Three Big Words: Part 1 – Incarnation

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks in his sermon called Three Big Words: Part 1 – Incarnation from John 1:1-18.

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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God: children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

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 testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”‘

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”

This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Through Jesus Christ, amen.

This opening to the gospel of John is strange is several ways. For a start, in John’s gospel, only in the prologue is the word word used christologically. You’d think that a word with so much weight in the opening verses would be used again in the same way in the book, but it’s not. When John uses the word word elsewhere, it either refers to Scripture or simply to the message that Jesus preaches.

Thus, for example, in John 8:30–31, Jesus says, “You are my disciples indeed if you hold onto my word.” Clearly this is not the same use of word as here in the prologue. Then, the word word itself is not transparent. It is a very common term in the ancient world. At the risk of oversimplification, it tended to go in one of two directions. It could refer to inward thought, the logic of something, the inner meaning of something.

It is in that sense that it shows up, in transliteration, in all of our –logy words in English: theology, geology, psychology. They all come from logos, the word here rendered word. That is, theology is the logic, the science, the structure of thought of theos, of God. Geology is the logic, the science, the structure of thought of ge, of land, and so forth.

The other use of the term is the one that John is leaning on here. It sometimes refers to the outward expression of the inward thought. It is the articulation of something. I am persuaded that that’s what John has in mind here: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It’s a bit too paraphrastic to say (though I like it), “In the beginning, God expressed himself, and this self-expression was with God, and this self-expression was God.” That is, what is in view is the outward manifestation or expression of God.

You still have to ask why John would use this term. Why doesn’t he use one of the great christological titles with which the book abounds? You recall how the high point is reached in John 20:30–31. He says, “I have written these things to you in order that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”

So why does he not say here, for example (though it would have been an entirely orthodox thing to say), “In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was God”? After all, Son of God is a transparently important theme right through the whole book, so why not use that one instead of a term that then isn’t used for the rest of the book?

As soon as you ask the question, you see the structure of a response, because if John had said here, “In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was God,” inevitably, we would all think of this gospel as the gospel of Jesus as the Son of God. In other words, it would, in some ways, restrict or narrow our vision down to this particular christological focus, would it not? Precisely because the term would be placarded right at the beginning of the book.

Yet this book also makes a great deal of the fact that Jesus is the Son of Man, the King of Israel, and other christological titles. They all have their own part to play, and all of them would be somewhat marginalized if Son were advanced right at the beginning. I suspect that one of the reasons why John uses this term is because he means it to be comprehensive. He means to embrace all of the christological titles in the self-disclosure of God, in one term.

You can almost hear his mental wheels going over as, led by the Spirit of God, he’s looking for an appropriate way of introducing Christ in this prologue, which is about to introduce many of the themes of the whole book. He remembers that word, in the Old Testament, is regularly connected with creation, with revelation, and with salvation. It’s bound up with creation. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,” we’re told. “God spoke …” That’s how the book of Genesis begins. “… and there was light.”

Then the word is tied up regularly with revelation. Again and again, we read of the prophets, “The word of the Lord came to the prophet Jeremiah, saying …” Or something of that order. Then, as for deliverance, there are many passages. One recalls Isaiah 55: “My word will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire.” Or in Psalm 107, when some of the people were ill, “God sent forth his word and healed them.” That is, there is deliverance, salvation, and transformation by God’s powerful word.

In short, in the Old Testament, God’s word is God’s own powerful self-expression in creation, in revelation, and in deliverance. John makes the small step to say, “How utterly appropriate for the climax of God’s self-disclosure in the person of his own dear Son.” He writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This is not the only book in the New Testament that says something like this, though in somewhat different terms. I’m sure you recall the opening lines of Hebrews: “In the past, God spoke …” There is word again. “… to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

This is what our English translations say. The thought in the original is a little more nuanced. We might paraphrase it as: “He spoke in the Son-revelation.” That is, it’s not that he spoke by the prophets, and then he added one more prophet on, namely his Son, so that this Son was namely the further mediation of God’s word. Rather, the Son was the Word. The Son was the final, climactic disclosing Word.

Here, John goes so far as to say, this Word, this self-expression of God, was with God (God’s own fellow) and was God (God’s own self). Here you have the beginnings of what later would become the doctrine of the Trinity, in carefully nuanced articulation. One commentator writes, “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God. If this be not true, the book is blasphemous.”

What, then, does John tell us about this Word of God and his relationship to us in these opening verses? He tells us five things.

1. The Word creates us.

If you are following the text, you will see that verse 2 picks up the central line of verse 1 so as to introduce verse 3. The central line in verse 1 says, “… the Word was with God …” That is now picked up in verse 2: “He was with God in the beginning.” This, then, prepares the ground for verse 3, such that he is God’s agent in creation: “Through him all things were made.”

In other words, this beginning must be absolute. As far back as we go in time as we know it, time is bound up with creation. Yet before there was anything, since all things were made by him, this Word was already one with God, with God, and identified as God’s own self. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Now that is meant, simultaneously, to make a difference between the created order and the Creator, which is fundamental to all biblical thought, and to rule out a lot of the paganism of the ancient world in which it was commonly thought that different gods made different elements of the created order. This text insists one God made everything and this one God made everything by one agent: his Word, his self-expression, who is with him (and thus differentiable from him) and yet is him, his own self, somehow, God’s own agent in creation.

