The Word Became Flesh

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth,” –John 1:1-3, 14 (ESV).

John in his gospel does not give an account of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.  Rather, he begins immediately to introduce Jesus as the Word,  John wrote his gospel with a Greek readership in mind.  The Greek thinkers were very philosophical.  To them Word, or Logos, referred to the.Power that ordered the universe.  Word was one way they thought of God.  The Jews, likewise, would have been very familiar with God as Word.  They thought in terms of God as the Word found in the law (see Deuteronomy 30:11-14).  They considered Wisdom as God personified, an idea strongly propounded in Proverbs 8.  So when John introduced Jesus as “the Word made flesh,” God being in the Word was not an idea completely unfamiliar to them.  The only difference was that a special Messiah who would bear the Word of God to the people had been expected over so many centuries that the Word finally being upon the earth in person was new and different.  Could that be why so many scoffed at Jesus?  What they expected of the Word was not how the Word lived, ministered and presented Himself, especially to the critical Sadducees and Pharisees.

John makes several significant statements about the Word:  The Word is God.   The Word is Creator.  The Word is life, the sort of life that becomes the light of men.  And the darkness cannot extinguish the light that is the Word.  But the greatest statement John made was that the Word became flesh.  He came into our world and had all the characteristics of a flesh-and-blood person.  Indeed He did, for he was wholly human—while at the same time wholly divine.  This is the doctrine of the incarnation.  The Word became flesh means that God entered the sphere of time and space and took on all the characteristics of a human being.  He was the Son of Man, further identifying Himself with mankind. 

In becoming human, Jesus emptied Himself for His span of life of all the glories of heaven.  He was limited by time and space while He was upon the earth.  He was tempted in every way like as we are, yet was without sin.  Someone has aptly said that the Prince became a pauper.  He exchanged heaven’s glory and riches for a place where he did not have a home to call his own.  Poverty and wandering marked His earthly condition.

Then as Word He could communicate.  And think how Jesus did that so effectively!  He went about teaching.  We fortunately have His teachings compiled for us in the gospels.  As Word he introduced us to God the Father:  “I and my Father are one,” He said.  The incarnation of Christ as Word shows us the glory of the Father and leads us to Him.  And the ultimate Word is that Jesus became the sacrifice for our sins, therefore bridging that barrier of communication between Holy God and sinful man.  Through His sacrifice He speaks grace and truth to us.  And it is through God’s revealed grace in the Word made flesh that we can know Him and come to peace with God.

Prayer.  This Christmas, Father, help us to keenly accept the glory of the Word made flesh, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.   And because of Your grace, implemented by the Word, we can know and understand the reason why “the Word was made flesh” that night in Bethlehem. And we can see why the Word was slain that dark day thirty-three years later on Golgotha’s hill in Jerusalem.  Then, Father, You took Him back to heaven where we will some day join the Word.  Selah!

Promise of an Everlasting Kingdom

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” – Daniel 7:12-14 (ESV).

Many prophecies abound in the Old Testament of the coming of Messiah.  I counted in one listing of the prophecies a total of 134 different references, ranging from Genesis to Malachi.  I’m sure if you consulted other scholarly lists, you might find a different number.  Suffice it to say that the Old Testament is replete with references predicting the coming of the Redeemer Savior.  In this account in Daniel, the Messiah is referred to as Son of Man.  Jesus, in reference to Himself, used ‘Son of Man’ more than any other term (in the gospels it is used 82 times!).  This name revealed the true identity of Who He is and the nature of His ministry.  He is the Son of God who became flesh (the Son of Man) and dwelt among us so that “we might behold His gory, as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  This designation denotes both the humanity and the divinity  of the Christ, and to Him is given “dominion and glory and a kingdom.”  Moreover, the kingdom is everlasting, will not pass away, cannot be destroyed.

When Jesus had been arrested and brought before the Council in Jerusalem and was asked if He was the Christ, He responded:  “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62, ESV).  In answering the high priest, Christ was telling what nature His kingdom would have.  However, the high priest cried out that Jesus was a blasphemer and demanded the death sentence for Him.  The time of that kingdom has not yet been fulfilled, but the laying of its foundation has been surely put into place by the Son of Man in His coming to earth and completing the mission God assigned Him to do.

In prophesying of the coming of the Son of Man, Daniel saw a great sweep of history that will be fulfilled finally in Christ’s reign upon earth  Believers in Christ know that He came first to earth to offer Himself a sacrifice for the sins of mankind.  The victorious Savior will return.  We are told in I Thessalonians 4:13-18 that we who believe and remain alive will be caught up to meet Him in the air.  Revelation 21 and 22 give the further fulfillment of the prophecy:  We will return to earth with Him to reign with Him and serve Him.  We do well to live in expectation of the implementation of that promise, for no person knows the day nor the hour of His return.  But His word to us is, “Surely I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:20).  And our proper response is, “Come, Lord Jesus!” 

