By Rev Dr Edward Goh
John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The incarnation of Christ is indeed a wonder of wonders. It was in God’s mind when He made the world and created us male and female. In pondering the depths of this wonder, Paul cited Gen. 2:24 in Eph. 5:31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” He told us in verse 32, this is about Christ and the church and this mystery is profound. Paul must have pondered on it long and hard.
It certainly was not just the cross Paul was thinking of. The cross has no meaning without the incarnation. As Galatians 4:4-5 explains, Christ has to be made like us in every way yet without sin to be our true representative. He lived under the law we have broken to die for us by fulfilling its requirements.
And Christ did not just come to die for us. He came to unite Himself to us. Just as a father stoops down to look eye to eye, to arrest the attention of his little toddler, to speak personally to his child, through Christ incarnation, God deals with us personally and directly. He deals with us in a way we can understand. He taught us as a man. He suffered for us as a man. He intercedes for us now as a man too. And He will come to judge and receive us to Himself as a man.
The incarnation also says God did not just bind Himself to us through an oath or a covenant, important as they are. Rather, God in Christ became one with us by being one of us. He took on our human nature and form. The incarnation reveals God’s determination to join Himself to us. He has forever bridged the infinite Creator-creature’s gap. In the body of a man, He has bound Himself to us forever.
We will not fully appreciate how much God loves, affirms, and values us if we fail to contemplate on Christ’s incarnation. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, . . . .” As we study the Gospel of John, the Gospel of His incarnation, may we come to behold the glory of Christ in His condescension. May it change the way we view God and ourselves and hence the way we live in and through Christ.