Now everyone who reads the book of John knows that the prologue, in some ways, introduces the rest the book. We shall stop here and there to notice how lines in the prologue anticipate themes that are fully developed in the book. Yet if we ask where this theme of Christ as God’s own agent in creation is developed in the book, the short answer is that it’s not. So again, we must ask, “Why does John include it? What is the point? What is the purpose? How does it relate to the book as a whole?”

The theme is known elsewhere in the New Testament, of course. In the so-called “Christ hymn” of Colossians 1:15–20, we are told all things were made by him (that is, by Christ) and for him. Not only by him, but for him. Christ is not only God’s agent in creation, but he is the very purpose of creation. The whole creation exists for him. Hebrews 1:2 (from that same passage which has other parallels to John 1) insists that Christ is the one that through whom God made the universe. So this theme is not unknown in the rest of the New Testament.

Moreover, it’s stated powerfully here. Verse 3 states the truth both positively and negatively, to make the whole point: “All things were made by him; without him nothing was made that has been made.” What’s the point? Why is it included here? In some ways, this is a setup for something within the prologue. As we shall see in a few moments, when we get down to verse 10, the theme of creation is picked up: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”

In other words, what John is establishing is the responsibility, the accountability, of the entire created order to God and, in particular, to God’s own agent in creation: the eternal Word, who, as we shall see, becomes flesh and lives for a while among us. Thus, there is, in the very nature of creation itself, the structured accountability of all of that created order to its Maker, to Jesus of Nazareth. It is a shocking thought.

Have you sometimes tried to bear witness where you are and discover that the people to whom you’re bearing witness are such relativists that, quite frankly, your exclusive insistence on Jesus is narking them? It’s going right up their nose. Eventually, they say to you something like, “Look, Mary, I’m quite happy if you find your Jesus to be of help to you, but we all have our forms of spirituality, don’t we? You have yours, and I have mine.

I’m quite a spiritual person, you know. I mean, I find that the vibration of crystals really attunes my spiritual being. We all have our different forms of spirituality, and you don’t have the right to tell me that yours in any better than mine. So if you don’t mind, just back off a little bit, or else, quite frankly, I’m not sure I even want your friendship.” Have you ever had people say that sort of thing to you?

What do you say by way of response? Well, there may be a place for a certain tactical reserve, so as not to cause unnecessary umbrage, but sooner or later, don’t you have to say something like, “Pauline, I really don’t mean to be rude, but the one thing I can’t do is back off, because you don’t have any idea how much danger you’re in. God made you, and you owe him. You will give an account to him, whether you like it or not. I’m just telling you that because I love you.” Isn’t that what you have to say somewhere along the line?

In other words, spirituality is not grounded in personal preference. At the end of the day, human accountability is based in the doctrine of creation. If you lose that, then all of us, instead of thinking of ourselves as created beings who owe everything ultimately to the Creator, are likely to drift toward personal preference. Our understanding of spirituality will ultimately be constrained by our own personal preferences, nothing more.

It is the doctrine of creation which finally makes us accountable to the same God (God’s own agent, Christ) who will be our Judge on the last day. John is preparing us for this foundational truth in the prologue, for all of his gospel affirmations and evangelistic fervor throughout the book, ultimately, are grounded in this assumption. So in the first place, then, the Word creates us.

2. The Word gives us light and life.

Verses 4 to 9. Now I’m going to ask you to use your imagination here. It’s virtually incomprehensible, but try to imagine that you have never read this book before. You may have some exposure to Christianity. Maybe others have borne witness to you. You might have even read another gospel, but you’ve never read this gospel before.

Moreover, you’re not reading it in the way in which a lot of people read in the contemporary world, by covering as many pages as possible. Seminary students are particularly adept at that! Rather, you read it in a more Oriental fashion. You read it more slowly. You think about it. You turn it over in your mind. You read a line, think about it, and go back and re-read it. You read the next line and the one after that, and then you go back and read the first line again. You think about it. You’ve never read it before, however.

So far all you’ve read of this book is verses 1 to 3. You haven’t read the rest of the book. Now if that’s all you’ve read, how will you understand verses 4 and 5? “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not …” There’s a pun there; we’ll come to that in a moment.

You see, so far, all you have is the doctrine of creation. So wouldn’t you be likely to read verses 4 and 5 in the context of creation? “In him was life …” Well, we’ve just been told that all that came into being, came into being through him, through this Word. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Light is probably used now in some metaphorical sense for our entire existence, perhaps even our existence before God.

Moreover, if you’re a Jew or a proselyte in a first-century Jewish synagogue, and you’ve been exposed to the Old Testament, you may even recall that when God spoke, in the Old Testament, the first thing he said was, “ ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” The darkness couldn’t stop God from creating things! “The light shines in the darkness …” God spoke by his agent, God’s own Word.

“The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not …” Now the pun. The closest thing I can get in English to the pun in Greek is the verb to master. You can master an opponent in wrestling; you overpower him. Or you can master a subject like microbiology; you learn it. In both cases, you master it. The Greek is literally to seize upon. The word can be used, and is used in the New Testament, in both ways. That is to say, both to overpower and to learn, to understand. Which does it mean here?

Well, I suspect that if you’re reading verses 4 and 5 in the light of what I have just said (that is, in the light of verses 1 to 3) then you will read it this way: With the doctrine of creation in mind, perhaps even with Genesis 1 in mind, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overpowered it.” The darkness cannot stop the creative power of God.

