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

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

Infinitely Greater

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

We needed a revelation

Job asks: “Who by searching can find out God?” The answer is plain in history: No one! For what we find in our upward search for God is not God, but the projection of our thoughts into the heavens and calling it God. It is the Word become word—and earthbound. We create God in the image of our imagination. And this is “no true image.” Apart from Jesus we know little or nothing about God, and what we know is wrong.

The Word must become flesh
or the Word is a vast question mark.

. . . God the Father could only be revealed by Revelation. No one could imagine or think that the God of the Universe would take a body and become man to redeem man. A love like that just doesn’t exist—not in the categories of philosophy. Here only seeing is believing. We would never have believed it unless we had seen it. The Word had to become flesh to become credible. Unless the eye had seen and the ear heard it would never have entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for him

–E. Stanley Jones

God made visible

Jesus was God letting people 
see the beauty of His face
and listen to the music of His voice,
and feel the irresistibly gentle
drawing power of His presence.

–S. D. Gordon
(1859-1936)

Deity before our eyes

He does not speak about grace, He brings it; He does not show us God by His words, He shows us God by His acts. He does not preach about Him, but He lives Him, He manifests Him. His gentleness, His compassion, His miracles, His wisdom, His patience, His tears, His promises; all these are the very Deity in action before our eyes; and instead of a mere verbal revelation, which is so imperfect and so worthless, grace and truth, the living realities, are flashed upon a darkened world in the face of Jesus Christ.

–Alexander McLaren

We see Him as He is

We worship a God who lived in the womb of one of His sinful creatures for nine months, washed the dirty feet of his betrayer, and humbly forgave those who tortured him to death. Through Christ, the veil of distortion and misrepresentation of God’s character is removed and we see Him as He is.

–Brad Cole

A Jesus-like God

The gospel begins with Jesus, not with God. Apart from Jesus you know little or nothing about God, and what you know is wrong. If you don’t see God in the face of Jesus, you see something other that God—and different.

Jesus is the self-revelation of God:
God meeting us in understandable form,
human form, the Word become flesh.

God is a Jesus-like God . . . apart from Jesus your ideas of God become strange and uncertain. When you lose Jesus, you lose God . . . the more I know of Jesus the more I know of God.

–E. Stanley Jones
(1884–1973)

The message embodied

He did not argue, as Socrates, the immortality of the soul—He raised the dead.

He did not paint in glowing colors the beauties of friendship and the need for human sympathy—He wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus.

He did not discourse on the beauty of love—He loved.

He did not prove how pain and sorrow in the universe could be compatible with the love of God—He took on Himself at the cross everything that spoke against the love of God, and through that pain and tragedy and sin showed the very love of God.

He did not merely ask men to turn the other cheek when smitten on the one, to go the second mile when compelled to go the one, to give the cloak also when sued at law and the coat was taken away, to love our enemies and to bless them—He Himself did that very thing. The servants struck him on one cheek, He turned the other cheek, and the soldiers struck Him on that; they compelled Him to go one mile from Gethsemane to the judgement hall—He went two, even to Calvary. They took away His coat at the judgement hall and He gave His seamless robe at the cross and in agony on the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them.”

Jesus was the Concrete, for He was the Word become flesh. Had He been the Word become word He would have spun theories about life, but since He was the Word become flesh He puts shoes on all His theories and made them walk.

–E. Stanley Jones

The Incomparable Christ

He did not merely tell us that death need have no terrors for us—He rose from the dead, and lo, now the tombs glows with light.

Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything—they changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.

Many teachers have told us why the patient is suffering and that he should bear it with fortitude—Jesus tells him to take up his bed and walk.

Many philosophers speculate on how evil entered the world—Jesus presents Himself as the way by which it shall leave.

He did not go into long discussions about the way to God and the possibility of finding Him—He quietly said to men, “I am the Way.”

Many speculate with Pilate and ask “What is truth?” Jesus shows Himself and says, “I am the Truth.”

Spencer defined physical life for us as response to environment—Jesus defines life itself by presenting himself and saying, “I am the Life.” Anyone who looks upon Him knows in the inmost depths of his soul that he is looking on Life itself…

Everything He said He did—and more. For His life was greater than His words. Words never have had such weight of meaning.

—E. Stanley Jones

The deepest conviction

The deepest conviction of all Christian theology
is the affirmation that the God of all the world
is like Jesus Christ.

-Elton Trueblood

God unveiled

God hides nothing.
His very work from the beginning
is revelation—a casting aside of veil after veil,
a showing unto men of truth after truth.
On and on from fact Divine He advances,
until at length in His Son Jesus
He unveils His very face.

–George MacDonald

Just like Jesus

You will never find
a more relieved person
in all the world than me
when I discovered
that God was
just like Jesus Christ.

–Eugenia Price

God made understandable

Jesus is God
spelling Himself out
in language that people
can understand.

–S. D. Gordon (1859-1936)

God before our eyes

He does not speak about grace, He brings it; He does not show us God by His words, He shows us God by His acts. He does not preach about Him, but He lives Him, He manifests Him. His gentleness, His compassion, His miracles, His wisdom, His patience, His tears, His promises; all these are the very Deity in action before our eyes; and instead of a mere verbal revelation, which is so imperfect and so worthless, grace and truth, the living realities, are flashed upon a darkened world in the face of Jesus Christ.

–Alexander MacLaren

Divine power

Divine power
is not a ruling fist,
but an open,
bleeding hand.

–Michael Lodahl

Face to face with God

We must reject as inadequate or inaccurate the attempts to find God through nature—the nature worshipers; the attempt to find God within ourselves—the “I” worshipers; the attempt to find God through teachers, gurus, priests—the human worshipers; the attempt to find God in legalism—the written law worshipers; the attempt to find God in slogans and affirmation—the cult of the Positive, the Positive worshipers; the attempt to find God in the quiet of submissiveness—the worshipers of Silence, of Quietism.

In any of these you may find glimpses of God, but if you are to see God face to face you must see God in the face of Jesus Christ. For Jesus is God approachable, God available, God simplified, God lovable. The Word has become flesh.

–E. Stanley Jones

God is like Jesus Christ

The deepest conviction of all Christian theology is the affirmation that the God of all the world is like Jesus Christ. . . If we take this seriously we conclude that God cannot be cruel, or self-centered or vindictive, or even lacking in humor.

-Elton Trueblood

His livingness

The Word of God is not my possession. The words printed on the pages of my Bible give witness to the living active revelation of the God of creation and salvation, the God of love who became the Word made flesh in Jesus, and I had better not forget it. If in my Bible reading I lose touch with His livingness, if I fail to listen to this living Jesus, submit to this sovereignty and respond to this love, I become arrogant in my knowing and impersonal in my behaviour.

–Eugene Peterson