Prayer.  Father, Your Word is full of the promise of the Son of Man coming to us.  That first promise of His coming has been completed, His mission on earth fulfilled.  His second coming is yet to be. Let us live in eager expectation of that glorious day and let us await it with joyful anticipation.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Jesus: The Light of the World

“Again Jesus spoke to them saying, ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” –John 8:12 (ESV)  “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” –John 1: 4-5 “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.  But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” –John 1:9-13 (ESV).[Read John 8:12-20]

The occasion of Jesus announcing that He is the light of the world came during the annual Festival of Tabernacles when the Jewish people and leaders were assembled at the Temple in Jerusalem. The festival was observed for eight days, about this time of year.  It commemorated a joyful celebration of the harvest but also remembered the time when the people dwelt in tents or tabernacles during the years of wilderness wanderings.  God had delivered them from those hardships.  Every night during the days of the Festival, the priests would light four large candelabra in the court of the women and these gave much light.  They reminded the people that God had led them with a pillar of fire by night and a glowing cloud by day that had shown God’s direction, protection and provision.  They would sing and dance, repeating assurances of God’s presence:  “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Psalm 27:1) or “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you” (Isaiah 60:1). In the midst of the celebration of lights, Jesus stood and said, “I am the light of the world!”  The learned Jews among them should have known that Light was one of the names given to the Messiah.  That was seen in the prophecy of Daniel 2:22: “light dwells with Him” and in Malachi 4:2: “But for you who revere My name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.”  Unfortunately, the Pharisees hearing Jesus argued with Him and told Him that they did not believe His testimony, that it was not true.  Regardless of what the Jewish leaders believed, they were standing there, observing and hearing the very Light of the World as He sought to enlighten them. What a pity that they would not hear the truth that the Light had been with God since the creation of the world.  John would write about the Light at the beginning of his gospel.  Even at that moment that true Light stood and taught among them.

Following the discourse with the Jewish leaders, Jesus went outside the Temple courtyard and soon found a man blind from birth.  He told His disciples in the presence of the blind man, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5).  He then proceeded to restore sight to the blind man, bringing the poor man from darkness to light.  A discourse ensued between the healed blind man and the Jews, but the man told the Lord he believed in him, praised Jesus for restoring his sight and worshiped Him.  He had experienced the miracle of Light performed by the one Who is the Light of the world.

James Hudson Taylor lived in Brighton, England.  He got a burden for the lost of China, and arranged for a loan from his bank to start the China Inland Mission in June of 1865.  The mission work was hard and tedious, but Taylor persisted in his mission “to open the eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness”(Isaiah 42:7).  And Jesus, the Light of the World, calls each of us  (as he did James Hudson Taylor) who have come to His light to be light-bearers wherever we are:  “Ye are the light of the world,”  Jesus said as He called us.  And our privilege is to follow Him and let our lights shine where He has stationed us.  “Therefore, let your light so shine!” Let us reflect the glory of the Father through the Light of His Son.   (Matthew 5:14-16).

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” –Matthew 5:8 (KJV, NKJV, ESV).

The statement of this beatitude is so clear that three versions I consulted use the same words for expressing its truth.  A note in my English Standard Version Study Bible notes:  “The pure in heart are those whose pursuit of purity and uprightness affects every area life” (p. 1828, note)..  “They shall see God” notes the ultimate fulfillment of Revelation 22:4:  “They shall see His face, and their names shall be on His forehead.”  John 1:18 reads, “No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father’s side; He has made Him known.”  In Jewish thinking, no one had ever seen God in His full and complete glory. But John wanted the people to see that “the Word made flesh”—Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us—is the way we see the heart and nature of God.  Jesus is the Word of God; He is God revealed to humankind.  The Jews also laid much store in external ritual purity.  They performed ritual washings before worshiping in order to symbolically rid themselves of the contamination of the world before they went into the temple or synagogue to worship God.  The rituals were their outward manifestations of inward cleansing.  But Jesus, as always, gets to the heart of purity and righteousness by stating, “blessed are the pure in heart,” those whose purity is so much a part of them that it is deeply ingrained in the heart.  And the expression “in the heart” means—then and now—in the inward being, at the center of control of one’s emotions and thinking.