Now I live in Chicago. I teach at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Because Trinity is a national seminary (it’s actually an international seminary; about 27 percent of our students are from all over the world), this means that many of us on the faculty are traveling on the weekend to former students around North America and elsewhere.

So many are the times I’ve boarded a plane on Friday afternoon or Friday night and headed out to San Francisco. It’s a four-hour flight. Then Sunday night, I catch the red-eye flight back, and I’m back in the classroom the next morning at 7:45. It’s part of the price of living in Chicago and teaching a national seminary.

You get on the plane, and it’s four hours before you touch down again. You’re in the economy section so you can’t plug in your computer, or you’re too tired to work in any case; you’ve done your work. So you pick up a whodunit in the airport bookstore, and by the time you arrive in San Francisco, you have discovered whodunit.

Now sometimes you might actually read something serious, but on this particular occasion, you read a whodunit. In fact, it’s helped you pass the time, along with snoozing and stale sandwiches. By the time you get to the other end, you just put the whodunit in the seat pocket because you’re not adding it to your library. It’s just one of those things.

On the other hand, you might also read some book of adventure or history or the like. A better novel has so many layers to it that you read it once and discover the plotline for your own amusement and entertainment. It’s gripping as a story. Nevertheless, the characterization is so rich, the linguistic usage is so evocative, or perhaps it’s describing a part of the world that you know, so that you want to go back and look at it again.

As you go back and re-read it, you discover whole layers of things that you didn’t see the first time. One of the things that marks out a good writer, especially a writer of narrative, is that he or she constructs the thing with multiple layers, so that the better you know the text, the better you see those different layers.

Now the question is this.… Did John write his book as a throwaway tract or as a book with layers? There is a place for throwaway tracts. I’m not taking a cheap shot at them. They just usually don’t belong in your library, and you probably won’t read them very much or very often. However, books that are self-consciously written in layers enable you to see more things each time you read them. I think that you can demonstrate that John’s gospel is supremely layered.

Now because the books of the Bible are the Word of God, you want to re-read them and re-read them and re-read them in any case. Sometimes, there is so much to learn, even from texts that are pretty straightforward, that even when there’s not a great deal of layering.… You need to re-read and re-read and re-read books like Proverbs because they make you think and they teach you basic ethics and fundamental choices in a God-ordained universe, but they’re not layered the way a narrative is like this.

Yet you can show that John’s gospel is layered. All you have to do is ask yourself, “How would I read this if I were reading this for the first time?” Then read through the rest of the book and ask, “How would I now read it?” You can show in passage after passage after passage that another vision opens up. After you’ve seen a whole lot of things in John’s gospel, you can go back and see how even more connections are made.

Now the first evidence of that in John’s gospel, and there are many of them, are these two verses. This is because, I submit, if you’ve read verses 1 to 3 and then understood verses 4 and 5 a particular way, now if you go on to read the next verses, already there is something that is transcending mere creation.

“There was a man who was sent from God; his name was John.” Who is this suddenly appearing in the narrative? Is it the Word himself? Oh no, no, no. That’s not it. “He came as a witness to testify concerning that light …” Well, he couldn’t have been a witness in the sense of being there at creation; he’s part of the created order himself. He could be a witness only in the sense that he’s bearing witness to the truth of the light, but not a witness to the light itself.

“He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him all men might believe.” Now there’s already a hint that there’s darkness in the world and some people don’t believe. It’s not unpacked yet, but John is introducing a theme which he then unpacks a little farther on in verses 10 and 11. John the Evangelist wants to make it very clear that John the Baptist is not himself to be confused with this Word, this logos, this Light.

No. “He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” So now you have the light not only bound up with creation but somehow intruding into this world. Now that’s a use of light that is certainly eclipsing whatever happened at creation itself.

Moreover, that is the way this light imagery multiples in John’s gospel. For example, in John 3:19 and following: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” Well, if you understand verses 4 and 5 only in terms of creation, light is what God creates over and against darkness, which is just the darkness of nothingness. Now darkness is bound up with moral reprobation; it’s bound up with moral decay.

Light must, therefore, be bound up with truth and righteousness and integrity. “Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” The darkness has rejected it. The darkness is evil. Men love darkness instead of light, we’re told, because their deeds were evil. “Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light. This sort of metaphor continues until we get to John 8:12, where Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”

Moreover, when you press on and discover that John’s dominant use of life is eternal life, not merely the life of the created order, and you go back and re-read verses 4 and 5, how do they read now? How will you see them? “In him was eternal life, and that life was the light of men.” What is required is God’s own eternal life to grant us moral clarity, genuine revelation from God, and genuine knowledge of God. Later on, Jesus will say about eternal life, “This is what it means to know you, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” It requires revelation.

This light shines in the darkness, but now it’s a darkness of moral corruption and decay. The darkness is not, ultimately, overpowered but it hasn’t even understood the light. It hasn’t mastered the light, as becomes very obvious in verses 10 and 11, when “even though the world was made by him, the world did not recognize him.”

So now we must ask the obvious question. These verses tell us that the Word gives us light and life. Does John mean to evoke creation or does he mean to evoke what Paul will call “new creation”? Does he mean to evoke the original light-against-darkness contrast of the creation, or does he mean to evoke God’s gracious, redeeming, saving self-disclosure, overcoming all the powers of darkness?

