John 1:14-18 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. ¹⁵ (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

INTRODUCTION

In John 1:1 we were introduced to the deity of Jesus. In 1:14 we are introduced to the humanity of Jesus. How those two things come together is at the same time (1) a mystery and (2) right at the heart of the Christian faith and gospel. The wages of sin is death, so humanity is essential for an acceptable sacrifice. The sins of mankind warrant an infinite punishment, so divinity is essential for a sufficient sacrifice.

But how can a being be both divine and human, both eternal and temporal, both unborn and born, both invincible and murdered, and on and on? In the simplest possible terms, John answers these questions in the introduction to his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God.” “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Largely based in the first eighteen verses in John, one of the clearest statements from the Church on this comes from the Council of Chalcedon (mid 5th century AD). Consider these ancient words as a means of preparing your hearts and minds for the glory of Jesus that is revealed in our passage for this morning (this also happens to be the right answer to one of the questions on the membership application if you want to cheat).

Therefore, following the holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance [homoousios] the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer (theotokos]; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence [hupostasis], not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us. (cited in Henry Bettenson, ed., Documents of the Christian Church [London: Oxford Univ., 1967],51-52)

Let’s pray that God would help us stand in awe at the mystery of the hypostatic union of God and man in One. And let’s pray that in that state of awe, God would grant fuller love and obedience.

INCARNATE, DWELLING, GLORY (14)

John 1:14 is staggering in its claims. The eternal Word of God became flesh, the incarnate Word lived among men, in these things, the Word revealed the glory of God in a fuller way than had ever been seen, and the heart of this incarnate, Word-glory is fullness of grace and truth! Vs.15-18, then, reiterate and expand a bit upon these claims.

The Word Became Flesh (14a)

If all we had were the first 13 verses of John’s Gospel, we’d have something truly significant, but not overly controversial. The eternality, creative power, and personification of the wisdom of God were not new or unique to the Jews. Those claims are not what makes Christianity truly different. The first clause of the 14th verse, however, is a different animal. It is, in many ways, the very thing that makes Christianity an entirely exclusive religion. That is, it is because of this clause that Christianity is either true and all other religions are false, or false and we are all fools. What clause am I referring to?

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh…

God became man. God became man, Grace Church. God became man. One being, truly God and truly man. It was universally believed among the Jews that God had existed eternally as God and that the Christ would come as a man. What was most definitely not understood, is the reality-altering reality of the two being One.

The significance of this will become increasingly plain as we work through John’s Gospel, but for now, I invite you to be amazed or re-amazed by the reality that God became man.

The Word Dwelt Among Us (14b)

What’s more, not only did the Word become flesh (become man), but the incarnate Word came to live with mankind.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

Oh what condescending grace! It’s condescending in that as staggering as it is that God became man, it’s not far behind that as a man He “had no [external] form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). The One who made the heavens and earth, the One who has stars and galaxies as footstools, the One who commands myriads and myriads of angels, the One who holds all things together, took on a normal human body and made His home among ordinary people; not in a palace or on a throne or among the powerful, but in a form and manner that was entirely unremarkable.

In fact, the word translated “dwelt” refers to a tent. A more literal rendering might be “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.” This simultaneously points back to God’s tabernacle dwelling with Israel, tells of a fuller expression of that (the fullest expression yet), and is an indication that this would not be the permanent or fullest version of all. There are some really nice, sturdy tents, but tents by definition are temporary, vulnerable, and not kingly structures.

But let’s be clear on the fact that although Jesus’ incarnation was condescending, it was also another, awesome dose of God’s redeeming, reconciling grace. Let us never forget, Grace, that the greatest promise of God, the fullest measure of salvation, is that one day there will be an unending, uninterrupted, undiminished dwelling of God with man.

The Garden is the first place we saw God dwell among man. Indeed, in the Garden we see that part of mankind’s very purpose for being is to dwell with God. The Fall, however, displaced men from entering freely into God’s presence and therein frustrated our ability to live full and meaningful lives. In love, though, God was determined to fix this, to reconcile us to Himself, and to restore our fellowship with Him. The tabernacle and then the temple gave glimpses of hope and God’s redeeming work. And in the fullest way since the Fall, John 1:14b tells of God coming again to dwell among us. But all of that was meant to pave the way for the full, final, and permanent experience of God’s presence (which we read about in Revelation 21).

