WHAT an amazing fact is revealed to us in this short sentence. He who WAS when time was not, at whose fiat the pendulum of time began to swing, who set all the forces of nature into motion, and made the universe pulsate with life: Who is Himself personally the exact expression of the infinite thoughts and eternal glory of the Godhead — the ever-existing Word — He became flesh and dwelt among us, taking part in flesh and blood that He might come near to us without making us afraid it is this that fills the souls of those who have received Him with wonder and worship.
He did not come as a king might come to visit His subjects in their cottage homes, speaking a kindly word to them, and then passing on and forgetting them; He dwelt among us. There was no aloofness about Him: He entered into the circumstances of life: He entered into the joys and sorrows of men, as well as into their houses. He came near to them, became infinitely accessible to even the poorest and the worst. He dwelt among us full of grace and truth.
We say with deepest reverence that He took men as He found them: He demanded no special treatment from them: He was full of compassion for their sorrows, He did not grow impatient at their ignorance and weakness, nor condemn them for their sins.
He was ready to set the TRUTH before a man of the Pharisees when he came to Him, and was so full of GRACE that He did not rebuke the cowardice that made him creep out in the darkness for that memorable interview.
His GRACE took Him to Sychar’s well to talk with a lonely and tired sinner there, and He poured the TRUTH into her soul so abundantly that she returned to her city a new creature, with Himself as her absorbing theme. And mark well His way in that story. The distance was great to where that solitary sinner sighed and sorrowed, yet no camel or ass bore him over the weary miles, for He was a poor man: He must take that journey, every step of it, on foot: and tired and hungry and thirsty He met her — met her as one wayfarer would meet another — and talked with her so gently that she felt neither restraint nor fear in His presence. How truly He “dwell among us,” and how full of grace and truth was He in that dwelling: for let not His lowliness and the poverty of His circumstances, and the way in which He “dwelt among us,” hide from our souls the glory of His person. He was “THE WORD,” “THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON IN THE BOSOM OF THE FATHER.”
What a never-failing, ever-growing charm this Gospel of Gospels — the Gospel of the incarnate Word — has for our souls! How infinite are the heights in which it takes its rise, how deep are the depths into which it flows. Grace and truth are there in Him who dwelt among us, while He still dwelt in the bosom of the Father as the only begotten Son. He has brought the love of that bosom to us, and revealed it, not as something to be admired on the sabbath day in the temple, but as that which would labor seven days in the week, seeking no rest, in order to relieve the needs of men and Eli their souls with joy. And TRUTH was in Him — He came, from the highest height of God’s glory to reveal it; and GRACE also — He stooped to the deepest depth of our need to meet it; and He has filled the immeasurable distance between the height and the depth with the light of God’s love.
That which He declared here abides for us. What He was He is, and what He was the Father is: for He said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” How infinitely attractive to our souls has the Father become since He has been revealed to us so blessedly in JESUS, who dwelt among us.