The answer, of course, is, “Yes.” It’s precisely by writing in this layered way that we are forced to see things in more than one way. The same agent of God, the same Word who is one with God, identified as God, is God’s agent in creation and God’s agent in redemption. So this is the second thing that John establishes: the Word gives us light and life.

3. The Word confronts us and divides us.

Verses 10 to 13. If the first point, the Word creates us, talks about creation, and the second point talks about revelation, this third point talks about the fall. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” Then the point is made in more focused pattern in verse 11: “He came to that which was his own …”

The idiom really is best rendered, “He came to his own home.” The reference is to the Jewish people, the Jewish nation, into which he was born. “… and his own people did not receive him.” Is this because John thinks of the Jews as worst? No, rather they are the exemplification of the point he’s made in the preceding verse. They are typical. “He came to his own created order, and the world did not receive him. He came to his own people, and his own people did not receive him.”

This introduces us, of course, to the word world. There have been endless studies on that word. Some have argued (in fact, it dominates the literature at the moment) that John uses the word world in three different ways: a positive way, a negative way, and a neutral way. Well, John certainly does use it neutrally a handful of times, four or five.

For example, in the closing two verses of this gospel, he says that he supposes that if all the things possible had been written down about this Word made flesh, about Christ, then the world itself would not be big enough to contain the books. So world as a big place and a potential library (I rather like that usage myself). But clearly there’s no overtone of either good or evil there. It’s merely a big space. That’s it.

There are lots of places where the word is used negatively, but I submit to you that the word is never, ever used simply positively. Where you almost think that it’s used positively, it’s a setup for the negative. Some people say, for example, that John 3:16 uses the word positively: “God so loved the world …” It seems to me that that says a great deal of the positive value of God and his love, but it doesn’t say much for the world at all.

Here there is just the hint, the expectation, that something positive will be said before the world is clobbered. “The whole world was made through him …” Well, that’s good isn’t it? Yet the world that was made by him was also the world that rejected him. It’s merely a setup for the negative. Dominantly in John’s usage, the word world extends to include Jews and Gentiles alike. In that sense, it includes the whole world, which does not so much focus on all without exception as all without distinction.

Then theologically, in terms of freight, the overwhelming preponderance of usage in John’s gospel is negative. It’s the God-damned world. That is, it’s the created order in active, moral rebellion against its Maker. That’s why John 3:16 is so powerful. “God so loved the world …” This is to make us think greatly of God’s love, not because the world is so big, but because the world is so bad. God still loved this world. He is that kind of God.

So here, “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” Now when I was a boy, I still lived at a time in Western Christianity when a lot of Christians were concerned with worldliness. What worldliness consisted in depended on your particular small social patch.

“Never drink, smoke, swear, or chew, and never go out with girls who do.” This was not the sum of all worldliness, but it came pretty close. In some circles, this meant you couldn’t play cards, you couldn’t have mixed swimming, or whatever it was. Nowadays, we’re all so wonderfully emancipated that not many people are afraid of sin itself.

In John’s understanding of world, however, it is not really something that merely compresses a batch of rules, as important as various rules may be. It is the created order, this world made by God, which doesn’t recognize its origins. It doesn’t recognize its Maker. It doesn’t recognize its Redeemer.

He came into the world, and the world didn’t even recognize him! It’s unthinkable, but it is precisely what happens. It’s unthinkable that human beings, made in the image of God, should hear the message of the Bible and not recognize the God who made them, but that is precisely the mark of lostness in the world. That is the point.

Is there, then, no hope? In some ways, of course, verse 11 is merely the sort of thing that you read in a lot of Old Testament prophetic Scriptures. Here’s Isaiah 65:2–3, Yahweh declaring, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations, a people who continually provoke me to my face.” This is not saying anything new. It is re-articulating what has been the experience of Israel, across the generations, and now insisting that it is true for the entire created order.

Are there no exceptions? Yes, in verses 12 and 13, but not because these exceptions are intrinsically better. The word does not divide us on the basis of what some people are, some good, and some bad; rather, the world does not recognize him, and yet, his own people do know him somehow. This is not the old covenant people; that’s bound up with verse 11.

Rather, there are some who do receive him and believe in him. This is not finally because of natural birth, which is tracked back to a husband’s decision, on the assumption that he takes the initiative in sexual union. Instead, John uses it now to say, in fact, this kind of new birth is not finally grounded in human decision at all. It’s found in another kind of birth: birth from God.

You can describe it a lot of different ways. You can describe it in terms of believing. You can describe it of receiving. You receive him; you believe him. John will unpack all these terms at greater length in his book. Yet at the end of the day, the ultimate distinction is bound up with an act of God. They’re born of God. They’re born by God. That, of course, is one of the themes that are developed by John later in his book, supremely in John 3, in the account of Nicodemus.

I wish I had time to unpack that at much greater length, but I don’t, so I’ll pass that by. I will merely say this in passing: In my view, one of the hardest things to get across to an increasingly biblically illiterate generation is not the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the incarnation, or the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ. It’s what the Bible says about sin.

I’ve been doing university missions now for over 30 years. What I discover in most university missions is that the vast majority of unbelievers who are present are so biblically illiterate that they don’t know the Bible has two Testaments. They’ve never heard of Abraham or Isaiah. None of these categories mean anything. When I was a young man, if I were dealing with an atheist, at least he or she was a Christian atheist. That is, the God he or she disbelieved in was the God of the Bible. You can’t even count on that anymore. The categories are lost.