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

You and I, along with all mankind were made to dwell with God; not merely at the same time as Him, or within the same universe as Him, or even within the same vicinity as Him, but with Him in perfect fellowship. And not merely for a few brief moments, or even for long periods of time, but forever and ever without interruption. Be amazed, Grace and change your life goals; change your ambitions; change your sense of self and purpose; change your understanding of greatest treasure. Whatever those things are, this is what it’s meant to be—dwelling with God! And in this passage we see the reality of God with us in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Word Revealed Glory (14c, 18)

In light of the first two, the next clause in v.14 shouldn’t come as any kind of a surprise.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and [in that incarnation and co-dwelling] we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father…

Though His form was not outwardly impressive, Jesus came in and revealed a glory that was unlike anything the world had seen since the first Garden. He came in the glory unique to the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, sent from the Father. Jesus put the glory of God on display for all to see and savor in a way that no one had seen except Adam and Eve.

This too is a pointer back to OT imagery and reality. In Exodus 40 “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” In John 1:14, the glory of the LORD filled the Son as He took on flesh and “tabernacled” among us.

V.18 makes this even clearer.

¹⁸ No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

In Jesus, mankind was given the fullest glimpse yet of the glory of the invisible God. In Jesus, God was made known in a manner which had only partially been revealed and much of which sin had caused us to miss and forget. Jesus, having eternally existed at the Father’s side, came to make the godhead known to the world in glory. No one else was able to do so since no one else has seen God or been at His side. Jesus alone, as the Christ, the Son of God, possessed a view of this glory and shared in this glory. He alone, therefore, was able to do what John says He did.

John tells us that in coming into the world incarnate, Jesus made a new and fuller way for sinful man to see God, to know God, and to dwell with God—to fulfill the very purposes for which we were made. And in that is a kind of glory that is astonishing beyond measure.

Grace, let me submit to you once again the simple fact that your view of God is entirely too small. Your view of the incarnation is entirely too small. Your view of the amazing grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ is way too small. God is greater than you could ever imagine and we catch another glimpse of that in this short verse. May God make us increasingly eager to see all of this lived out in the life of Jesus as we work through John’s description of it in this gospel.

GRACE AND TRUTH (14D, 16-17)

Again, in just the first ¾ of v.14 (with help from v.18), John claimed that the eternal Word of God became flesh, the incarnate Word lived among men, and the Word revealed the glory of God. As if all of that were not enough, he makes one more claim of unimaginable magnitude in the final clause of the first verse in our passage for this morning (which he expands upon in vs.16-17).

¹⁴ 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… ¹⁶ For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

The claim is that Jesus Christ, the God-man, came full of grace and truth. And this claim has two critical aspects to it: (1) it is part of the glory Jesus came to reveal and (2) it is the means by which we see that glory.

The Glory

That Jesus is “full of grace and truth,” that “from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace,” and that “grace and truth came through Jesus” are all further descriptions of the particular glory of Jesus. There is a general sense in which Jesus is glorious; meaning, Jesus possesses a greatness, a majesty, a splendor that is well outside of the norm. But we are right to ask what his glory consists of. What, specifically, is it about him that is great, majestic, and splendid?

A significant part of the content of the glory of Jesus is the fact that He is full of grace and truth. There is absolutely nothing false about Him. There is nothing in Him that fails to perfectly conform to Truth. Everything He is, says, feels, believes, and does entirely correspond to the reality that God authors. Similarly, Jesus continually exudes unmerited favor to the world. The very fact that not everyone is in hell is entirely owing to the grace of God in Jesus. God’s patience with sinners is exclusively tied to the saving work that Jesus accomplished on the cross. The fact that things are never as bad as they could be (common grace) is only because Jesus’ glory consists of unending grace. And, of course, that anyone has been saved is only because Jesus is full of grace.

When you consider Jesus, John invites you to consider His glory, “glory as of the only Son from the Father.” And when you consider His glory, John invites you to consider the fact that part of what makes it up is perfect truth and unending grace.

The Means of Seeing Glory

As I said, however, there’s another aspect of the grace and truth that fill Jesus. This aspect is embedded in the words, “we have all received.” More than simply the content and a display of glory, as remarkable as that would be all by itself, the grace and truth of Jesus is also the means by which God has given mankind to apprehend and experience and delight in the glory!

