Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenges. Yesterday we read a beautiful passage in the Gospel of John that says God came and walked on this earth, as a man with human flesh.
He talked about the logos, the Word, which would have been a philosophical concept beloved by Jews and Greeks, even if they meant different things. But then, I hinted yesterday, he uses that concept to teach something altogether new and world changing.
The stunning claim that changes everything is that John says the light of the world, the Word/logos of God, the creator of the world from the beginning of time, the anointed Christ or Messiah of Israel are all one and the same and that he was here. The Word was a person…someone with whom we can relate, communicate.
Did not just enter into flesh, but became flesh and lived among us.
John says, in Greek that the Word was tabernacled among us – this means he pitched a tent among us. He became a physical reality. This tent, Jesus of Nazareth, was God’s home on earth in the same way the Jerusalem temple, and a portable tent version of the temple before that (called the tabernacle), had previously fulfilled for Israel.
But this time God’s presence joined us on earth not as an idea, intangible spirit, or merely visible as smoke or fire, but as the most tangible of things for human beings to grasp, another human.
The Word, here as human flesh, even had a name – Jesus.
He came to earth in the form of a human child. But John laments that most people, maybe even ourselves if we’re honest, were too preoccupied looking for God to notice that he was here.
By the time John 1:10-18 was written, Jesus had grown into his 30s, spread his message about the kingdom of God, and died a criminal’s death on the cross.
The tragedy is that the majority of the world went back to going about its business, went on studying the word of God or the logos of philosophy, as if the subject of their study had not just appeared on earth.
The world was still looking for God – as if nothing had really changed…Or had it?
- 12-13 says, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
John is saying that Jesus, God in the flesh, incarnate, came to adopt into his family all those who will receive him. He came with an invitation to join his family, to be an heir of God’s love. This was an offer worth paying attention to, and yet many people rejected him and ignored him on earth.
Question: Why do you think so many people didn’t recognize, or outright rejected, God when He appeared as human flesh?
Meeting with a Group? Your discussion questions are in this week’s Group Study Guide