So if I start explaining what Christians believe about God, which, unlike a unity vision of the one god that you find in Islam, this strange Trinitarian notion.… I try to explain it as best I can. The students will sit there and nod and say, “Okay, if that’s what Christians believe, if you say so.” They’re not offended by it, and they certainly don’t know enough to ask any of the difficult questions. If I talk about resurrection from the dead? Well, whether they believe it or not, they don’t take umbrage at it. “A bit strange, but interesting. Nice if it were true.”

When I get to sin, however, then they’re all upset because now I’ve gone from talking about Christian faith in a private, subjective sort of way to sounding condemning. I’m meddling in their life. “What right do you have to tell me what’s wrong?” Yet you cannot finally get agreement on what the solution is unless you get agreement on what the problem is. If you don’t see your status before God, you will not ask what you must have from God. That’s the truth.

Now in terms of the psychological appreciation of these things, that’s in God’s mystery. Sometimes people begin to see what the gospel is and, in consequence, begin to see just how bad sin is. Sometimes people see just how bad sin is and begin to cry out, by God’s grace, for the relief that only the gospel can give. Sooner or later, however, those things stand or fall together.

If you do not see how dysfunctional we are with respect to our Maker … that is, how rebellious we are in that, as creatures, we disavow our Creator and that all of our accountability before God is grounded in that simple truth … then it is very difficult to come to a genuinely faithful understanding of what the gospel itself is.

The gospel, sooner or later, is diluted into something which makes us happy or which sorts out our families or gives us a purpose for life, all of which the gospel does, but it is not at the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is still being reconciled to this Maker, who is also our Judge. That requires the powerful work of God himself in spiritual new birth. So now we come to the last two on which I wish to spend most of the remainder of my time.

4. The Word incarnates God for us.

He enfleshes God for us. We don’t see how materialistic this is because incarnation sounds like a very theological word. In many European languages (Italian and Spanish and so on), carne, which comes from the Latin word for meat, is actually flesh. This is the “enmeating” of God; it’s the enfleshing of God.

You need to see it as blunt as that, yet in a context in which this enfleshing means becoming a human being. The language in verse 14 is exquisite. “The Word became flesh …” It is worth pausing for a moment to think of the various attempts to explain this that were eventually condemned in the history of the church.

A) Apollinarianism

This might be called an “empty-shell Christology.” That is, God simply is in Jesus in some sense. Jesus is insignificant, but God is in him; he takes up residence in him. Jesus is the tent; that’s it.

B) Nestorianism

Some here, I’m sure, are familiar with English pantomimes, the form of play that you get at a lot of local British theaters at Christmas, which have their own standard forms of symbolism. They always have one man dressed as a woman and one woman dressed as a man, and somewhere along the line you boo the bad guy. There’s a whole stereotype symbolism to it all.

If you’ve never seen an English pantomime, you don’t know what I’m talking about, but in the pantomime, there is almost always a horse, which is actually two people with one horse costume over them. The two people making the horse are supposed to work together. Some people, Nestorians, have a kind of “English-pantomime-horse Christology.” That is, there are two selves under the one skin. What you really have are two different people under the one skin. That was condemned by the church, and rightly so.

C) Eutychianism

Here, what is envisaged is a kind of divine, supernatural medical operation. When the baby was conceived in Mary’s womb, then somehow the power of God came on the baby to transform him into what we know of as Jesus. He was one nature, not two, and not right God either, but rather a sort of souped-up, God-empowered human being.

D) Arianism

 We’re more familiar with this, in terms of Jehovah’s Witnesses and other friendly door knockers. In Arianism, Jesus is a sort of a god, as it were, but he’s not the ultimate God. He’s not truly God. He’s a junior god, as it were. Ultimately, he is a created god.

The church, at Nicea and Chalcedon and repeatedly since then, has rejected all of these things, and for very good reason. Not only are they biblically unfaithful, they have huge implications for how we understand the entire structure, not only of the gospel of John but of our very salvation itself.

We don’t want either human nature or divine nature switched off. Our Savior is one of us. He’s a human being. However, our Savior is also our Maker. He’s also our Creator. What he accomplishes on the cross, he accomplishes by virtue of the fact that he is the God-man, not just that he’s a man. On the other hand, if he were just God hiding out in a human shell, in what sense is he identifying with us at all? Everything Jesus said and did, he said and did as fully a human being and fully God, living in the fullness of both of his natures.

All of that is embraced in this one little clause, “The Word became flesh …” The Word did not simply assume flesh or reduce himself to flesh; rather, he became what he was not. He became a human being, without ceasing to be what he was. “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.” That brings me to the last point …

5. Above all, the Word supremely reveals God to us.

Now I don’t know this august crowd. I’m sure that there are some younger ministers starting out in ministry whose knowledge of the Bible still needs to be stretched. There are doubtless others who have been in the ministry of the Word for a long time. I could quote almost any passage, and you’d immediately identify the book and chapter in which it is embedded.

If I were to say, “God so loved the world that he gave his Son,” you wouldn’t have any trouble telling me that that’s from John 3. If I were to say, “He was wounded for our transgressions, and he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was …” Where is that from? Isaiah. Whereabouts in Isaiah? Chapter 53. It’s the fourth servant song, and so on.

