The Word Became Flesh

Read it: Luke 1–2; John 1

After four hundred years of silence, God spoke again, and He began in the temple.

An old priest named Zechariah was burning incense in the holy place when the angel Gabriel appeared. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John” (Luke 1:13). This son, Gabriel said, would come “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17), the messenger Malachi had promised. Zechariah and Elizabeth were old and had never had children. Zechariah couldn’t believe it, and he was unable to speak until the baby was born.

A girl in a small town

Six months later Gabriel went somewhere much less impressive: Nazareth, a small village in the hills of Galilee, a place so ordinary that someone later asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46). There lived a young woman named Mary, engaged to a carpenter called Joseph. In that culture, engagement was almost as binding as marriage, and girls were often engaged in their teens.

Gabriel told her, “you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus” (Luke 1:31). The name means “the LORD saves.” And this son would be no ordinary king: “The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end!” (Luke 1:32–33). Every promise we have followed, to Abraham, to David, through Isaiah, comes rushing into one sentence.

It was the obvious question. “How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). Mary had every reason to be afraid. An unexplained pregnancy could cost her her marriage and her reputation. But she said, “I am the Lord’s servant ... May it happen to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

No room

Then the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus in Rome, ordered a census, and without knowing it moved Joseph and Mary to exactly the right town. Joseph was descended from David, so they travelled south to Bethlehem, David’s hometown. There Mary “gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). A manger is an animal’s feeding trough. The word “inn” may mean the guest room of a crowded family home; in many houses of that time the animals were brought indoors at night. Either way, the King arrived in the place for animals.

The first people told were shepherds, working the night shift in the fields. Shepherds were poor, smelled of sheep and were not much trusted. An angel said to them, “Do not be afraid! For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: Today in the city of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord!” (Luke 2:10–11). Then the sky filled with angels: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests!” (Luke 2:14). The shepherds ran to see, and then told everyone.

Forty days later Joseph and Mary brought the baby to the temple. An old man named Simeon was there, someone who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25), which means waiting for God to comfort His people at last. He took Jesus in his arms and said, “my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Your people Israel” (Luke 2:30–32). Light for the Gentiles: the blessing for all nations promised to Abraham was lying in Simeon’s arms.

Before the beginning

Luke tells the story from Bethlehem. John goes back much further. His Gospel opens with words that echo the first line of the Bible: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This Word is the One through whom God spoke the world into being: “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3).

Then John writes the most astonishing sentence he could have written: “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The word for “made His dwelling” is the word for pitching a tent. Remember the tabernacle, God’s tent in the middle of Israel’s camp? Now God had pitched His tent in a human body. “We have seen His glory,” John says, “full of grace and truth.”

Not everyone welcomed Him. “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11–12). And when John the Baptist, now grown up, saw Jesus coming, he pointed and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

Where Jesus is in this

This whole chapter is about Jesus, so the question here is how His birth fits the long story. Paul sums it up: “But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Nothing about Bethlehem was an accident. It was the moment the whole Old Testament had been leaning towards.

Matthew gives the deepest reason. The angel told Joseph to name the baby Jesus, “because He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), and Matthew adds that this fulfils Isaiah’s sign: “they will call Him Immanuel,” which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). God walked with Adam in the garden, filled the tabernacle with His glory, and filled Solomon’s temple. Now God was with us as a baby who needed feeding. “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known” (John 1:18).

Think about it: God chose a village girl, a crowded house and a gang of night-shift shepherds for the most important birth in history. What does that tell you about the kind of people God notices?

Go deeper: The Key Teachings of Athanasius of Alexandria — This chapter takes up the question “Why did God become man?” and gives Athanasius’s answer: the One who rescues the world is the same Word who made it, coming back to repair His own work, which is exactly where John 1 begins. Start with chapter 3, “The Word Made Flesh”.