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Jim's PERSPECTIVENovember 20, 2013The Incarnation, and particularly as John states it in his gospel, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (RSV), is, for me, the second-most intriguing and compelling aspect of Jesus. The first would be the Resurrection because it validates everything that Jesus said and did. And it authenticates both Old and New Testament scripture. But the Incarnation is the cornerstone of Christian experience. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” is how Paul puts it in the book of Colossians. Yeah, yeah, I know that some would question whether Paul actually wrote Colossians. Most scholars say that he didn’t, but many would say that it is “Pauline” in nature and tone. Could have been a disciple or secretary or someone, but regardless of who wrote it I always have thought that Colossians came from Paul’s thinking processes. The point is, “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” And Paul actually does write in 2 Corinthians that “we have this treasure (meaning the Holy Spirit) in earthen vessels (meaning us) that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.” In the context of the divine origin of this phenomenon, Paul’s statement in his second letter to the church at Corinth is analogous to John’s prologue, which points out that children of God are born, “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (ch.1, v.13). We westerners have heard this “word became flesh” line so many times that we have been conditioned to think of it as normal. However, for many in other parts of the world, the idea is repugnant. The objection many non-westerners raise to the concept of God entering into human flesh is a very, very old idea. All of the so-called dualists—folks like the Gnostics and Manichees—thought it inconceivable that a holy God would ever inhabit “ungodly” human flesh. To better understand why it was (and still is) considered scandalous, one needs to know a little about some assumptions held by dualists. For them, the universe is made up of two pre-existing, co-equal factions of light and darkness, good and evil. Obviously, this would not be the place to discuss the belief that Christians have in evil as “corruption of the good,” as St. Augustine thought. In any case, the world, especially for the Manichees (Incidentally, Augustine was one before becoming a Christian), because it is comprised of “matter,” and matter is evil, anything belonging to the world, including human flesh, is bad stuff. Early Greeks— ones under the influence of Plato and some others—believed that the goal of life is to escape the “prison-house of the body” and be re-united with the pure form from which it came. Again, the implicit suggestion in that way of thinking is that “flesh” is not good, and it would further imply that God would not “sully” himself by coming to live in it. Of course, this would fly in the face of the account in the first chapter of Genesis which declares that when God made the material world, he “saw that it was good” (vv.12, 18, 25), and in verse 31, that it was “very good.” The writer of Hebrews points out, too, that “He is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters” (ch.2.vv.9-11). Evidently God is not embarrassed nearly as much as we are about our human flesh. Christians assert that God does, in fact, come to “birth himself” in humans by means of the Second Person of the Godhead, namely, Jesus himself. John describes it with these words: “But to all who ‘received’ him (i.e., ‘took him in’), by believing in his name, he gave them power to become sons and daughters of God” (ch.1, v.12). It is all about becoming something that we otherwise could not be—God-like— without the life of God “in” or “incarnated” within us. John’s first letter puts it thusly: See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (ch.3, vv.1, 2) I like to invert the last two phrases because it really says the same thing in a slightly different way: “we shall see him as he is (face-to-face) because we shall be like him.” It is all made possible by means of the Incarnation, or, rather, a kind of “Junior Incarnation.” I celebrate this whole idea in the lyrics of one of my songs, “Incarnation 2.” This is what I really love about Advent and Christmas. - Jim Radford |
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©2013 Jim Radford. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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