Now I didn’t pick anything from Haggai or Zechariah; nevertheless, I’m sure that some would pick up those sorts of allusions as well. Isn’t it the case, however, that when New Testament writers pick up Old Testament passages and make allusions to them, then the biblically literate among the readers are supposed to make the connection and see what comes together?

Now in these five verses, verse 14 to 18, John makes five or six allusions to one Old Testament passage. There is a sense in which we best understand John’s verses if we remind ourselves what’s in those Old Testament verses. They’re all found in Exodus 32 to 34. Be of good cheer; I won’t expound all three chapters at length now, but I’d like to remind you what is in them.

In Exodus 32, Moses has gone up to the mount to get the Law, and now he comes down. Meanwhile, the people themselves have become impatient at his absence and have, in effect, started a rebellion. They’ve conscripted Aaron himself. He has suggested they bring their gold bits, and he’s put them into a fire and smelted down a golden calf. Now they’re involved in a round of pagan orgy, insisting that this calf represents the gods that brought them out of the land of Egypt.

Moses comes down, hears all of this debauchery in the camp, is enraged, and smashes the tablets of stone. His rage is nothing compared with God’s anger. God himself says, in effect, to Moses, “Get out of the way. I’m going to wipe out this people, and I’ll make a new nation out of you.” Eventually, Moses intercedes, and God relents. There is a terrible slaughter: 23,000 die in the initial round of judgment. The Law eventually will have to be secured again when Moses returns up the mountain.

Now in the midst of this terrible scene, Moses, in chapter 33, meets God at what is called the Tent of Meeting. You must remember that this is before the tabernacle was built (part of what Moses received on the mountain was instruction on how to build the tabernacle). So this was before the tabernacle was built. Nevertheless, they had some sort of Tent of Meeting pitched outside the camp.

We read in Exodus 33:7, “Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’ Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.” Now in that context, then, we are allowed to overhear part of Moses’ petition before God as he intercedes for the people. Exodus 33:12: “Moses said to the Lord, ‘You have been telling me, “Lead these people,” but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.’ ”

Now in the historic context, Moses is concerned because Aaron has become so compromised. Part of Moses’ willingness to go, way back when he was first ordained, was that Aaron would be his spokesperson. Moses would not go alone. Rather, Aaron would actually be his mouthpiece, but now Aaron is completely compromised. Moses feels utterly alone.

“You have not said now whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” Now here, Moses is saying two or three things.

He is saying, “These are not my people. These are your people. You called them, saved them, and brought them out. They’re not my people in that sense. I can’t handle this. If these are your people, then you do something with them.” This is a good thing for ministers of the gospel to remember now and then! It would be good if we remembered it at other times than when things are going wrong.

“The Lord replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ ” God had so threatened to cut them off that he would no longer go with them at all. Ultimately, the threat is that when the tabernacle is built, no longer would it be built in the midst of the people with three tribes in the north, three in the south, three in the east, and three in the west. How could God do that? His anger could lash out and destroy the whole camp when there is sin like this.

However, Moses understands that if God does not go with the people, how are they different from anybody else? Verse 15: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” Listen, the people of God are characterized by the presence of God, or else they’re indistinguishable from everybody else on the face of the earth. Write it down.

That means that in all of your ministry, you must think within that framework. You must strive to work within that framework. You must help people to see, worship, serve, evangelize, and pray within the framework of God being amongst his people. It’s not a place where people throw their weight around and merely argue and use their money to have clout in the church or anything like that. It’s first and foremost a place where God manifests himself in his people.

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.’ ” You know how this works out. In due course, the tabernacle is built and God condescends to have it built and placed within the middle of the camp, with three tribes in the north, three in the south, three in the east, and three in the west.

“Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ ” Moses understands that when things are at their worst pitch, what you must have is a renewed and clarified vision of God. Nothing else is stabilizing. “Show me your glory.” He does not ask that he should see the end from the beginning, or even that all the problems would be removed. Rather, he asks of God, “Manifest yourself to me. Show me your glory.” He knows that he must be anchored in God if he is to lead this rebellious people. What else will anchor him?

God replies, “I will make all my goodness pass before you.” Isn’t that remarkable? What it was that Moses had in mind, we can never know exactly. He wants God to disclose himself and he envisages it in terms of a display of glory: “Show me your glory.” God, however, envisages his display of glory in terms of the display of his own goodness. This is not because God is relinquishing his sovereignty. Far from it.

Look how he goes on. “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But if what you are asking for is to see me face to face, personally, you cannot see it. No one can see my face and live.”

Now you may say, “Isn’t this, in some ways, a bit of an overclaim?” Because there are passages in the Old Testament which openly say that so-and-so openly saw the face of God. What do you do with Isaiah 6: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and lifted up”? Yet when he actually describes the vision, what he sees is the hem of the Lord’s garment filling the whole temple and a whole lot of smoke.

When Jacob wrestles with the Lord, it has to be dark, and this manifestation must disappear before the light comes. In every case where there is some sort of “they saw the face of God,” there is also some kind of restraint, blinding, darkness, or symbolism. So if what Moses is asking for is an unmediated vision of the glory of God, he cannot have it. “For no one can look on my face,” God says, “and live.”

Then the famous scene unrolls. Moses is hidden in the cleft of the rock. God goes by and intones certain words. Then Moses is allowed to peep out from the cleft of the rock, in chapter 34, and see something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God. What are the words that God intones as he goes by in front of Moses? I wish we could look at them in detail, but let me just focus on one phrase.

