It’s a wonderful truth that the Word “became flesh and dwelt among us” in order to reveal God’s glory. But it’s even more amazing that “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). When Israel stood around Mount Sinai, when Moses received the law of God, His glory was so terrifying that they “said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die’” (Ex. 20:19). It remains true that “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). But “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), so that we no longer need to fear approaching God the Father. 

Christmastime often gives believers more opportunities with family and friends to discuss the true wonder of the season. We can tell them that we need not wonder who God is and what He is like. He has condescended to us through both the living Word and the written Word. If we want to know the triune God, we must search the Scriptures and ask the Holy Spirit to show us Christ, who in turn reveals the Father. The gospel of John is a good place to start.

Strikingly, the apostle John tell us that the Word who “was in the beginning with God,” through whom “all things were made,” and who is “the true light,” also “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, the Son of God “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7). In fulfillment of all that the tent of meeting and tabernacle represented in the Old Testament, most notably God’s presence (see Ex. 25:8; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rev. 21:3), Jesus “dwelt among us” in order to reveal God’s glory. Just as “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” in Moses’s day, so too the glory of God the Father filled the Son of God, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Without grace the truth would be terrifying. We are sinners that stand condemned before God’s holy law. But the gospel of grace testifies that the Son of God “gave the right to become children of God” to those “who believed in his name” (v. 12).

The entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures “bear witness” about Jesus (John 5:39) and there are numerous prophecies that speak about His coming. So important was the arrival of the Word that God sent a witness to prepare His way.

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