The Word Became Flesh
THE WORD BECAME FLESH
The Cleansing of the Kingdom
Luke 17:20-21; Acts 1:3-8
Since I have seen the Word become “flesh” I can no longer be afraid of “flesh,” the material, for it has within it the possibility of expressing the Divine. Jesus cleansed the material. I never really saw the material until I saw him. Then my world was new. And an amazingly worthwhile world is the scene of the coming kingdom.
Victorious Living
(Week 17, Friday)
Religion Needs a Cosmic Guarantee
Revelation 21:1-5
Is the Way a principle or a Person?
It is both! Jesus put them together in this statement, “I am the way” (John 14:6). Here the Word became flesh, the Path became a Person.
The Way
(Week 7, Monday)
Christ Written in the Texture of Things
John 1:1-5, 10
We cannot give ourselves to something that is time-bound, and therefore to be time-destroyed. It must be eternal. And then that “eternal greatness” must be “incarnate in the passage of temporal fact” (Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas [New York: Macmillan, 1933], 33). It must meet us where we are, walk our dusty ways with us, redeem us, not by proxy but by proximity; the Word must become flesh. What other faith can fulfill the demand except that of Jesus?
But there is a further consideration. This Word that becomes flesh must be not only a revelation of God; it must have a kinship to the flesh, must be the interpretation not only of God but of life.
The Way
(Week 7, Saturday)
The Barrier down beween Flesh and Spirit
1 Corinthians 6:12-13
The Holy Spirit broke down the barrier between flesh and spirit. “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17). Here “Spirit” was to come upon “flesh.” It is true that “flesh” is often used as “people,” but the very fact that “flesh” was used instead of “people” was significant and fits in with the genius of the gospel. For that gospel is founded on “the Word made flesh,” the incarnation.
If the Word had become printer’s ink, it would have become a code. If the Word had become idea, it would have been a philosophy. But the Word became flesh and therefore became a gospel, the good news.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 14, Sunday)
Faith through Fingertips
John 20:19-20
The Christian faith is founded on an incarnation, the Word became flesh. So the flesh now becomes Word, and one can find faith in and through the material.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 15, Sunday)
The Transformation of the Material
Luke 12:13-15
Affirmation for the Day: Since the center of my faith is in the Word become flesh, now my flesh and my material possessions must become word.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 41, Sunday)
The Word of Christianity Become Flesh
1 John 1:1-4
The very center of the Christian faith is the Incarnation, in which the Divine Word becomes flesh; the idea becomes fact. All other faiths are the word become word, the idea projected as an idea. In Jesus, the idea walked. It spoke in human life and manifested in human relationships. It transformed religion from idealism to realism.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 30, Sunday)
The Word Become Flesh
John 1:1-4
Jesus: the Word become flesh of “everything Jesus did and taught from the beginning” (Acts 1:1 CEB). Our starting point is Jesus. But someone objects and says, “The gospel begins with God.” No, for until Jesus came, there were views about God and there was news about God, but no good news. Apart from Jesus we know little about God, and what little we know is not good news. The conception of the character of God apart from Jesus is questionable. In Jesus our question marks about God turn into exclamation points. In the face of Jesus we know what God is like and what we must be like if we are to be good. If God is other than Jesus, God is not good; if like Jesus, God is good. That is an astounding thing to say; yet when I say it, I hear the ages give a resounding Amen. And it reverberates through all things.
Mastery
(Week 1, Wednesday)
If you ask my definition of maturity, I give you not a verbal but a vital definition: Jesus! He is Incarnate Maturity, the Word of Maturity become flesh.
Christian Maturity
(p. xii)
God Salvation or Self-Salvation?
Ephesians 2:7-8
John has no hesitancy in pointing straight to the heart of the matter: the center of faith is a Person and that Person is Jesus: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest” (1 John 1:1-2). Here, over against human speculations about God, John points to God’s authentic self-revelation: Jesus, the Word become flesh.
Christian Maturity
(Week 1, Thursday)
Religions: Our Search for God
Acts 17:22-28
In Jesus the Word became flesh; in Gnosticism the word became idea. We must broaden and even universalize that statement by saying: In Jesus the Word became flesh; in all other systems of religion and philosophy the Word became word. Jesus is good news; all else is good views.
Christian Maturity
(Week 1, Friday)
The Eternal Purpose
In Jesus, purpose became performance, the idea became fact, and the Word became flesh. In all other religions, it is the word become word—a philosophy or a moralism. In Jesus, and in Jesus alone, the Word became flesh.
