The WORD became flesh.
During the Christmas season, many of us put out a nativity scene as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. But Bethlehem wasn’t the beginning of Jesus.
The apostle John begins his gospel by taking us back to creation. He teaches us in the first chapter of John that Jesus (the second part of the trinity) always existed. John wrote:
In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. John 1:1-3
John makes it clear in his first chapter that Jesus is the Word. By this time in history, John like the rest of the people in Israel wrote in the Greek language. When God inspired John to write “In the beginning was the Word” he used the Greek term logos. Everyone in his day would have understood the meaning of it. In their Greek speaking culture, logos carried with it deeper connotation for them than it does for contemporary Christians.
By the first century, secular Greek scholars and philosophers had infused the term logos to mean:
divine reason,
a divine plan,
a spiritual principal,
an intermediary between God and the world,
how the human mind could comprehend God,
God’s desire to speak to people,
a bridge between the divine and the human
and an agent of creation.
John, who called himself the disciple Jesus loved, established immediately in his gospel that Jesus is THE WORD. Jesus is everything the term logos implied. Jesus, THE WORD, was eternal, Jesus was there in the beginning. Jesus was with God. Jesus was God. Jesus is God.
In other words, you could read the first three verses of John 1:1 like this:
In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God. Jesus was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Jesus, and apart from Jesus nothing came into being that has come into being.
Once John established that Jesus is THE WORD, he writes a phrase so beautiful and concise in John 1:14 that it shines through the ages:
“THE WORD became flesh.”
In four words, John tells us the story of Christmas. Jesus who created everything that exists, stepped down from heaven and was born in the flesh to a simple virgin girl. The WORD, the creator, became flesh so He could pay the price for the sins of mankind.
The apostle John is writing about Jesus many years after Jesus’s death, burial, resurrection, and ascension back to heaven. I believe that as John writes John 1:14, he is overwhelmed at the thought that he had been allowed to participate in the earthly ministry of the Word made flesh. He was part of the inner circle of apostles who witnessed the Messiah who was full of grace and truth.
As I celebrate this Christmas season, may I never forget the Christmas story in four words.
THE WORD became flesh.
Carla Killough McClafferty