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.”
This, of course, is speaking of Jesus and the Incarnation.
I’ve written on this topic before, but recently, new revelation has come with a different understanding of what it means for the word to be made flesh.
We are the Body of Christ.
In us, the word of God that he reveals to us is meant to take on life in us. It’s not meant to sit in your brain and make you feel better about your theologically accurate worldview or give you a sense of superiority because you hear from God when others may struggle to discern what he is saying.
It is meant to be lived out.
When that happens, God’s word that he revealed to you takes on life, and the word of God becomes flesh again in you and me.
What if we did this? What if God’s word actually transformed the way that we live and made it possible for the world to see him?
We live in a visual world. We also live in a loud world. With so many noises and voices everywhere, sometimes they all just blend into the symphony of sounds around us, indistinguishable from the rest.
You can’t see words. They are spoken and heard, not seen. We have to add flesh for them to be seen by the world.
Consider this quote from a book by Brennan Manning called Ruthless Trust, and please forgive me for the length. It’s just too good to leave anything out.
“… in our faithful listening to God’s Word, we often neglect his first word to us — the gift of ourselves to ourselves: our existence, our temperament, our personal history, our uniqueness, our flaws and foibles, our identity. Our very existence is one of the never-to-be-repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time. Because we are made in God’s image and likeness, you and I are yet another promise that he has made to the universe that he will continue to love it and care for it.
Yet even if we accept that we are a word uttered by God, we may not grasp what he is trying to say through us. In Seeds of Contemplation Merton writes: ‘God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept God utters in me, if I am true to the thought in him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in him.’
In patient endurance we wait for God to make clear what he wants to say through us. Such waiting demands not only alert attention but the courage to let ourselves be spoken. Such courage arises from unfailing trust in the wisdom of God, WHO UTTERS NO FALSE WORD.”
God is speaking. He is speaking to you. And he is speaking to the world through you.
He still wants to reveal his glory in lives full of grace and truth. He still wants the world to know that he is working to save and redeem.
But you have to have the courage to let yourself be spoken, even if you don’t know what God is saying through you. Trust that God knows what he’s doing and saying exactly what the world needs to hear.
Then let His word take on flesh again in you.
