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Incarnation
God in the Flesh Showing God’s Glory
We live in the days in which the ancient spokesmen of God, the “prophets,” have been replaced by the ultimate “Word” from God.
“Long ago, God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now, in these final days, he has spoken to us in his Son.”
(Hebrews 1:1-2)
God says, “Here, in my Son, is the perfect expression of who I am, what I am all about, what my will is, and how you can fit into all that!” The Word, Jesus Christ, is the perfect expression of Jesus Christ. As we saw last week, the verse that perfectly shows the amazing truth of Christmas is John 1:14.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
(John 1:14)
The Christmas season is mysterious—filled with awe and wonder.
I remember as a small child having this almost tingly sensation when I would come down the stairs on Christmas morning to see the glorious sight of the Christmas tree surrounded by dozens of brightly wrapped presents. I love re-living my childhood through my own children—watching their faces as we talk about incredible things. Their faces are aglow with wonder when I share with them, with much enthusiasm and awe in my own facial expressions, the awesome story of Christmas.
As adults and teens, we can find ourselves in that same sense of awe and wonder this Christmas season. Why? Because each year, we can more deeply meditate on the mysterious, amazing meaning of Christmas: “The Word became flesh!” God incarnate! God actually dwelt among us!
This is no small news. There have been a lot of incredible events in the history of the world, and it might be a great exercise to list the top 10 events in the history of the world.
What would you suppose should be on such a list? The invention of the wheel? World War II? The Fall of the Roman Empire?
Now, wait a minute, shouldn’t “number one” be that God himself became one of us? That he walked with us, talked with us, and died for us? And can “number two” on the list even come close to the real “number one?” What can even come close to that?
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
Whoa! Really? That’s nearly unbelievable!
Exactly. It’s so “out-there” that it is hard to believe. That is why, even though it is all recorded for you in this incredible history book called “The Bible,” people to this day are still skeptical. I don’t blame them—it really is a difficult thing to swallow. God became one of us? It would be hard to believe it were not for the testimonies of all the people throughout the last 2,000 years that have given their lives to this Jesus Christ—their claims that Jesus is not dead, but alive, risen from the grave, and that he is actually indwelling them through his Holy Spirit. Lives are changed, purpose is given, the world is a better place—all because of this fact: At a certain time and in a certain place God Himself became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We can read the testimonies of those who lived in that place and time, including the Apostle John, when he states these words:
“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
(John 1:14b)
The Incarnation showed people God’s glory.
John says that he, along with others, saw the glory of the unique One, the only One who came from the Father. While I am certainly sympathetic to people’s desire for tolerance for other’s views, we must not miss the point that John is making here: While there are a lot of religious leaders in the world, and a lot of opinions about religion, we can’t gloss over what is stated over and over again in the Christian Scriptures. Jesus Christ is
unique. No other religious leader was actually God-in-the-flesh. No other world religion follows the “only One who came from the Father.” In our discussions about tolerance and plurality, we must be open to and tolerant to the fact that Jesus and his apostles made some very unique claims about who he was. John claims to have seen the very glory of God in Jesus—that is an amazing claim, and one that needs to be dealt with honestly. Either the apostles were dead wrong, and Jesus Christ is not the unique Son of God (as the Koran claims), or he was. We really cannot have it both ways. John claims that the uniqueness of Jesus Christ showed the true nature of God to the world—the glory of God was seen in the person of Jesus.
This is what I want us to think about today—how God incarnate showed the world God’s glory. I want us to know what that means, and I want us to think about what that means for us as we try to live our lives as the Body of Christ in this world today.
There’s a story recorded in the Gospel of John that teaches us that showing God’s glory is the most loving thing for anybody to do. It’s found in chapter 11.
“Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. (John 11:1-6)
The rest of the chapter tells of Jesus finally arriving and raising the dead Lazarus from the grave. Jesus tells them
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (v. 25) And upon raising Lazarus, Jesus says, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
(v. 40)
Here are some points that this story tells us about Jesus’ mission in becoming flesh and dwelling among us.
1. Jesus allowed Lazarus to die. “So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” (v. 6) Jesus’ believed that there was something more important than alleviating the family of the grief of losing Lazarus. What was it?
2. Jesus’ primary concern was to show God’s glory. Jesus says that this terrible thing was happening for a reason: “It is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (v. 4)
3. Jesus’ decision to show God’s glory and not keep Lazarus from dying was an act of love. Look at the connection between verses 5 and 6: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So (the Greek word there, hôs, means “so,” indicating manner, not “yet,” as the NIV has it) when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” The reason he stayed away, allowing his good friend to die, allowing his good friends Mary and Martha to wail and cry in grief, was because he loved these people!
4. Therefore, Jesus’ definition of love is very different from our normal definition of love.
We think love for others is ultimately expressed in doing whatever we can to bring people comfort, to lift up their value. This is what is taught us as the ultimate expressions of love, and they are indeed excellent expressions of love. It is good to love somebody by making a big deal out of them, to lift up their value.
