The Word Became Flesh

For centuries, John 1 has offered the church perhaps its favorite Advent text outside of the birth narratives of Luke. But have we ever stopped to think about what was going through the mind of the author when he chose the word logos (word) to describe Jesus? Perhaps we are so used to the strange choice that we don’t realize how inscrutable it sounded the first time Western ears heard it. But make no mistake: it was utterly clear and eminently meaningful to John’s original audience.

The socio-cultural world of the New Testament was shaped by the convergence of two cultural worldviews: Hebrew and Greco-Roman. Though the New Testament is written in Greek (the lingua franca of the day), almost every author that contributed to the canon was indelibly shaped by the Hebrew culture that infused the life of the early church. So to understand how the first readers of John’s gospel understood the word logos, we have to look at both cultures.

In Greco-Roman cosmology, the logos was understood to be the animating force that infuses the world with being and life. The logos was the ever-present energy—variously described by the competing philosophical schools as wisdom, logic, rationality, and beauty—that both created the world in the beginning and sustained it from one moment to the next.

Hebrew cosmology was similarly shaped by a unique understanding of words. In the Hebrew imagination, words were not simply linguistic tools of communication, they were the building blocks of reality. It is no mistake that the Hebrew phrase vayo’mer (“and he said”) is found 11 times in Genesis 1. The idea that God created the world with words was not simply understood by the Hebrew mind as a flashy metaphor or a creative anthropomorphism—it reflected a fundamental understanding of how the world works. God created the world with words, and God’s words of love and covenant faithfulness continue to create the world from one moment to the next. In fact, the Hebrew word davar can be translated as both “word” and “action”/”good deed”—so closely tied is the Hebrew understanding of speaking and doing.

To the Hebrew mind, words literally created worlds. While this may sound strange to us, it makes abundant sense. Think about a time when you were encouraged by a dear friend in a period of vulnerability or self-doubt. Or remember a moment of frustration when you spat out words of hurt toward another. Words can create a world of trust and support or a world of pain and hurt.

It’s clear that John is going for something specific by framing the incarnation of Jesus in this way. He could have articulated the mind-bending paradox of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God in myriad ways, but he chooses to tap deep into the Greco-Roman and Hebrew worldview, to the very nature of reality and creation. Why would John find it so important to tie creation and the incarnation together so tightly?

Perhaps it is because in the incarnation we see God’s ultimate affirmation of the physical earth. That God would assume physical existence—that he would wrap himself in flesh and bone, tendon and cartilage—was an insurmountable obstacle for many early Christians. In fact, the early Church’s most formidable heresy was Christian Gnosticism, a system of dualism that separated evil bodily existence from the spiritual realm of purity and truth. Christian Gnostics simply could not circle the paradoxical square of a perfect God assuming fallen flesh. It’s a stumbling block that has continued to dog the church and lives on in various forms today.

But the incarnation should come as no surprise to those who pay close attention to God’s actions in the world. The gospel writer has been paying attention, and signals as much in that favorite Advent verse: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14a).

The Greek word translated as “made his dwelling” is actually more specific than that. It literally means “tabernacled,” and its significance is impossible to miss.

For the Hebrews wandering around the desert, the tabernacle was God’s manifest presence among them. When it was erected, God was literally inside it. And if you wade through all the meticulous instructions that God gives the Israelites for constructing the tabernacle, you might be stunned by what you find in Exodus 26:14: “You shall make for the tent a covering of tanned rams’ skins and an outer covering of fine leather.” That’s right—God instructed the Israelites to put a layer of skin on the outside of the tabernacle. The Hebrew readers of John 1:14 wouldn’t bat an eye at hearing that the “Word became flesh,” because ever since the tabernacle, God has been putting skin on to be near his people.

Matter has always mattered to God. God creates the world—sun, rocks, birds, bacteria—and rejoices in its goodness. God creates humans, both male and female, and calls us to be caretakers of God’s beloved world. God shows us his power in water, delivers his healing in leaves, promises grace through rainbows, sustains life through soil. God is praised by the trees, and worship breaks forth in the mountains. God lavishly displays his love in the world around us and is always using the stuff of the world—be it flesh, water, bread, or wine—to reveal himself. Nowhere is this more powerfully on display than in the incarnation, when the Word that created matter assumes it in order to redeem it.

God is so concerned with the created world that God freely chose to enter into it and die on its behalf rather than see it succumb to the consequences of sin and death. But do we share that concern? Do our lives display a similar love and appreciation for the created world? Do we allow the power and magnitude of the incarnation to transform our relationship with the creation? Or do we evacuate the physicality and earthliness of the paradoxical God-man and reduce him to a spiritualized religious dogma?

If God views the stuff of earth as worthy of participating in the work of redemption, what keeps us from celebrating creation and engaging in the sacred work of “serving and protecting” it (Gen. 2:15)?