If you were God, eternal and infinite and omnipotent and Triune, how would you go about communicating your greatness to others? Which of your attributes would you talk about first? Which attribute would you want to demonstrate most? If it was entirely up to you to create the theater, cast the characters, write the story, and direct the production, how would you reveal your glory?

The apostle John introduces us to this sort of divine revelation in his prologue (1:1-18). The eternal (“in the beginning”) God existed and was expressed in the Word, who was not merely an idea God had of Himself, but a second Person, hinting at eternal relationship. This God made the cosmic theater—the lights, the stage, with surround sound—(“without him was not anything made that was made”). “In him was life,” and that life spilled over onto and into men, and men shared in the revelation of God’s own life.

It gets better, as this Light was coming into the world. There was a witness to the Light named John (the Baptist), and though some rejected Him, many received Him and were born by God as His children.

In the fourth paragraph of the Prologue, the apostle John gets even more specific about the Logos and more specific about the glory of the Logos. John says, “We have seen his glory” and then teases out for us attributes of divine glory. The remaining twenty and a half chapters of the gospel describe and demonstrate His glory, the way God wanted it told, emphasizing the attributes God desires most to display about Himself.

This is too good and too applicable for us to move too quickly through it. Today we are only going to marinate in verse 14 and the incarnating of glory. Our consideration of the incarnation is immature, not because our finite minds have trouble fitting together 100% God and 100% man into 100% one person. That’s true; this union doesn’t fit into easy categories. But I say our incarnation theology isn’t very mature mostly because we do not live it, and we don’t live it because we don’t even think there is anything about the God-man we’re supposed to live out. We’re supposed to know it and teach it to our kids and defend it, but live it?

Lord willing, we’ll see how the entire paragraph argues the point next Lord’s day, but for this morning, let’s focus on verse fourteen and then observe four elements of incarnating glory.

The Incarnated Word

In verse 1, the Logos was in the beginning, He was God and He was with God. Those are eternal realities. Now, the Logos became flesh. Something different happened and a new reality dawned.

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.

”The Logos became flesh.” John doesn’t say that the Logos appeared to be human. The docetists (from δοκέω, “seem”) believed that the Word looked like a man but didn’t actually become a man. John also doesn’t say that the Logos stopped being God when He started being flesh. In verse 18 He Himself is still “the only God.” Throughout the rest of John, the Logos repeatedly walked into trouble for claiming to be God.

God became “flesh,” fully God and fully man. This is not only hard to believe, it was unthinkable to many in the 1st century Greek world, particularly among those who believed in the dualism between spirit and matter. They imagined an elaborate spectrum of beings, some more spirit and less matter, others more physical and less spirit, with more spiritual equalling more glorious. While that system of thought may not have been fully defined, enough people believed it to be appalled at pure spirit associating with soiled flesh.

Of all the words to describe the incarnation, “flesh” is perhaps the least glorious. John could have said, “The Word became a man” (ἄνθρωπος), or “The Word took on a body” (σῶμα). But He became σὰρξ, “flesh.” Flesh is the most primitive, unrefined way to refer to man and, throughout the Old Testament, it emphasizes his frail and fleeting frame. For example:

He remembered that they were but flesh,
a wind that passes and comes not again.
(Psalm 78:39)

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
(Isaiah 40:6)

So the omnipotent, eternal, living God took on weak, temporary, mortal flesh and all the ailments associated with it. “He clothed Himself with frail humanity.”

John also says that the Logos “dwelt among us.” Many English translations still use “and dwelt among us” (KJV, NAS, ESV), first published by William Tyndale in 1526. [See an image of John 1 from Tyndale’s printed edition. Note the absence of verse numbers but the presence of paragraph symbols!]. His phrase is a fantastic expression that we can easily take for granted in it’s simplicity and in it’s depth.

For what it’s worth, I became permanently suspicious of The Message paraphrase of the Bible because of John 1:14 - “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (MSG) Maybe that’s not wrong, but it isn’t enough.

The word ἐσκήνωσεν is best translated “dwell” or “live,” though it has a distinct reference to pitching one’s tent, taking up residence, so Young’s Translation - “The Word…did tabernacle among us.” The verb described being among, associating with, identifying with, as opposed to being at a distance, separated, and aloof.

Many Greek-speaking Jews connected this with the σκηνή, the “tabernacle where God met with Israel before the temple was built” (Carson)(cf. Exodus 40:34-35, the place that God filled with His glory). I would argue, and I’ll explain more later, that this dwelling connected to the “tent of meeting” mentioned in Exodus 33:9. Moses went out to meet with God there, but now God has come among men.

We call this the “incarnation” because He took on humanity at its most basic level. Our word “incarnation” derives from the Latin verb incarno, itself derived from the prefix in- and caro, “flesh”, meaning “to make into flesh.” So elsewhere the Logos is called Immanuel: “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23).

Theologically the incarnation is important, even necessary, because only a man could identify with men and with their guilt. However, no man is righteous, so no man could offer his righteousness to someone else; in fact, he has his own unrighteousness to deal with first. So we need a man-Savior, but we also need a God-savior, One who not only lives in perfect righteousness, but who also is capable of bearing more than one other man’s punishment. In the Logos, we have the God-man, the only hope of life!

