| “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). |
| In yesterday’s message, we noticed that the Lord Jesus is referred to in John 1:1 as “the Word.” This simply means that He represents everything that God is. We cannot understand God fully, for if we could, we would be gods ourselves. But we can realize through the Scriptures that God is a Trinity (a being made up of three persons), consisting of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus is the Son of God, and when God the Father wanted to reveal Himself to you and me, He sent His only Son down into this world as a man. In this way He was “made flesh,” and had a human body, soul, and spirit, just as you and I have. He was born into this world as a baby, and grew up in a family, just as you and I do. But one thing about Him was different — very different; He did not have a sinful nature, as we all do. He never told a lie, never was disobedient to His parents, never took something that was not His, never hit His younger brothers or sisters, never used bad words, or did any of the other wrong things that all of us did as children. He was perfect, because He was the Son of God. |
| Because of all this, He stood out among other children, and as our verse says, “was full of grace and truth.” But even though He was a real man, He was also still the Son of God, and was the One who upheld “all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). He could tell the storm to cease, when their boat in the Sea of Galilee was filling with water. He could heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and act in every way according to His divine power. |
| Most of all, however, He could show us what God the Father was like. Before the Lord Jesus came, man could not really know God in a very personal way. But now the Lord Jesus has revealed the Father, and He could say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). It is a most wonderful thing to know God, and we know Him because the Lord Jesus, who is God Himself, has come into this world as a man to reveal Him. |
