The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us

The mountain seemed to be on fire. The ground shook and flashes of lightning illuminated the smoke at the top of Mount Sinai. Trembling, the people of Israel had seen and heard more than they wanted to.

“You speak with us, and we will hear,” they told Moses; “but let not God speak with us, lest we die” (Exodus 20:19). The presence of Almighty God at Mount Sinai was too terrifying for the people of Israel to behold.

God in the flesh prophesied

As a direct result of this experience, Moses did what the nation had asked. He spoke to God on their behalf so they could avoid the terror that had gripped them when God appeared in fire and smoke at the top of Mount Sinai.

Decades later, toward the end of his life and just prior to Israel finally entering the Promised Land, Moses relayed an important message to the nation. It was a prophecy given to him by God.

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear” (Deuteronomy 18:15). God made this promise in response to the request of His people (verse 16).

The people did not understand the full significance of this prophecy at the time. These words point toward Jesus Christ, who came some 1,500 years later as the Prophet promised in Deuteronomy.

Another mountain

At one point in His earthly ministry, Jesus took His three closest disciples with Him to the top of another mountain, “a high mountain” where they could be “by themselves” (Matthew 17:1).

What happened there has been labeled “the transfiguration” because of the Greek word metamorphoō, generally translated as “transfigured” (verse 2). The two parts of this Greek word mean “change” and “form.”

In front of their eyes, Jesus changed from ordinary to extraordinary. According to Matthew, “His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light” (verse 2). Through this vision, Peter, James and John saw Jesus in glory.

When the disciples heard a voice from the cloud, “they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid” (verse 6), just as the tribes of Israel had been frightened by the power of God at Mount Sinai.

God in His glory terrifies us frail and weak human beings.

Hear Him

Like at Mount Sinai so many years before, there was a cloud on this high mountain and a voice from the cloud delivering the words of God the Father (verse 5). “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” God told them, ending with the command, “Hear Him!”

These words are the same words spoken by the heavenly voice when John the Baptist baptized Jesus (Matthew 3:17), with one exception. The difference is in the additional words, rendered emphatically as “Hear Him,” or “Listen to Him” (English Standard Version).

According to The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, “The additional words ‘Listen to him’—an allusion to Deuteronomy 18:15—confirm Jesus is the Prophet like Moses” (Vol. 8, p. 386).

Jesus was revealing Himself to His closest disciples as more than their human Teacher. They may not have understood it at the time, but He was giving them a glimpse into who He really was—the Prophet like Moses who had come as God in the flesh.

And the Word became flesh

One of those three disciples was John. Years later, he wrote that from the beginning of time “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This disciple, who had spent so many years with Jesus, also explained that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (verse 14).

We can relate to Jesus because we know that He understands us. In one of his letters to the Church, John wrote that he and the other disciples had personally spent time with God in the flesh. They had heard Him speak, they had seen Him with their own eyes, and they had interacted with Him:

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled” (1 John 1:1).

It seems that John, an old man when he wrote his epistles, described their interactions with Jesus to combat heresies that had entered the Church. The advocates of those heresies “went out from us,” he said (1 John 2:19). One of their heresies was denying that Jesus Christ had “come in the flesh” (1 John 4:1-2).

Son of Man

The appearance of God in the flesh is a fundamental aspect of the first coming of Christ. This is reflected in one of His titles.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus tended to refer to Himself as “Son of Man” much more often than as the “Son of God.”

In speaking with Nicodemus, for example, Jesus used the title “Son of Man.” He connected it to His unique manifestation as God in the flesh: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3:13).

Christ undoubtedly had more than one reason for using this title, but a prominent one was that it emphasizes His humanity. Jesus was both God and man, but He had now come in human form.

Why?

Why God in the flesh?

The most important reason Christ came as God in the flesh was so He could die for our sins. God is Spirit, and He is eternal. When the Word became flesh, He did so in preparation for His atoning death.

Paul wrote about this in his letter to the church at Philippi. He said that Jesus, “being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).

That sacrifice is the whole foundation of Christianity. (To read more about the need for this sacrifice, read the Life, Hope & Truth article “Why Jesus Had to Die.”)

There is another reason, a practical one that is bound up with the experience of Israel at Mount Sinai. The Word came in the flesh so we could relate to Him and to the Father with love.

Love the Lord your God

Scripture makes it clear that we are to fear God (Ecclesiastes 12:13), that is, to have a deep, abiding respect for Him. But God wants more. He wants us to love Him.

He told ancient Israel that they were to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). This key verse is part of the passage known to Jews as the Shema, and it is ultimately for all people.

It is much easier to love someone we can begin to understand. Jesus, as God in the flesh, spoke with and listened to many people, interacting with them as a human.

One profound example is found in the account of the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus knew, even before He reached Bethany, that His friend had died (John 11:14). Even so, the apostle John didn’t record any emotional reaction of Jesus until He was with Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha.

After seeing Mary and those around her weeping, “Jesus wept” (verse 35).

Jesus had known for days that Lazarus was dead. He knew that He was about to resurrect His friend (verses 38-44). It seems clear that Jesus did not shed tears of grief but, instead, tears of empathy and compassion.

Jesus was God in the flesh. He experienced human emotions. He felt sorrow when observing the pain in the faces of the friends and family of Lazarus. (See more in our blog post “Jesus Wept.”)

Relating to God in the flesh

What does this mean for us?

We can relate to Jesus because we know that He understands us. He understands our emotions. The Gospels show that He experienced a whole range of emotions.

He felt not only sorrow, but also joy (John 15:11). He felt apprehension (Matthew 26:37), but also triumph (Colossians 2:15). Jesus was indeed God, but God in the flesh, and for that reason, we can relate to Him more readily.

And we can also feel more comfortable in our relationship with the Father because we know that Jesus has taken up His role as “Mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5).

The writer of the book of Hebrews touches on the role of emotion for Jesus, telling us that “we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

The very next verse explains one reason this is so important. Unlike the people of ancient Israel, trembling at the base of Mount Sinai, we need not be terrified to approach God. Instead, we are told to “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (verse 16).

Take the next step with our article “Relationship With God.”