He is glorious for the reality alone.

The Incarnated Glory

His glory is more than ontological, that is, glory is more than the virtually unbelievable fact of the Logos being God and man and both fully at the same time.

John says, “we have seen” or “we beheld” (NAS) “his glory.” The “we” refers to all the believers who saw Christ, including John the Baptist mentioned in the very next verse as a witness. Those who (cheat and) read Matthew (chapter 17) and/or Mark (chapter 9) may be tempted to think that John is referring to the Transfiguration, and that the “we” would be Peter, James, and himself. No doubt that was a display of glory, a flash of the glory Jesus prays for in John 17:5. God’s glory is infinite, unsearchable in its extent and intensity. But there is glory that God reveals here, in the incarnation, in flesh. The rest of the paragraph expands on it, but verse 14 summarizes it.

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.

”Glory” is δόξαν, a state of being magnificent, great, awesome. In physical terms, δόξα is brightness and radiance, and often describes anything that catches the eye. A person’s glory was their reputation, their honor, their greatness.

There are four elements of observable, incarnated glory. The first two are implicit from the first half of verse 14, the second two are explicit from the second half of verse 14. Look for how God makes Himself known and what He emphasizes about His awesomeness.

1. Glory That Condescends

The word “condescend” carries big, ugly baggage for us, referring to doing something that shows how superior a person is, to act as if something is below one’s dignity. When someone else treats us in a condescending way, our pants get bunched up because, really, what makes that person think he is better?

When John says, “we beheld his glory,” he means that they saw Him, the Logos, which means that they saw God, and that means God humbled Himself like none of us could possibly imagine. Verse 18 says, “No one has ever seen God.” Why? Because no one can stand His glory! No one can handle the amount of dignity! No one can handle the brightness of the Light!

But God took on flesh, lowering Himself, stooping down, subjecting Himself to all the ailments of flesh. He didn’t do it because He was truly bored, but because He is truly glorious.

2. Glory That Relates

He took on flesh and lived among men. He chose men to walk with Him. He ate with men. He came Himself. He did not drop a book from heaven by itself. He didn’t merely send delegates, representatives to keep His glory separated from the riffraff.

He created a world where He would give His only Son to be killed to save the killers. That reveals something about His character and about His glory.

Glory is relational because God is Trinitarian. Jesus, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us is, on one hand, impossible to wrap our minds around and yet, at the same time, for those who know God, it is a perfect “Duh!” moment.

3. Glory That Gives

John explicitly describes the glory, “glory as of the only Son from the Father.” The term μονογενοῦς (used again in John 3:16) by itself does not carry the idea of only-begotten, instead it refers to the idea of “the One and Only” (NIV) or “one-of-a-kind”. It was often used in the LXX for an “only child.” “Being an only child, and thus irreplaceable, makes a child of special value to its parents” (Köstenberger).

Not only does this speak for the first time in John’s gospel about the Father-Son relationship, it also speaks to the reality that the Son is “from the Father” (a better translation of παρὰ). The glorious God sent the equally glorious Son to take on flesh and dwell among us and serve and suffer and die. “God so loved the world that he gave,” part of Himself, what was most precious to Him. The giving-ness of God is His glory.

4. Glory That Saves

The second explicit description of glory is, “glory…full of grace and truth.” The apostle John certainly had in mind the account between Moses and the Lord in Exodus 33-34. Moses pleads with God, “Please show me your glory” (33:18). What do we expect to come next? A sky full of lightening and thunder? Niagara Falls? The Crab Nebula? Hell? The Lord responds:

I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (Exodus 33:19)

Then moments later, He continued:

The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” (34:5-7)

For even more connection between John 1 and Exodus 33, in the LXX for verse 16, Moses asks, “How shall it be truly (ἀληθῶς) known that I have found favor (χάριν) in your sight?”

That’s why our Scripture reading this morning was from Exodus 33-34. Moses asks God to show His glory. And what does God do? Out of all the things God could have said or done, He emphasizes His mercy, His grace, His saving of men who don’t deserve it.

Our God, supremely expressed in the flesh-taking, dwell-amonging, Father-sent Logos gives light to those in darkness; He causes men to be born again. This is what God wants us to know chiefly about Himself, this is the most glorious part of His glory. God is not glorious because forgiven rebels love Him. He is glorious because He loves and forgives rebels.

John will shorty say that we have received grace upon grace, that as good as Moses had it, we have it even better in Jesus Christ. Though the word “grace” doesn’t appear again in John’s gospel after 1:17, the entire book is a proof of it.

Conclusion

Consider just a few of the episodes in John’s gospel where this incarnated glory is demonstrated: the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4, the woman caught in adultery in chapter 8, and washing the disciples’ feet in chapter 13. Jesus explains that

If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. (John 13:1-15)

They will know we are His disciples if we love one another through humble, personal, giving, and grace-sloshing (cf John 13:35). Why? Because when we act like this we act like Christ.

We don’t usually think about God’s glory like this; we need a glory adjustment. All glory is His, and what He tells us about it and how He told, comes to a head in the incarnation.

It is also how we will be glorious, because we are made in His image and, as Christians, are being made like Christ. While we are not God taking flesh, we are supposed to show what life and glory look like in the flesh.

For more, see Athanasius: On the Incarnation