The Word Became Flesh

The season of Advent is a season of longing, waiting and expectancy. It is a season for the church to ready herself to celebrate the coming of King Jesus. We long—we ache—for a Savior because we know deep down that we are people needing to be saved. Even those who can’t admit they are sinners, even those who deny a high morality, even they must concede that things are not as they should be in this world. And for the most honest of us: “Things are not as they should be in me.” This is why Christmas is good news. 

Christmas is the story of the incarnation, the story of Jesus coming “in the flesh” to save sinners and right the wrongs of the world. How can we overcome the cruelty and injustice of the world? How can we overcome the cruelty and injustice in our own hearts? How can we restore our broken relationship with our Creator? The crushing answer to all of these questions is: we can’t. Yet still there is hope. Cruelty and injustice can be overcome. Our divine spiritual relationship can be restored. Our unique purpose in the cosmos can be rightly explained. But not by us. The solution to the wrongness in the world, the solution to the wrongness in our hearts, is the incarnation. The solution is Christmas. 

The Beloved Disciple wrote, “In the beginning was the Word [logos], 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 any thing 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 1:1-5, 14).

To the Jews, the Word of God was the presence and action of God. To the Greeks, the Logos was the origin of all things. The Logos ordered creation, made sense of the world. The Logos was the calm behind the chaos. Here John is telling both Jews and Greeks that the Word (Logos) became flesh. The presence, the power, the action, the force of God, the logic behind all of the creation, that which makes sense of our world became flesh and dwelt among us.

In his book Peculiar Treasures, Frederick Buechner wrote about the Beloved Disciple and about his Beloved. He said, “John was a poet, and he knew about words. He knew that all men and all women are mysteries known only to themselves until they speak a word that opens up the mystery. He knew that the words people speak have their life in them just as surely as they have their breath in them. He knew that the words people speak have dynamite in them and that a word may be all it takes to set somebody's heart on fire or break it in two. And at the beginning of his Gospel he wrote a poem about the Word that God spoke…. When God speaks, things happen, because the words of God aren't just as good as God's deeds; they are God's deeds. When God speaks, John says, creation happens.... ‘The word became flesh,’ John says (1:14), and that means that when God wanted to say what God is all about and what humankind is all about and what life is all about, it wasn't a sound that emerged, but a man. Jesus was his name. He was dynamite. He was the word of God.” 

“Nothing in fiction is so fantastic,” wrote J. I. Packer, “as is the truth of the incarnation.”

The dynamite, the fantastic, the mystery of the incarnation, is that somehow Jesus is both fully God and fully man. He was born a little baby, went through adolescence and puberty. He had parents and siblings. He had a job. He had friends. He was betrayed. He was rejected. He was wounded. And of course, he died. Jesus was fully human yet never ceased being God. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, and this is a profound mystery, an instructive truth in the flesh.

For one, the incarnation teaches us that God is humble, or to use John Calvin’s language, “accommodating”. Humility is what distinguishes Christianity from most other major religions. Ours is not a story of man becoming god (a story of gaining) but of God becoming Man (a story of giving). In humility, God choses us.  “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). In humility, God pursues us. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Ours is a story of class disparity, undignified romance, and lopsided union. We are lost coins. He is a hidden treasure. We are barren figs. He is a flourishing vine. Christianity is not man attaining nirvana or enlightenment or transcendence. This is not man ascending into divinity. This is God descending into flesh.

Christmas is the story of God as a baby, vulnerable, exposed, born in obscurity to rural parents, diapered, dependent, killable. Ironically, it is when Jesus seems most helpless that he is most powerful. God seemed so weak as a newborn baby. God seemed so helpless nailed to the cross. Yet in those moments the world was utterly and irrevocably transformed. 

Why did Jesus have to be fully God? Because we need a Divine Rescuer. Why did Jesus have to be fully man? Because we need a High Priest to divert God’s wrath (Heb. 2:17). Only God can forgive sins. Only man can be punished for sin. Jesus atoned fully. He paid the debt eternally. He is both Just and Justifier (Rom. 3). Jesus serves not only as our example, but as our substitute.

“God became man to turn creatures into sons,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “not simply to produce better men of the old kind, but to produce a new kind of man.” Christmas does not promise renovation; it promises resurrection.

Advent is a season of eager anticipation. The purpose is to whet our appetites for celebration. What are we celebrating? The solution to all our problems has come: God in a manger; the Divine wrapped in flesh, formed with features; the Eternal Creator anchored in space and time to split history in two; Immanuel, God with us. In other words, we celebrate that we are not alone. We celebrate the ancient and future hope … the possibility … the assurance … that words have the power to change everything. And one Word is all we need.