Swindoll Study Bible - Book of John - Flipbook - Page 16
1277
J ohn 1 : 2 7
The Word Became Human
JOHN 1:1-18
T H E SON OF G OD, as “very God” (to quote the Nicene Creed), arrived on this earth as a
man. He came to the mountains He created. He faced the rivers with their rushing currents.
He crossed the valleys. He gazed upon the sea. He walked beneath the skies and the stars
and the moon and the sun. But the tragedy of all tragedies is this:
“He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t
The world
recognize him” (John 1:10). The world didn’t recognize the One who
didn’t recognize
had created it. In other words, “He came to his own people, and
the One who
even they rejected him” (John 1:11).
created it.
In our world, people look at the beauty of creation but refuse
to acknowledge the Creator. Imagine Walt Disney coming to
Disneyland on its opening day in 1955—but nobody even acknowledging him or acknowledging the fact that everything in the park had come from his imagination and creativity.
Imagine them all saying, “Oh, it just happened.” Such an illustration can’t really do justice to
this magnificent passage of Scripture, but you get the picture.
We all know the Christmas story: The Creator came to our planet as a baby, but there
was no room at the inn for the One who had created the rocks from which that inn was
made. There was no welcome mat for Christ. Isn’t it remarkable that the One who is
coequal, coeternal, and coexistent with the Father and the Spirit—the One who divinely
decreed the events that would run their course on this earth in perfect timing with His
profound plan—could come to the earth and be beaten and spit upon, have spikes driven
through His hands and feet, be hung on a cross, and be cursed until He died? Even after
being raised from the dead, He is still denied, rejected, and refused some twenty centuries
later. There is still no room for the Savior.
What about you? Do you know what it means that God, who made everything, reduced
Himself to take on skin, subject Himself to the very gravity that He put into effect, and limit
Himself to a tiny space of property—for you?
From the vanishing point of the past to the vanishing point of the future, Jesus Christ
remains in His nature and His attributes very God. But Christ, in order that human beings
might be able to see what God is like in tangible form, became a human for all eternity
future. This introduction to the Gospel of John concludes, “No one has ever seen God.
But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed
God to us” (John 1:18).
Do you wonder what the Father is like? Make a study of Christ. Do you wonder how
God could be a God of grace, at the same time both gentle and full of justice and purity?
Look at Christ. He shares the Father’s divine nature, and He explains it and models it in
perfect terms so that we can grasp the person of the Father.
The world didn’t recognize the One who created it. Do we?
