Daily Devotional

This is the center of the Prologue. Everything before has been leading to it. Everything after flows from it. Fifteen words in Greek. The most compressed theological statement in the New Testament.

The Word became flesh. Not the Word inhabited a man. Not the Word appeared as a man. The Word became flesh. He did not stop being what he was. He began to be what he was not.

Flesh. Not "human nature" in the abstract. Σάρξ — the stuff of mortality, weakness, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, pain, and death. The same clay that Adam was made from. Why does this matter? Because if the Word did not become flesh, then God did not actually enter our condition. He did not suffer. He did not hunger. He did not weep at a grave. He did not feel the nails. And if he did not enter our condition, he did not redeem it.

And he dwelt among us — ἐσκήνωσεν, "he pitched his tent." The tabernacle in the wilderness was the place where God's glory dwelt among Israel. Now the glory has a new tent: human flesh. The WEB says "lived among us" — accurate, but the Greek says "pitched his tent." John adds: "We have seen his glory." The disciples saw it with physical eyes — the glory of God blazing through the ordinary humanity of a Galilean carpenter.

Full of grace and truth. This is the climax. Not a code written on stone. A person. Grace — unearned favor. Truth — the reality of God made visible. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. He is the exegesis of the invisible God.