Exodus 34:5: “Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord, Yahweh. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness …” Now let’s unpack that expression “abounding in love and faithfulness.”

Love and faithfulness are a pair in the Old Testament that every biblical student knows something about. They are checed and ‘emeth in Hebrew. Checed is God’s covenant grace, his covenant love for his people, so some translations render it grace, and some translations render it love. ‘Emeth has to do with faithfulness, all right, but when it’s faithfulness that is connected with word, then it simply means truth.

For example, when the queen of Sheba says to Solomon, “Everything that was told me was ‘emeth,” what she means is that she received a faithful report. It was the truth; it was a true report. So the very same expression that can be rendered love and faithfulness can equally be rendered grace and truth and, in some passages, is so rendered.

Now come back to John 1, and we will note some of John’s references to Exodus 32 to 34.

1. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

Verse 14. The word used for dwelling is tabernacle. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” This is not the normal word for dwelling. This is the word for tabernacle. That is to say, immediately the biblically literate reader’s mind is called back to the Old Testament where the tabernacle is introduced. It’s introduced in Exodus 32 to 34, with the giving of the Law.

2. We’re told, “We have seen his glory.”

Well, glory is such a common theme in the Old Testament that you cannot track that, by itself, exclusively back to this one passage. If, on the other hand, there are other markers through this passage that do tie back exclusively to those three chapters in Exodus (and there are, as we’ll see in a moment), then immediately, you recall Moses’ prayer: “Show me your glory.”

Then Moses is allowed to peep out and see something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God, and you wonder what John will do with this theme of glory. Oh, he unpacks it. At the beginning of the miracles, for example. We read, after the first miracle of the turning of the water into wine in Cana of Galilee, in John 2:11, that the disciples saw his glory. The crowd saw the miracle, but the disciples saw the glory. They saw a bit of what was it was disclosing of God.

Glory is regularly bound up with John’s signs until you get to chapter 12, where the manifestation of Christ’s glory suddenly becomes connected with the cross. Now Jesus’ glory is presented in the ignominy, shame, odium, sacrifice, and torture of a damnable execution instrument. That’s where God’s glory is revealed! The request of “Show me your glory” is answered by “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.”

3. John goes on to say, “This is the One who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

That Old Testament pair. In case we didn’t get it, he is about to repeat it, too. He has this small connection with John the Baptist again, because he wants us to remember that this is a historical manifestation. This is not abstract thought. It’s a historical manifestation. Because I will come back to that theme in my last address, I will skip over it here. It’s an extraordinarily important point in John’s understanding of the gospel, but as I say, we will come back to it.

Then John writes in verse 16 (I’m reading from the NIV): “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” Now if you read 10 different English translations, they will translate it 10 different ways. It is not easy to get the Greek meaning of this one across, but this one isn’t right. The phrase “one blessing after another” sounds like Christmas presents around a tree, piled one on top of another, or something like that. Nor is it: “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” That’s closer, but it’s still not right.

What the preposition means is this: “From his fullness, we have all received grace instead of grace.” It’s a replacement theme, a succession theme. “From his fullness, we have all received grace replacing grace. For …” The next verse, 17, explains that clause. Whenever you see the word for or therefore, see what it’s there for. There is a logical connection. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

So now you’re tied back to Moses, which ties you back to the Pentateuch, and to the giving of the Law, which ties you back to these three chapters in Exodus. This is where the Law was first given, except that it was smashed. That gift was a great, gracious gift. It was a genuinely gracious gift from God. It was a great grace. When Moses heard the words of God saying, “The Lord, the Lord, full of grace and truth …” this was genuinely a manifestation of God’s grace and truth in his self-disclosure, in his self-disclosure at the cave in the giving of the Law.

Yet grace and truth par excellence did not come with the coming of the Law. It came with the coming of Christ. We have now received a grace instead of a grace. This is not in any sense suggesting a Marcionite exclusivism: they had that, we have this, and never the twain shall meet. Of course, there are points of continuity, but we are the people of the new covenant, not of the old covenant.

The new covenant has brought the ultimate Tabernacle, the ultimate manifestation of God, which itself is a theme that John later develops. Do you recall John 2? “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again.” He was not speaking of that hunk of masonry in Jerusalem. He was speaking of his own body.

The tabernacle and the successive temple were the great meeting place between God and human beings, the place of sacrifice, the place of reconciliation, and the place to which the people gathered. For us, where the tabernacle? Where is the place of the meeting of the people of the Lord? Where is the place of reconciliation before God, the place of the priest, and the place of the sacrifice? He is our tabernacle. He is the ultimate manifestation of grace and truth.

“From his fullness, we have all received grace succeeding a grace, grace replacing a grace. For the Law was truly given by Moses …” Yes, yes, yes. “Grace and truth par excellence came through Jesus Christ.” Which brings us to the last reference to these passages …

4. “No one has ever seen God …”

Ah, yes, that picks up precisely what we were told in Exodus 33, that one cannot see God’s face and live. “… but God the unique One, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

Let me close, if I may, with a story. I went to McGill University in the 60s to study chemistry and mathematics. Somewhere along the line, I think it was in my third year, I befriended a Pakistani Muslim. He lived down the hall from me. He was twice my age. He had left his wife and two children behind in Pakistan while he came to do a PhD in Islamic studies at McGill. (McGill, even then, had one of the finest Islamic institutes in the world, and it’s probably even stronger now.) He was lonely.

