The Word became flesh and God’s extraordinary gift

Secular people in the West can feel resentful about the seemingly arbitrary Christian rule that only those who believe in Jesus can enter ‘heaven’. How can a loving God exclude even good people from happiness and eternal life on such a technicality? What they fail to appreciate is that the good things they expect of heaven do not exist in isolation. Rather, they are the by-products of a relationship with God. Without faith in Jesus who reconnects us with God through His saving act, these ‘goodies’ are inaccessible because our sins create a separation from God. This is visually illustrated in the story of Eden where Adam and Eve’s sin fractures their relationship with God and leads to their becoming cut off from Him and the Tree of Life (Gen 3:22-24). God, the Giver of Life, knows that true happiness, fulfilment and eternal life can only flow into our lives when we are connected to Him.

God’s presence and the problem of sin

The same issue surfaces in Israel’s story after they worship the golden calf: How can God’s presence dwell with a sinful people (cf. Exod 33:3)? As I often used to tell my students, if God’s holiness is like fire (e.g.  Exod 19:18; 24:17) and our sins are flammable, then His presence has devastating consequences for us. Yet, how can God’s people continue without His presence (Exod 33:15-16)? At Moses’ appeal, the Lord consents to live with Israel (Exod 33:17; 34:9-10), but the rest of Exodus, and much of Leviticus and Numbers deal with safeguards and restrictions to ensure that sinful Israel is not destroyed in their encounter with God. Even Moses can only see God’s glory from the back, as the Lord marches ahead to lead His people in person (Exod 33:17-23). When God’s glory settles on the newly built tabernacle, not even Moses can enter the place (Exod 40:34-35).

God’s extraordinary response in Jesus

This is the background to the Gospel’s staggering statement: the Word became flesh and literally ‘tabernacled’ (or ‘pitched His tent’; the verbal form of skēnē = tent) among us, and we saw His glory… (John 3:14).[1] Jesus has become the tabernacle/temple: God’s presence in our midst! What an extraordinary gift! Israel could only approach God cautiously and from a distance; His presence mediated by priests and sacrifices. Now God takes on a human body, so we can look into His face and touch Him. He does not just seem like human, He is fully human, flesh and blood. At the same time, He is also fully God, the ‘one of a kind’ or ‘the one and only’ (the sense of the Greek monogenēs, NASB ‘only begotten’; v.14) of the Father. Later, Jesus will identify His body as the temple to be destroyed in His death and rebuilt in His resurrection (John 2:19-22). A similar idea is conveyed in the allusion to Jacob’s ladder, which Jesus describes as Himself as He mediates God’s presence (John 1:51; Gen 28:12, 16-17).

God’s grace and faithfulness

This, then, is God’s extraordinary gift: despite our ongoing sin and unbelief, the Lord has come to dwell with us, just as He did when Moses interceded for God’s wayward people. At that time, the Lord revealed to Moses His glory and His character as ‘compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth’ (Exod 34:6), a statement that became Israel’s foundational creed. The word ‘lovingkindness’ (ḥesed), sometimes translated ‘grace’ or ‘mercy’, is God’s loving covenant commitment to His people, while ‘truth’ (ʾemet) means God’s faithfulness, a trustworthy and steadfast character. John alludes to this when he describes Jesus’s coming as full of ‘grace and truth’ (John 1:14).[2] Despite the rejection that Jesus will experience, the Lord acts towards us with grace and faithfulness. Yet, as it will become evident in John’s Gospel, the glory that ‘we saw’ (v. 14) was not recognised by everyone for what it was. Jesus manifested His glory through miracles (signs) that pointed to who He was, but only some believed (John 2:11). As we approach Christmas, many come to its celebration with vague ideals like ‘family’, ‘love’, ‘peace’, yet miss the astounding claim of the gospel. May we be moved by God’s extraordinary love and not throw away this opportunity to reconnect with Him.

---

[1] Although English translations simply go with ‘dwelt’ or ‘lived’, the Greek word for tent here is used in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) for the tent of meeting or tabernacle (E.g. Exod 25:9; 26:1, etc.). Thus, the point is not that this is a temporary dwelling (our association with tent) but that Jesus is the temple of God dwelling among His people. Since John’s Gospel highlights the idea of Jesus as the temple later, it is not farfetched to see an allusion to this in the Prologue. Several words in these verses (John 1:14, 17-18) such as ‘tabernacled’, ‘glory’, ‘grace and truth’ (more on this later in the post), the reference to Moses and the law and that no one has seen God, all evoke the exodus context and specifically Exodus 33-34. While much of this subtlety is easily missed by everyday Christians, it is well-recognised in scholarship. See e.g. George R. Beasley-Murray, John, WBC 36, 2^nd ed. (Thomas Nelson, 1999), 14; D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, Pillar NTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Leicester: Apollos; 1991), 126-130.

[2] It is sometimes pointed out that the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew ḥesed ve–ʾemet (lovingkindness and truth) in Exod 34:6 is eleos kai alētheia (mercy and truth), whereas John uses charis kai alētheia (grace and truth). However, the conceptual parallels between John 1:14-18 and Exodus 33-34 are so strong that the issue seems to be no more than John’s personal preference in word choice.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others.