Let’s say you didn’t think the backstage pass could possibly be legit and decided to stick with the program instead. What kind of behaviors might people who are protective of the program show toward someone who got and used a backstage pass?
3. Read Hebrews 1:1-3 “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 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. 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.”  How does this explain the tension between the Law and Jesus?  Does Jesus negate the Law?

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.