Focusing on Christ:
He Is THE Word In Human Flesh

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him,
and without Him was not any thing made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
– John 1:1–18 –

In the beginning.…

As we have already discussed, it is very important to know how things started. Here, in the passage from John’s Gospel, the Scriptures tell us that The Word was in the beginning. The Word as with God and was God.

Clearly, John understands this “Word” to be the Lord Jesus. Jesus, of course, is the focus of John’s Gospel and he is the only Gospel writer to begin with Jesus’ existence. We might say his pre-existence as He relates to creation. Jesus was before anything else. All things were created by Him.

Since John was raised within Jewish culture of the 1st Century, he would have been very familiar with the term “word” being associated with God’s creation and direction of all things. More than likely, by John’s time, the term “word” had come to be fill in for the Lord’s Name (YHWH – “I AM”) since the Jews did not speak The Name out loud. The Lord God’s word is the expression of His character and power.

Just a brief survey of the Psalms gives us insight into the background against which John chooses this term “Word” to refer to Jesus.

• 33:4 – the Lord’s Word is associated with His faithful work
• 103:20 – The Lord’s Word is powerful and to be heard and obeyed
• 105:8 – The Lord’s Word is associated with His covenant promises
• 107:20 – The Lord’s Word is sent out and it heals.
• 119:81 – The Lord’s Word is a source of hope and salvation.
• 119:105 – The Lord’s Word gives light (direction)
• 119:130 – The Lord’s Word gives understanding
• 119:161 – The Lord’s Word is like great treasure
• 138:2 – The Lord’s Name and Word are exalted above all other things

All of these ideas are expanded in the New Testament and applied to Jesus. He IS the Word – the human expression of the One True God’s character and power.

As we have said several times now, if all we had were our experience and our observations of the world, we would have huge gaps in our knowledge of reality. There was no one present when things began at our origins. UNLESS. Unless we take what Jesus and the Scriptures affirm.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was in the beginning and His creative work was the basis of our existence. Jesus even claims to have knowledge of things “before the foundation of the world” or “before the world existed” (see John 17:5, 24). Because of this, in Jesus we have access to a source of knowledge that transcends our own small experience.

The entire first chapter of John’s Gospel is powerful and worthy of a fuller exploration and explanation than we are giving here. We are going to focus on one key thing John says toward the conclusion of this introduction:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth …. For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made him known.
– John 1:14-18 –

Even though Jesus, as the Eternal Son, existed before and at the beginning of all things, He also “became flesh” and lived among us. When we think about our design as human beings, one of the astounding realities that we can ponder is that our human bodies and spirits were created in a way that The Son could take on human form. Ponder that for a bit.

Think of this: when the Lord God was planning our creation, He made us in His image and likeness because He knew that in time The Son would need a body fit to hold His personality from that time on, forever. Right now, Jesus is still human. Yes, He is a different form of a human after His resurrection, but He is nevertheless human.

The Eternal Son entered the human experience and became “one of us.” This is one of the most important, core truths of a Bible Based, Christ focused worldview. God The Son took on human form and so He connects us back to Father God in a way only He can do:

“For there is one God
and one mediator between God and humanity,
Christ Jesus, Himself human,
who gave Himself—a ransom for all,
a testimony at the proper time.”
– 1 Timothy 2:5–6 (HCSB) –

John tells us that he and the other first disciples saw Jesus’ glory full of grace and truth. We will return to this passage when we discuss values and transcendent truths a little later. For now, simply think of Christ glory as His profound beauty and goodness made available to our senses. This glory is FULL of grace and truth.

As John concludes he says that Jesus has revealed and explained the the One Truth God, our Heavenly Father, to us. Because Jesus has been with the Father forever, before anything else existed, He is uniquely qualified to reveal and explain Him to us. Because Jesus has experiences that stand outside of time and space, He can be a vital source of Truth about the “really real.”

But to have access to this truth, we have to trust Him. Belief and trust always precede understanding and so we will need to explore those ideas a little more deeply.