The most needful thing in life (John 1:14-18)
John 1:14-18; Exod 33:15-23; 34:1-9
One of the hardest things of the Covid pandemic has been the social isolation we felt or may be feeling even now. When we face a crisis, are anxious, wrestle with tough questions, we want the presence of friends and family around. It is not enough to have an impersonal message, even if it gives the right answer, rather, we long for the support and personal touch of those we love and who love us. Yet, the fear of giving or receiving an infection keeps us apart. In some ways, our sinful nature creates a similar isolation from God, this time keeping us apart because His holiness is like fire and our sins like flammable material, so that His presence can unwittingly destroy us.
A holy God, a sinful people – seeking an answer
This was the dilemma Moses faced when Israel sinned and worshipped the golden calf. How could God dwell with them without destroying them (Exod 33:3)? Yet, how could they live without God’s presence (Exod 33:15-16)? Moses did not engage God in a lengthy theological discussion, however, but asked for a deeper encounter with Him where he might come to know His character (the sense of the request ‘show me your glory’ – Exod 33:18). While his experience was limited to seeing God’s glory passing by, what he nevertheless learned was that the Lord is ‘compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth’ (Exod 34:7).
Lovingkindness [ḥesed] speaks of God’s loyal love or covenant commitment, which is often expressed in His grace and compassion for His sinful people. The Hebrew translated as ‘truth’ [ʾemet] means faithfulness, a steadfast and firm attitude that is unwavering. It is this experience of coming to know God in a deeper way and His essential character itself that form the turning point in the story. There is no intellectual answer given to the problem, but the solution lies in the very nature of God whose steadfast love will make a way.
Word become flesh
Our readings in Ezra and Haggai have shown how central this relationship with God and His dwelling with His people are for life and flourishing. As we come to celebrate Christmas, we see God’s response as the Word-become-flesh that ‘tabernacled among us’ (John 1:14).[1] The Greek logos for ‘Word’ carried a whole cluster of associations in John’s world. For Greek thinkers, logos was the reason underlying the created world, for Jews, God spoke creation into existence through His powerful Word (Ps 33:6). In Jewish thinking, God’s Word was also linked to wisdom, present before creation, and personified as ‘a master builder’ (Prov 8:22-31). The Word was also active in the ongoing life of the world; when God spoke through the prophets, His Word achieved its purpose in history (Isa 55:10-11). Now this Word is identified with the person of Jesus Christ.
The resolution to the dilemma expressed in the story of the golden calf then was for the immensely powerful God to come in a weak and limited human body (the sense of ‘flesh’ here), so that we may be able to endure His presence and know Him more deeply. The OT believers could experience God’s dwelling with them to some extent and He also gifted them the Law through Moses to guide them into His will. However, this act of grace was surpassed by ‘the grace and truth’ realised in Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Like Russian dolls, where the larger dolls house the smaller ones, the ‘grace and truth’ revealed to Moses in Exod 34:7 is now encompassed by its fuller expression in Jesus.
The only begotten, beloved Son
Jesus can reveal God fully because He is ‘the only begotten of the Father’ (v.14). The Greek monogenēs has the sense of being one of a kind, so that Jesus is of the same kind as the Father, God Himself. This word is also used as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew yaḥid ‘the one and only’ and therefore the beloved (as in Abraham’s one and only, beloved son, Isaac). Thus, the word highlights that Jesus’ knowing of the Father is not an intellectual but a relational one, based on love and deep communion (being the beloved son and the one in the Father’s bosom – John 1:18; cf. John 13:23).
‘We have seen His glory’
Thus, John can say that ‘we have seen His glory’. In other words, we have seen God’s true nature of ‘grace and truth’, a steadfast love that has substance, that is the true reality. Yet many in Jesus’ time saw His signs that pointed to God’s glory (John 2:11), His character, and did not recognise that committed, loyal love of the Father. The call to us as we ponder the Lord’s coming to dwell with us is to respond with faith. We may not have an answer to every painful question we carry, but we know and can trust the One who loved us with an everlasting love.
[1] The Greek word for ‘tabernacle’, like its Hebrew equivalent, is derived from the same root as the verb ‘to dwell’. The point is not the temporary nature of God’s dwelling but the association with the tabernacle/temple, which in a more limited way fulfilled the same function of God’s presence with His people.
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