John 1: The Word Became Flesh

And Another Thing . . . Jesus’ Incarnation

When I was in junior high I heard, for the first time, what I later learned was a fairly well-known faith-challenging question. “Can God make a rock so large that He himself cannot lift it?”  George Carlin worked that question into a comedy routine about growing up Irish Catholic. When I first heard this attempt at a theological parlor trick, it completely disoriented me. I spent days trying to come up with what I thought would be a reasonable solution. It is, of course, a trick of logic. God is all powerful. “All” is all encompassing, so as soon as you imagine a “more,” the “more” is encompassed by the “all.” We get stuck in a logical conundrum. If there is something more than “all” then “all” is no longer “all.”

The question is an attempt to find a limit to God’s power. What it in fact reveals, however, is the limitation of our logic and language (rationalism). There is no end to God, but we can very quickly reach the end of our human ability to comprehend. All of us are two or three (or if you are really gifted perhaps five or six) questions away from, “I don’t know.” This leads us to the uncomfortable and yet inherently necessary need for mystery. Any god that we could completely understand would not be much of a god. Even with all of the incredible strides in knowledge and science of the past few centuries, much of our finite world remains unknown. When we begin to consider the nature of an infinite god, we reach the limit of our ability to understand before we have even scratched the surface. This is why the story of Jesus’ incarnation is such a surprise. God chooses to reveal His unknowable nature through His Son.

John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

John1:4 says, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

The unknowable God reveals Himself to men by becoming a man. If this makes sense to you the first time you hear it, then you are not paying attention. The mystery of how God can become man and then go back to being God is not something that is easily understood by beings who are limited by five senses and three dimensions. We have no way to measure such mysterious spiritual interactions.

The intention of Scripture is not to make the infinite understandable by finite beings. The intention of Scripture is to reveal the motive of the infinite God towards His creation.

“For God so loved the world that gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17.

The important thing about the nature of the universe is that it was created by a God who loves. And the love of God motivates Him to action. And the action He takes is to sacrifice himself through the person of Jesus so that we, His creation, can have life, walk in light and be rescued from perishing.

Jesus is the rock created by God to justly reconcile people to Himself by His love. Jesus is the rock of our salvation, and He is greater than anything we could ask or imagine. God lifts up this rock and us and all of creation. Jesus is no parlor trick. Jesus is the infinite invading the finite and elevating all of it-- and us --to what the Bible calls glory.

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now!