Last week, I asked you to consider how the very Son of God, the light of the world, the eternal Word, the means and aim of creation, could stand in front of men and not be recognized. Our passage for this week only complicates the question. In addition to all those things, we just saw that Jesus possesses the glory of God. Again, how could Jesus be all of those things and not entirely overwhelm the world with awe and wonder?

The answer, we saw in John 1:13, is that only those (re)born of God are able to see God as God. In the final clause of v.14 and in vs.16-17, we get another piece of the answer.

Here’s how salvation comes: Somehow, the truth of the gospel comes to us (through an evangelist, a tract, a sermon, an evangelistic video, by reading the Bible, etc.), through it (the gospel), the grace of God comes upon us, causing us to be spiritually born of God, the new birth allows us to see the truth as truth and trust the truth, where it was a matter of indifference or folly, by God’s grace it becomes the power of God, and then through that (our trust/faith in the gospel), the grace of God unites us with the saving work of Jesus. Truth, grace, truth, grace. Again, the truth of the gospel leads to regenerating grace. Regenerating grace leads to understanding of and faith in the gospel. Faith in the gospel is the means by which God imparts the righteousness of Christ to us. Truth, grace, truth, grace.

To make this even more clear, John highlighted the contrast between law and grace in v.17, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Moses brought the law, and with it, condemnation. That is not to say the law itself is sinful or bad, only that in our sin we could never keep it. It’s kind of like me explaining that the best solution to your health problem is to run an ultra-marathon every day for a year. It might be true, but if no one is able to actually do it, it’s not much of a solution. We’d need something different if we were to ever experience healing. The law, in revealing the path of holiness, also revealed the sinfulness of our sin and our need for grace. Jesus brought what sinners need: grace and truth.

We’ll see all of this in a number of ways in Jesus’ teaching and ministry, but here John lays the groundwork for what follows. The point is that grace and truth are our greatest needs and that they are found in abundance—”full of grace and truth” and “grace upon grace”—in Jesus Christ! Grace and truth are the content of Jesus’ glory and the means by which we are able to see and delight in it. Awesome!

CONCLUSION

Not long ago I took my truck in to get some work done. Before telling me what he did and giving me the bill, the shop owner took me out to the bay and showed me the old distributer cap, spark plugs and wires. I’m no mechanic, but it was clear even to me that they’d all gone well beyond their life span (they were original from ’96). Having clearly seen what he was working with, everything else he told me, including the bill, made a lot more sense than it would have otherwise.

In a very real way, with the same basic motivation, but in opposite order, that’s the relationship between the first eighteen verses of John’s Gospel and the rest of it. My mechanic showed me the problem first and then explained what I’d just seen second. John explained the significance of the person and ministry of Jesus first (in 1:1-18) so that we might best understand what we’re about to see in the narrative accounts of the rest of his Gospel.

Specifically, John explicitly stated the following things about Jesus so that we might understand what we’re seeing in the stories we’ll encounter in 1:19-21:25.

1. Jesus is the Word of God
2. He has existed eternally with God.
3. He is the second person of the godhead, the Son of God.
4. God created all that has been created through Jesus.
5. Jesus is life.
6. Jesus is the light of all men.
7. The light of Jesus cannot be overcome.
8. God sent many prophets promising that Jesus would come, the last of which was John the Baptist who’s job it was to announce that Jesus had come.
9. Though all of this was true of Jesus, when He did come, the people He’d created did not recognize Him—neither Jew nor gentile.
10. Those who did receive Him were given the right to become children of God.
11. The ability to receive Jesus comes from being born again of God.
12. Jesus became a man, truly God and truly man.
13. Jesus lived among men.
14. In Jesus, the world was shown the glory of God.
15. Jesus is, and is full of grace and truth.
16. Jesus gives grace and truth to all who will receive it.
17. Jesus makes the invisible God known.
18. Jesus is the Christ!

Having come to the end of the introduction, then, beginning next week we’ll see all of those things lived out in John’s description of Jesus and His the three-and-a-half-year ministry. Buckle up and pray earnestly. Pray that God would grant you the grace to see the truth revealed in the Gospel so that you might hope in the truth and receive the saving grace of God. Pray also that, having received the grace and truth of Jesus, your sense of the all-encompassing claim it makes on your life would grow to appropriate levels. In short, pray that you’d come to recognize Jesus as the Christ and find life; that you’d be entirely awed by the glory of Jesus Christ, so that you might live and love as you were created to do.