In Christ
(Week 33, Tuesday)
God through Philosophy and Moralism
Job 23:1-2, 8
There have been two great attempts to find God apart from the Word became flesh. They are the attempts of philosophy and the attempts of moralism. The attempt of philosophy has been seen in the great philosophical nations: Greece, India, and China. The great philosophical systems were all three completed just before the time of the coming of Jesus. They took humans as high as they could go by philosophical reasoning. Beyond these systems, the human race will not progress in philosophical thought. The human brain strained itself to the utmost, and having reached its apex, went progressively bankrupt as an adequate method of finding God.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 2, Sunday)
The Material World Has a Meaning and Destiny
Romans 8:18-20
We turn now to another phase of “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). We have been emphasizing “the Word,” but what about the “flesh”? The flesh stands for the organized material, the material organized for the use of the person. It, therefore, stands for the whole material universe. This means that the Divine assumes a material body, not as a temporary garment put on and off at will. The word “dwelt among us” could be translated “tabernacled among us,” a permanent dwelling.
This means that the material is going to be used for the purpose of the redemption of not only the spiritual being called human, but the whole person, body included; and the whole material universe is going to be redeemed. The material is just as much the subject of redemption as the spiritual.
This plants the faith of Jesus squarely in the midst of human relationships; nothing is alien to it except sin and evil. Anything that concerns life concerns the faith of Jesus, for he is Life and, therefore, includes everything comprehended under the term Life. The fact is that the Christian faith is the most materialistic of religions, the only one that really takes the material seriously. It starts out by saying that when God created the material universe, God “saw that it was good”; the material was God-made and God-approved.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 6, Sunday)
Through the Ages One Word
Ephesians 4:4-6
We have been studying how the main facts of the Christian faith—the incarnation, the creation of the world through Christ, the preparita evangelica in the body, the redemption through the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus—all are founded in and illustrated as the Word became flesh. We must now turn to see if the New Testament Scriptures in general support this thesis. Are these outstanding facts standing above, unsupported by the rest of the New Testament? Or is the whole of the New Testament a whole? And is there one message running through the whole, the message of the Word became flesh? One modern commentator says, “After the one statement in John about the Word becoming flesh, the rest of the New Testament dismisses it, so we can dismiss it.” Can we? If you dismiss it, do you dismiss the very genius of the Christian faith and turn that faith into a philosophy or moralism—people’s search for God—instead of a redemptive invasion of us—God’s search for us? If so, then the Christian faith takes its place as one of the religions of the world, a philosophy of good views, but with no good news.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 17, Wednesday)
The Word Continues to Be Flesh
Acts 2:32-33
I am persuaded that the Word became flesh is not only an event in the time of Jesus; it is a continuing principle, a fact that is inherent in the Christian faith. And this is seen and realized in the coming of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit was the Word become flesh in receptive and obedient believers. Here the historical passed into the experiential. The Word became flesh, not only in “the body of Christ”—the church—but in the bodies of believers as individuals and persons. There was a collective manifestation of the Word become flesh in the new community and an individual manifestation in the new person.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 26, Sunday)
Conversion? I Haven’t the Slightest Idea What It Means
John 3:9-12
Abandonment of the Word became flesh in favor of the Word become word, and its results, are seen in this: A professor of religious education in a Methodist theological college said to a friend of mine, “What do you mean by conversion? I haven’t the slightest idea of what it means.” He was brought up in a theological climate where Christianity was a system of thought to be learned. The knowing would heal you of your moral and spiritual ailments. It is salvation by knowledge, a lineal descendant of Gnosticism or the “Knowers.” If you know about it that saves you. That is proving its sterility in the realm of religion and in the realm of psychology and psychiatry.
In the realm of religion it is producing uncertain believers. “Here you found him?” “I hope so.” “Do you know him?” “Maybe.” “Have you assurance?” “No, I’m afraid not.” This making Jesus Teacher and Lord is putting the Methodist and other churches back in the days of Wesley before his conversion. There Wesley was depending on knowledge and discipline. It left him empty. But when he passed from knowledge and discipline to surrender and faith and acceptance—made Jesus Lord—then he became teacher, and how! Wesley’s whole being became illuminated: mind, body, spirit. Jesus was converted from Teacher and Lord to Lord and Teacher. And the conversion was profound. And Wesley had a message, a message that set the world on fire. Religious education, as in the person of this professor, knows little or nothing of conversion. For it doesn’t believe in it or depend on it; it depends on information, not transformation. So it produces moonlight, not sunlight, information about secondhand moonlight, not sunlight firsthand: “This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God” (John 17:3); not know about thee, but “know thee” as Lord and hence Teacher. Religious education doesn’t produce people of passion, people with a message.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 37, Thursday)