THE WORD BECAME FLESH

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

Today’s verse could be the greatest verse in the Bible. This is the mystery of godliness that Paul spent a lifetime trying to describe. In the middle of all of the shopping and parties, church services and decorating it can become quite easy to miss the whole point of Christmas; God became a man, the Creator visited His creation, eternity broke into this realm of time and space that we live in. The Word became flesh, that’s why the angels were singing. They had known Christ in heaven from the day they were created but never like this. This shocking truth for the angels was the demonstration of love and humility when He took on a human body, Immanuel had come, God was really with us. Martin Luther preached often about this verse in his Christmas sermons, here is a small sample of Luther’s take on this verse.

“The Word became flesh.” We can never fully grasp this teaching concerning our salvation and eternal life using human reason. Nevertheless, we must believe it, and we must cling tightly to what Scripture says about it. The Bible says that Christ, our Lord, is true and natural God and true and natural man. The Bible says that in his divine essence and nature, Christ is coequal with the Father. The heretics have cast doubts on both the divine nature and the human nature of Christ. During the lifetime of the apostles, some heretics claimed that Christ was not God. Centuries later, others claimed that Christ was not human. Some of our contemporaries teach similar things. They claim that because he was conceived solely by the Holy Spirit, Christ could not have been a human being like we are. He could not have had the same kind of body that we do. They insist that because he was a man from heaven, his body must have been from heaven too.”

The whole Christmas story is a picture of this great verse. Christ was born in Bethlehem, had a human mother and a heavenly Father, was announced by the angels and born with the animals. The heavens declared His birth with a star but there was no room in the inn. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have beheld His glory.