I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you
with my own eyes.
– Job 42:5
When God Made Fools of Us
The Word became flesh and spoke in a human form as one of us, though incognito and in a disguise that fooled us and made fools of us… The God of all power chose to become weak to subvert our puny power, the God of all wealth chose to become poor to subvert our meager wealth, the God of all wisdom chose to become foolish to subvert our imagined wisdom, and the God who alone is the sole decisive one chose to be a nobody to subvert us when we stupidly thought we were somebody.
– Os Guinness
The Incarnate Message
Jesus Christ is the Word become flesh, not the Word become idea. Had it been the Word become idea, it would have been a philosophy, a moralism. In that case it would have taken its place among the great philosophies of the world—higher, but among. But the Christian faith is not a philosophy, but a fact—the fact of Christ. In him all the ideas have taken shoes and walked. The message is the Man, for the Man is the message—incarnate. Everything he spoke he lived and more. This makes the Christian message not “among,” but apart from, different, sole, unique. “Never man spoke like this man,” for never man lived like this Man. You can’t tell where his words end and his deeds begin, or where his deeds end and his words begin, for his deeds were words and his words deeds. They entwine like words and music of a song. And what words, and what a son, and what harmony!
–E. Stanley Jones,
A Song of Ascents
The Birth of the Eternal One
No beginning that is the least
bit temporal can be applied
to the Only Begotten because He is
before all time and has
His existence before the ages.
– Cyril of Alexandria
(378 – 444)
Our Starting Point
The Gospel then begins with the incarnation. All religions are man’s search for God; the Gospel is God search for man; therefore there are many religions—there is but one Gospel. All religions are the Word become word; the gospel is the Word become flesh. Therefore all religions are philosophies; the Gospel is a fact. Philosophies may be good views; the Gospel is Good News. The Gospel is not primarily a philosophy— it is a Fact. The philosophy grows out of the Fact.
The Fact of Jesus is our starting point and is our Gospel. It is the Gospel of Jesus before it is the Gospel of God or the Gospel of the kingdom. The Gospel lies in his person—He didn’t come to bring the Good News—He was the Good News. This gospel is not spelled out, therefore verbal; it is lived out, therefore vital. Jesus didn’t come to bring the forgiveness of God—He was the forgiveness of God. There is no other way to God, for Jesus is the way from God. He is God coming to us. Therefore there can be no other way.
–E. Stanley Jones,
Mastery
The Definitive Word
“In the beginning was the Word,” says John 1:1 “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Before all other things, before anything else existed, there was God, and there was his Word, who was God. And with that little sentence, a revolution has just happened. Want to see how?…
Here, then, is the revolution: for all our dreams, our dark and frightened imaginings of God, there is no God in heaven who is unlike Jesus. For he is God. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” he says, for “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 14:9; 10:30). God cannot be otherwise…
Let us then be rid of that horrid, sly idea that behind Jesus, the friend of sinners, there is some more sinister being, one thinner on compassion and grace. There cannot be! Jesus is the Word. He is one with his Father. He is the radiance, the glow, the glory of who his Father is…
In him we see the true meaning of the love, the power, the wisdom, the justice and the majesty of God… And in fact, if we do not go to this Word to know God, then all our thoughts about God, however respectful, worshipful or philosophically satisfying, will be nothing but idolatry.
— Michael Reeves,
Rejoicing in Christ
B.C. / A.D.
No longer is God simply God,
he is also man.
No longer should we ask what God is like,
he is present in our midst.
No longer must we inquire what love looks like,
he has come to dwell among us.
No longer does darkness rule unchecked;
the Light of the world has come.
No longer should we retreat in fear;
Bethlehem invites us to draw near.
The Self-Disclosure of God
Jesus puts God on display:
He is what God looks like (Heb. 1:3).
He is what God lives like (Jn. 5:19).
He is what God loves like (Rom. 5:8).
He is what God has to say (Jn. 14:10).
Love Must Be Embodied
The whole concept of God taking human shape had never made much sense to me. That was because I realized one wonderful day, it was so simple. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied. That’s all. God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love.
–Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky,
Angels Without Wings
Artwork:
Matthias Stomer,
Adoration of the Infant Jesus
God’s Utterance
Jesus of Nazareth is God’s utterance. He is the Word of God because no more thorough, personal, and beautiful revelation of God is possible.
He who is the perfect statement and rhetoric of the Father, the revealer of divinity, shows up in the form of a servant and sufferer and overturns our notions of deity. The One who is to be worshiped, exalted, and obeyed comes to serve and to give and to lay down His life for others. He unveils the essential truth and unsurpassing glory of the divine nature—a God who pulsates with goodness and power and love and beauty. Jesus reveals a God whose blessedness lies in giving rather than receiving, whose essence is an overflowing, unstoppable tsunami of grace. “Jesus Christ is the mercy of God,” wrote Karl Barth, “he is the love of God, he is the open heart of God.”
The Lord of glory has made Himself know in His Son—and He turns out to more wonderful than we ever imagined.
-J.O. Schulz
When God Became Visible
No one has ever seen God until they see Jesus. Every other portrait of God — from whatever source — is subordinate to the revelation of God given to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Word of God, the Logos of God, the Logic of God in the form of human flesh. Christians are to believe in the perfect, infallible, inerrant Word of God — and his name is Jesus. Jesus is the icon of the invisible God.
–Brian Zahnd,
The Faceless White Giant,
http://brianzahnd.com/2016/06/the-faceless-white-giant/
God explained
Jesus is the exegesis,
the exposition,
the explanation of God.
We cannot know God
outside of Christ.
There IS no God
outside of Jesus.
He’s God enfleshed.
–Frank Viola
Not a code or an idea
If the Word had become printer’s ink, it would have become a code. If the Word had become an idea, it would have been a philosophy. But the Word became flesh and therefore became a gospel—good news.
–E. Stanley Jones
The Way to Power and Poise
He is what God is like
Let us be rid of that horrid, sly idea that behind Jesus, the friend of sinners, there is some more sinister being, one thinner on compassion and grace. There cannot be! Jesus is the Word. He is one with is Father. He is the radiance, the glow, the glory of who his Father is.
–Michael Reeves
Rejoicing in Christ
The Great Divide
The most important verse in Scripture is “And the word became
flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory of the only Son from the Father . . .”
This verse—“The Word became flesh”—is the Great Divide. In all other religions it is Word became word—a philosophy, a moralism, a system, a technique, but for all time and all men everywhere, “the Word became flesh”—the Idea became Fact.
Then I got hold of this difference (between all world religions and Christianity) in all other religions it is the Word become word, but only in Jesus Christ, did the Word become flesh. Then (and only then) Everything fell into its place. I had the Key, and this Key fitted everything in East and West . . . Religions are man’s search for God. The gospel is God’s search for man. Therefore, there are many religions, but only one gospel.
–E. Stanley Jones
Painting: “Head of Christ”
Rembrandt van Rijn
Debunking the myths
Men forsook God, and made carved images of men. Since therefore an image of man was falsely worshipped as God, God became truly Man, that the falsehood might be done away.
–Cyril of Jerusalem
(313—386)
Art: Rembrandt
On the ground spirituality
By accepting Jesus as the final and definitive revelation of God, the Christian church makes it impossible for us to make up our own customized variations of the spiritual life and get away with it. Not that we don’t try. But we can’t get around him or away from him: Jesus is the incarnation of God, God among and with us. Jesus gathered God’s words spoken to and through God’s people and given to us in our scriptures and spoke them personally to us. Jesus performed God’s works of healing and compassion, forgiveness and salvation, love and sacrifice among us, men and women with personal names, with personal histories.
Because Jesus was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, gathered disciples in Galilee, ate meals in Bethany, went to a wedding in Cana, told stories in Jericho, prayed in Gethsemane, led a parade down the Mount of Olives, taught in the Jerusalem temple, was killed on the hill Golgotha, and three days later had supper with Cleopas and his friend in Emmaus, none of us are free to make up our private spiritualities; we know too much about his life, his spirituality. The story of Jesus gives us access to scores of these incidents and words, specific with places and times and names, all of them hanging together and inter-penetrating, forming a coherent revelation of who God is and how he acts and what he says.
