TWO WORD PICTURES
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Opening Prayer
As I come to your Word today, Father, help me to hear your voice. Let me be amazed, once more, by the gift of your Son given for me.
Read JOHN 1:1–18
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[b] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
Think about the most generous, gracious, or exciting invitation you received—how did accepting this invitation affect you?
By using a unique title—‘the Word’—to introduce Jesus, John presents two contrasting word pictures. The first speaks of power, greatness, majesty (vv. 1–5). The Word was not just with God in his heavenly dwelling, but was God (v. 1). John’s ‘In the beginning’ echoes Genesis 1:1, transporting us back to that very first beginning. This Word was present even then, powerfully at work in giving form and shape to a formless void and filling it with diverse life forms (v. 3). This Word was ‘in very nature God’ and enjoyed ‘equality with God.’1
In contrast, the portrayal of the Word as ‘flesh’ (v. 14) connotes weakness, frailty, vulnerability: ‘Unimaginably, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down, so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and redivide until a fetus took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager.’2 In Paul’s words, ‘he made himself nothing … being made in human likeness.’3 The incarnation was this life-giving, darkness- dispelling Word entering a world dominated by death and darkness, offering life and light to a humanity deformed by sin (vv. 4, 5, 9). Yet, the incarnation was no invasion but an invitation, one humbly given and often rudely rejected—‘his own did not receive him’ (v. 11).
‘He became what we are so that we might become what he is.’4 The Word through whom everything was created became the crucified one. The Word became vulnerable, that we might enjoy wholeness. Just as, in the beginning, a formless void was given form and filled with teeming life, so a deformed humanity was offered a new beginning—the opportunity to be re-formed in God’s likeness, born anew as his own children (vv. 12, 13).
Apply
‘Mild he lays his glory by, / born that we no more may die, / born to raise us from the earth, / born to give us second birth.’5
Closing prayer
Holy Spirit, thank you for enabling me to see that the Creator of all condescended to come to this broken world and die so that I might live.
1 Phil 2:6 2 Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995), 36 3 Phil 2:7 4 Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 130–c. 202 AD 5 ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’, Charles Wesley, 1739
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