I was studying chemistry, and my grasp of theology left something to be desired. He was trying to find out what was going on and was trying to push his own Islam too. He came to church with me once or twice, just to see what was going on. I recall, as we’d walk down University Avenue to Pine Avenue to pick up the bus, one night he said to me, “Don, you study mathematics. If you have one cup and another cup, and you add them together, how many cups do you have?” Well, I was studying mathematics, so I said, “Two.”

“If you have two cups, and you add a third cup, how many cups do you have?”

“Three.”

“If you have three cups and take away one cup, how many cups do you have?”

“Two.” My mathematics was pretty good in those days! Now he said, “Do you believe that Jesus is God?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that the Father is God?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that the Holy Spirit is God?”

“Yes.”

Now many street Muslims don’t think that’s what Christians think. They think the Trinity is made up of God, Mary, and Jesus. Now he was far too informed to be taken in by that sort of view. So he had the structure of things right. “So if you have one God, plus one God, plus one God, how many Gods do you have?”

I was studying chemistry for goodness’ sake! So I answered as best I could, which wasn’t very profound. I said, “Well, if you’re going to use a mathematical model, let me at least choose the branch of mathematics. If you have infinity plus infinity plus infinity, how much do you have?” It’s not very good, and to be honest, you have to understand, too, that there is a branch of infinities where even that isn’t the right answer, but I won’t even go into that. He didn’t know that, and I wasn’t going to tell him.

Somewhere along the line, in about November, it dawned on me that he didn’t have a Bible, so I gave him one. He wanted to know how it worked because the Qur’an, as you know, is ordered on surahs of decreasing length. It’s structured very differently from the Christian Bible. So I showed him the Old Testament and New Testament, Prophets and Law, Gospels and Acts, and Epistles and so forth.

He said, “Well, where do I start?” Well, I didn’t know any better. I said, “Well, start with John’s gospel, I guess.” That was in November. Christmas came, and the dorms were shutting down. He had no place to go, so I invited him back home. At that point, my parents lived up on the French side near Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. It so happened that my father spent most of that Christmas season in the hospital, and my dear friend from Pakistan hardly saw us as we were shuttling back and forth to the hospital, visiting the ICU.

By the end of the season, it was pretty clear that Dad was fine, and I asked Mum if I could borrow the car to show my friend something of the sights of Ottawa. In those days, there was much less security than there is today, and eventually, we landed up at the Parliament buildings. It’s a kind of pseudo-Gothic structure, really quite beautiful. There was no security at all, and there was parking right close to the building. We walked in through the snow.

There was a guided tour of about 30 people going off every 15 minutes. We got into one of these tours. We were brought to the rotunda at the back, the rogues’ gallery of Canadian prime ministers (starting with Sir John A. Macdonald), the Senate chamber (yes, we do have a Senate chamber, but it doesn’t work like the American Senate; it works a lot like a senior house), and then the House of Commons and so forth.

Eventually, we got back to the foyer. There, there are these large pillars, each with a little fluted arch at the top with a figure in it. The guide was explaining these things and said, “That is Aristotle, for government must be based on knowledge. That is Socrates, for government must be based on wisdom. That is Moses, for government must be based on law.” He went around the whole lot, and then asked, “Any questions?”

My friend piped up, “Where is Jesus Christ?” Well, I didn’t know where this was coming from. The guide certainly didn’t know where it was coming from, so he did what all guides do under those circumstances. He said, “I beg your pardon?” My Pakistani friend did what all foreigners do under such circumstances. They think they haven’t been understood because of their accent. So he said it more loudly and more clearly, “Where is Jesus Christ?”

So now we had three groups of 30 people in the foyer of the Canadian Parliament building being asked by a Pakistani Muslim where Jesus was! I was looking for a crack in the ground to fall into. I didn’t know where this was coming from at all. Finally the guide said, “Well, why should Jesus be here?” My friend looked shocked. He said, “I read in the Christian Bible that the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Where is Jesus Christ?” Preach it, brother!

For you see, he was a Muslim. He understood law. He understood the demand of God. He understood the sovereignty of God. He understood the power of God. Those were not difficult concepts for him, but to stumble across God made flesh, full of grace and truth, in the person of Jesus … in this book that he had been reading and re-reading and re-reading since November … it was just all too much. “Where is Jesus Christ?” Let us pray.

Before there was a universe,

Before a star or planet,

When time had still not yet begun—

I scarcely understand it—

The eternal Word was with his God,

God’s very Self-Expression;

The eternal Word was God himself,

And God had planned redemption.

The Word became our flesh and blood,

The stuff of his creation.

The Word was God the Word was flesh,

Astounding incarnation!

But when he came to visit us,

We did not recognize him.

Although we owed him everything

We haughtily despised him.

In days gone by God showed himself

In grace and truth to Moses;

But in the Word of God made flesh

Their climax he discloses.

For grace and truth in fullness came

And showed the Father’s glory

When Jesus donned our flesh and died—

This is the gospel story.

Grant, Lord God, that the basics of the Christian faith, including the incarnation, will not be so cheaply known among us that we cease thinking about them, marveling at them, and learning to plumb a little more the depths of this great incalculable self-disclosure. The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us, and we have seen his glory. Help us, therefore, merciful God, to worship. In Jesus’ name, amen.