Weekend, December 21, 2024
God in Human Form
So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. (John 1:14 NLT)
Can you imagine looking at God in human form? During the earthly ministry of Jesus, we can imagine the disciples walking along with Him and looking at Him all the time.
The apostle John wrote of Jesus, “So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son” (John 1:14 NLT).
The disciples watched Him. They heard His words. Yet interestingly, in all the Gospel accounts, not one person gave a physical description of Jesus. The Bible suggests that Jesus was ordinary in appearance, because Isaiah 53 says, “There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him” (verse 2 NLT).
In other words, when Jesus walked this earth, He was an ordinary-looking man. He didn’t have a striking appearance. Nor did He have a permanent halo. In fact, when Judas Iscariot was about to identify Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said, “You will know which one to arrest when I greet him with a kiss” (Matthew 26:48 NLT).
Why did Judas need to say that? Because they wouldn’t have been able to find Jesus in the crowd. Judas was essentially saying, “Let me point Him out to you.”
This makes it all the more extraordinary that God Almighty became an ordinary human being, a person just like us. He came to this earth. He walked among us.
John was saying, “We walked with Him. We talked with Him. And we want you to know that you can have fellowship with Him just like we had fellowship with Him.”
This isn’t a privilege only afforded to first-century believers. It’s one that is indeed available to twenty-first century believers too. We can know Jesus. Yet for some, God can seem so distant and unapproachable. But Jesus, who was God, came to show us what the Father is like.
Jesus stands apart from all other prophets, teachers, and so-called gurus. Jesus wasn’t a man who became God. Rather, He was God who became a man. And it never will happen again.
If you want to know what God is like, then take a long look at Jesus. You don’t need to look further. If you want to know how God feels about children, then look at Jesus taking the little ones into His arms, blessing them, and saying, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children” (Matthew 19:14 NLT).
And if you want to know how God feels about sinners, then look at Jesus reaching out to the down-and-outers of society and showing them love and compassion. We see Him going out of His way to make time for people that no one else wanted anything to do with.
Thus, if you want to know what God thinks about anything, then look at the story of Jesus. He is showing us what God is like.
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