Week 26—Sunday Acts 2:32-33
Acts 2:32-33
THE WORD CONTINUES TO BE FLESH
We have now begun on the second half of our year’s pilgrimage, and we also begin on the second part of our study of the Word become flesh. We have looked at this Word become flesh as revealed in the four Gospels, in Jesus the Person. Did it stop there with him? Is this Word become flesh a once-and-for-all event, never repeated? Or is it a continuing principle inherent in the Christian faith? Does it pass over into the lives of the followers of Jesus as continuing fact? Did they become the Word become flesh? Imperfectly, of course, but nevertheless, was it the Divine Intention that they be a continuing incarnation of the life and spirit of Jesus? And did that happen? And does it happen now when we are in line with the reality of the Christian faith?
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 experimental. 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 pattern of the Word become flesh was fixed in Jesus—in his character and life, and that forever fixes for us our type of reproduction of the Word become flesh—it will be Christlike character and life. Nothing higher in heaven and on earth. This is It! The transition from the pattern to the reproduction was through the coming of the Holy Spirit—the most important event in human history.
O Jesus Lord, you came and you provided for your deeper coming within us by the coming of the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit we are in the line of succession of the Word became flesh. May that be in me today in thought, word, and deed. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: In some real way I shall be an extension of the Incarnation.