Post No.2
More for me than for you - so I can read it Christmas after Christmas.
A purpose beyond our understanding
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
A purpose beyond our understanding
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
John 1:14
Could this be the most profound verse in the whole Bible? The Word, who was with God in the beginning; the Word, who was indeed God; the one through whom the whole universe was made – how and why could he so demean himself, so limit himself, to take on the form of one of the beings that he had created? Indeed, it was not simply human form, human appearance, that he took on, but human flesh – a body with all its limitations and discomforts, its tiredness, its dirt and its sweat.
How? By going through the whole human process of conception, gestation and birth. Jesus didn’t land ready-made in the temple and command human allegiance, but subjected himself to all the physical risks that are the lot of humankind, and to all the constraints of human culture.
Why? Paul wrote to the Colossians that ‘God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross’ (1:19-20). We are on the whole more familiar with the idea that Jesus came to reconcile individual sinners to God. But God’s purpose was broader, and nobler.
We are of course, individually, part of that comprehensive purpose. We have to be personally redeemed in order to participate in the redemption of the earth. Richard Baukham and Trevor Hart write wonderfully of ‘the biblical story of the world from creation to consummation. It sees God as the beginning and end of all things, their source and their goal, Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Renewer, the one who was and is and is to come. It is a story not yet completed… This means that those who live by this story live within it. It gives us our identity, our place in the story, and a part to play in the still-to-be-completed purposes of God for his world’.
Let us worship Jesus, this Christmas, because through his incarnation we can walk beside him in his redemptive purposes for the world.
Helen Parry
This was the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity's article received on Monday 17th December 2007. You can subscribe to their bi-weekly emails at http://www.licc.org.uk/
Could this be the most profound verse in the whole Bible? The Word, who was with God in the beginning; the Word, who was indeed God; the one through whom the whole universe was made – how and why could he so demean himself, so limit himself, to take on the form of one of the beings that he had created? Indeed, it was not simply human form, human appearance, that he took on, but human flesh – a body with all its limitations and discomforts, its tiredness, its dirt and its sweat.
How? By going through the whole human process of conception, gestation and birth. Jesus didn’t land ready-made in the temple and command human allegiance, but subjected himself to all the physical risks that are the lot of humankind, and to all the constraints of human culture.
Why? Paul wrote to the Colossians that ‘God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross’ (1:19-20). We are on the whole more familiar with the idea that Jesus came to reconcile individual sinners to God. But God’s purpose was broader, and nobler.
We are of course, individually, part of that comprehensive purpose. We have to be personally redeemed in order to participate in the redemption of the earth. Richard Baukham and Trevor Hart write wonderfully of ‘the biblical story of the world from creation to consummation. It sees God as the beginning and end of all things, their source and their goal, Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Renewer, the one who was and is and is to come. It is a story not yet completed… This means that those who live by this story live within it. It gives us our identity, our place in the story, and a part to play in the still-to-be-completed purposes of God for his world’.
Let us worship Jesus, this Christmas, because through his incarnation we can walk beside him in his redemptive purposes for the world.
Helen Parry
This was the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity's article received on Monday 17th December 2007. You can subscribe to their bi-weekly emails at http://www.licc.org.uk/
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