Jesus prevents us from thinking that life is a matter of ideas to ponder or concepts to discuss. Jesus saves us from wasting our lives in the pursuit of cheap thrills and trivializing diversions. Jesus enables us to take seriously who we are and where we are without being seduced by the intimidating lies and illusions that fill the air and trying to be someone else or somewhere else.
Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing meals with friends and strangers, listening to the wind, observing the wildflowers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unself-consciously. Jesus insists that we deal with God right here and now, in the place we find ourselves and with the people we are with. Jesus is God here and now.
–Eugene H. Peterson
Why Spirituality Needs Jesus
Incomparable goodness
“The Word became flesh” . . . His words and his deeds blended like the words and music of a song. He was so truthful that He was truth, so loving that He was love, so good that He was goodness, so morally beautiful that He was beauty, so living that He was life, so godlike that he was God.
–E. Stanley Jones
Getting a look at God
One great advantage of the incarnation
(God in human form) is that
now we can see God.
Just look at Jesus.
–Larry Crabb
Why He came
The Word of God, Jesus Christ,
out of his boundless love,
became what we are,
that he might make us what he is.
–Irenaeus (ca. 125-202)
The miraculous entry
The Incarnation would be
equally a miracle however
Jesus entered the world.
–P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921)
God’s message to man
Jesus is the Word of God.
He is not the best Word.
He is not the ultimate Word.
He is not the seal of series
of improving words.
He is the Word.
–Glen Scrivener
When God got immersed in our mess
“And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us…”
(John 1:14)
The Incarnation means a card-carrying member of the Holy Trinity is now part of the human race. He bridged the uncrossable divide between Creator and creation, between Divinity and humanity. He became our blood relative, our next of kin.
A member of the Godhead has a body
of flesh and blood—He is one of us.
Literally.
Not for a few years, but forever.
God and man are now inseparably connected. The Lord of the universe has become a part of our story.
And a part of our predicament. He has thrown in his lot with us.
He has joined our ranks
to such a degree that our dilemma
has become His dilemma.
Our misfortune has become His.
He got embroiled in our brokenness—more than any self-respecting God ever should have.
Immersed in our mess.
He was not about to abandon his fellow humans to their plight. He got involved. He shouldered our cause. We are no longer alone in our distress.
We have a Redeemer.
–Jurgen O. Schulz
The starting point
Our starting point is Jesus. But someone objects and says, “The Gospel begins with God.” No, for until Jesus came, there were views about God and there was news about God, but no Good News. Apart from Jesus we know little about God, and what little we know is not Good News. The conception of the character of God apart from Jesus is questionable. In Jesus our question marks about God turn into exclamation points.
In the face of Jesus we know what God is like
and what we must be like if we are to be good.
If God is other than Jesus, He is not good; if He is like Jesus, He is good. This is an astounding thing to say, yet when I say it, I hear the Ages give an resounding Amen. And it reverberates through all things.
–E. Stanley Jones
Jesus shows us God
As Christians—as followers of the Lord Jesus—when we talk about God, we are talking about one who has entered into the very fabric of our world, who has come as close to us as we are to ourselves, a God who has become incarnate. When we talk about God, ultimately, we are always talking about Jesus. For the God of the gospel is the God who has come among us in Jesus of Nazareth. We believe in God because of Jesus.
Jesus is the one who showed us the face of God—
Jesus shows us the truth of God,
Jesus shows us the love of God.
Jesus is God’s smile beaming at us out of the depths of eternity. Jesus is God’s love wrapping around us, seizing us and not letting us go. Jesus is God’s grace, reaching into the darkest and most shameful dimensions of our experience. Jesus is God’s healing, binding up the wounded.
Jesus is God’s goodness, in a world
full of chaos and disaster and catastrophe.
Jesus is God’s great strength for the weak. Jesus is water for the thirsty, and when you drink that water you will never thirst again. Jesus is bread for all those who are starved and hungry, famished for something good and something true. Jesus shows us God. He is not God’s explanation, he is not God’s argument, he is not God’s debate. He is God’s simple, great, loving act, showing us, Here I am, here you are.
In Jesus, God shows us God.
That I believe, is the whole secret
of the Christian faith.
–Ben Myers
(emphasis added)
Perichoresis 