But are the ultimate expressions of love really when I make a big deal out of you? Is love best showed when you become the central thing in my life? Is it the really the greatest act of love to lift up your value as the center of my existence? Or is there an even higher expression of love?
Look at how Jesus defines love!
John Piper pointed this out to me in his recent devotional book, Pierced By The Word (Multnoma Publishers, 2003, p. 15). He writes:
“Oh, how many people—even Christians—would murmur at Jesus for callously letting Lazarus die and putting him and Mary and Martha and others through the pain and misery of those days. And if people today saw that this was motivated by Jesus’ desire to magnify the glory of God, how many would call this harsh or unloving! What this shows is how far above the glory of God most people value pain-free lives. For most people, love is whatever puts human value and human well-being at the center. So Jesus’ behavior is unintelligible to them.
But let us not tell Jesus what love is. Let us not instruct Him how He should love us and make us central. Let us learn from Jesus what love is and what our true well-being is. Love is doing whatever you need to do to help people see and savor the glory of God in Christ forever and ever. Love keeps God central. Because the soul was made for God.”
The world’s definition of love is when somebody makes a big deal out of you. Jesus’ definition of love is to help people see the real big deal: the glory of God! As God Incarnate, he displayed to everybody true love: The Glory of God!
The most loving act is to display to people the glory of God!
“Glory” comes from two biblical words: The Hebrew word, ka-bod, and the Greek word,
doxa. Ka-bod literally means “heavy.” It is like saying that God is weighty, on the balance of life, God outweighs everything combined!
Doxa literally means “a light’s radiance, brightness, or splendor.” It is like saying that God is magnificent, that the splendor of God outshines all else combined!
And the most loving thing to do for anybody that in your life, be it your spouse, your kids, your mom and dad, your co-workers, your fellow-students, your neighbors, your teachers, your students, or your hair-dresser is to show them the heaviness and radiance of who God is!
And, frankly, the best way to show them the glory of God is to show them the glory of Jesus
Christ—what he did in becoming God incarnate and then dying on the cross for our sins is the most glorious thing anybody can ever see.
Listen to how Jesus prayed to his Father at the end of his earthly life:
“Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
(John 17:1-5)
Jesus prays first and foremost for his glory. He says that glory was displayed in what he accomplished in his incarnation by the things he did and said in his life. He further says that it will ultimately be displayed in his death on the cross (for that is what this prayer is looking forward to). And in dying on the cross, Jesus will once again be in the place of glory in heaven by his Father’s side. He says (don’t miss this!) that the reason God gives people eternal life is ultimately for the purpose of showing the glory of God! (For nothing shows the glory of God more than the mercy of God in saving doomed people and giving them eternal life!) God loves people; He is willing to die for people!
Jesus’ primary motivation is all he did was to display the glory of God! That is what God Incarnate does! So the syncretistic equation is this:
The most loving action to do for anybody is to show them the glory of God.
The most glorious action is to show God’s loving heart for people, displayed in the person of Jesus Christ.
The most loving act of God-in-the-flesh was not ultimately to make you and me central, but to make his glory central, so that we could see it and be forever changed because of it. There is something bigger than us. It is God Himself. God’s love drives him to glorify Himself for our sakes. We are changed—not in making us a big deal, but in making God the big deal! This is the remarkable truth of the Gospel of Christ: We need to be brought up into something more glorious than ourselves in order for us to fulfill who we were meant to be. And Jesus Christ is the glorious route to that glorious place.
That is why, I believe, people have been turned off by so many churches. Many of today’s churches make men the big deal—they give us “how to” sermons in order to try to make our lives better (humans are the big deal there), they give power to those in the church hierarchy (humans, again, are the big deal there), they seek to scratch where people itch so as to make people happy in their situations. But God is not the center of any of that.
The authentic church shifts its attention upwards toward God. It realizes that our purpose is to glorify God!
That is why we are commanded in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God”
Now, Jesus is no longer walking on the planet. But though he is in heaven, he is still incarnate on the planet, through his Church, what He calls the very “Body of Christ.” What are we doing to show the weight and splendor of God to the world in the way that “The Body of Christ” must? Do we understand our reason for existing? Do we grasp our purpose?
The story of Lazarus’ death teaches me that the most loving act for me may be to suffer for Christ’s sake so that He can be glorified. The most loving act may actually cause some suffering. I may lose some stature, I may lose some of my friends, I may lose my job; I may even lose my life. But I must be willing to not put those things above the glory of God.
Oh, how I pray that I could place my own personal comfort and desires aside for the more important purpose of glorifying Christ! Oh, how I pray that I would wake up to the fact that my true satisfaction and joy in life will only be found in living for the glory of God!
We here at Vanguard Church made this our priority when we wrote our “Purpose Statement” a couple years ago:
“To glorify God by developing a people passionately in love with their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and eager to share this love and hope with others.”
This Christmas, allow the truth of the incarnation shift your focus away from all that clouds your true purpose in life.
Allow Jesus Christ to be the center. Pray that you would yield to him this Christmas, that he would be your vision, your guide, the very reason that you live.
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