God Became a Flesh and Bone Man!
12/2 Reading Portions: 2 Chronicles 1; 1 John 1; Micah 7; Luke 16
Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)
12/2 Reading Portions: 2 Chronicles 1; 1 John 1; Micah 7; Luke 16
1 John 1:1
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—
INCARNATION
What an incredible way to start a letter to people you love! As many times as I’ve read this verse since the Lord saved me by His grace in 1985, it wasn’t until a little over twenty-five years ago, just before the Lord called me into pastoral ministry that it struck me what John was saying. While certainly it is true what many Bible scholars say about this opening, that in John’s day, in the last decade or so of the first century, there were many who were embracing the gnostic heresy that teaches that Jesus came as a spirit in bodily form but didn’t actually have a body. While this verse confounds that cockamamie notion, what John opens with is even more profound than that. There are exuberant joy and excitement in the words he conveys to the churches with this opening statement. He was effectively saying, “The eternal God, He who is from the beginning as we know it, came to the earth He created and man wrecked with his willful disobedience, and we heard HIS voice, not just a cantor singing the psalms, or an elder reading the Law of Moses; He, who is forever and infinite, we have seen Him with our very own eyes, and looked upon his stature; and not only that, we have embraced God because He showed Himself to us as flesh and bone Man; it is this Jesus that I write to you about, who has given us the word of life, the magnificent grace of God expounded from the promise in Eden’s Garden to Malachi’s prophetic hope of expectation!” Moreover, John was not boasting of something special that he and eleven others witnessed. He was expressing a truth that was even mightier and much more magnificent. Now, as a believer filled with the Holy Spirit, the majesty and wonder of that truth is something to shout from the rooftops, or if writing a letter, the most prolific opening statement a soul can muster— The blessed and eternal God became a flesh and bone Man to save wretched souls like you and me. And everything John writes afterward, springs forth from this truth. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Can this truth be yours and mine as well? Yes, it can, because it is. It’s ours, as much as it was his, and John tells us so, which we will explore and meditate upon tomorrow.