Jesus certainly did not mean the ceremonial cleansing of the Jewish law that required ritual washing.  Neither did He mean the blamelessness of outwardly manifested conduct, as in “he or she is a righteous person” or has the reputation of being and doing what is right.  An ore, for example, is pure when it contains no admixture of other substances.  “Pure gold” would have gone through the refining process, an action that rendered the metal without alloys.  Thinking of the actions and motives of the Christian, we can give examples of what being pure means.  When we perform benevolent acts, we do them not for any selfish motive but for the benefit of helping others, not expecting a return from the action.  In practicing justice for others, there is no partiality.  Love is pure when it has no inferior motives that are selfish and self-promoting.  The heart is pure when it loves only the good, when motives are right, and when it seeks the welfare of others above selfish desires.  The kind of purity Jesus means in this beatitude is not synonymous with chastity.  Those who cleanse their hearts understand God in proportion to their own hearts.  With these thoughts in mind, do we begin to see that Jesus was aiming at the very center of our relationship with God and with others?  If we cleanse our hearts, we begin the see holy God and how much He is above our meager righteousness.  We are as “filthy rags” in comparison to His holiness.  But thanks be to God, as we come to Him for cleansing, He can set us right.  He can impute His righteousness to us.  And with that spiritual and inward cleansing, we can stand before God; we can “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” One day, not within the parameters of this present world, we will “see God” fully and wholly.  Paul expressed that day of complete holiness for the Christian in this way:  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; but then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  With the change of heart possible for us when we trust the Lord for salvation, we are beginning the journey of purity and holiness.  One day it will be fulfilled!  Amen.

Philip and Nathanael Become Disciples

“The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.  He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’  Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’  Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’  Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’  Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit!’  Nathanael said to Him, ‘How do you know me?’  Jesus answered him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.  Nathanael answered Him, ‘Rabbi, You are the Son of God!  You are the King of Israel!’  Jesus answered him, ‘Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?  You will see greater things than these.’  And He said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’” –John 1:43-51 (ESV).

“The next day” in the opening of this passage from John’s gospel refers to the day after Jesus had called John himself as a disciple, and Andrew and Peter, and two days after John the Baptist had declared that Jesus was the Son of God.   Some scholars call Philip and Nathanael brothers.  Their calling is similar to that of Andrew and Peter, with Andrew finding Christ first and then going to find his own brother, Peter.  In Galilee, Jesus “found” Philip who was from the same city in Galilee, Bethsaida, where Andrew and Peter were from.  The important thing we see here is that each time the men who first encountered Jesus and were moved by Him to follow, went seeking others to follow Jesus whom they believed strongly from the time they first met Him was the Messiah, the Christ.  “Come and see,” they invited.  And Jesus was so compelling and had such a quality of spiritual insight that they wanted to follow Him.

Nathanael first shows some doubt, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  Nazareth was an obscure town, not mentioned in the Old Testament, and certainly not held as a place from which the Messiah would come. To counter Nathanael’s doubts, Philip wisely invited him to come and meet Jesus for himself.  No doubt Philip, in his short time of knowing Jesus, had recognized something strong and different about Him.  When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching Him, he made an unusual statement about his character:  “Behold, and Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit!”  He was comparing Nathanael as an opposite of the long-ago Jacob who had deceived his brother Esau to get his father’s blessing.  Then Jesus told Nathanael He had already seen him “under the fig tree.”Much of speculation and imagination has been written about Jesus observing Nathanael as he was ‘under the fig tree.’  What had drawn Jesus’ attention to him, and why was this significant enough for John to mention it as he wrote of the calling of Philip and Nathanael?  We don’t have the answer to these questions, except to surmise that wherever we are, Jesus in His omnipotence already knows about us and wants us to follow Him..After Nathanael’s declaration “You are the Son of God!  You are the King of Israel!” Jesus promised Nathanael he would see greater things, and he referred to the dream of Jacob in the Old Testament when he saw a ladder reaching to Heaven and angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  This was a designation Jesus used for Himself as Messiah  It is a term indicating that Jesus was completely partaking of the human nature, but at the same time He was completely divine.

Scholars believe that Nathanael and Bartholomew are one and the same disciple, with Bartholomew used in some of the lists of disciples, and Nathanael used here at the time of his calling as recorded by John.  We see in Philip first coming to Jesus and then inviting Nathanael a firm pattern of how we ourselves should lead others to discipleship.  We come to know Jesus and decide to follow Him.  He makes such a difference in our lives that we want to invite others to “Come and see” Jesus for themselves.  Like Philip to Nathanael, we want them to experience the joy of knowing the Messiah, the Savior.  And, like Nathanael and Philip, they can know that Jesus knew and loved them even before they came to Him. He awaits, still, each individual’s response.