Glenn Samuels
Ministerial Secretary, West Indies Union

In his influential book, The Essence of Christianity, the German philosopher Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872) argued that God was simply a human projection.

Richard Rice, in The Reign of God, declares that "no matter what we learn about the vastness of the universe or the intricacy of the atom, we ourselves are the greatest mystery of all. And the more we learn about ourselves, the more mysterious we become" (pp. 96, 97).

I suggest, however, that the greatest mystery with which the human mind could ever be confronted is the mystery of the incarnation. The mystery of godliness, God manifested in the flesh, is the basis of every hope, the foundation of our salvation, the source of our transformation, and the reason for our rejoicing (1 Tim. 3:16).

The Creator becoming flesh--the Divine becoming human in the person of Jesus Christ, who was all God and all man at the same time--is fundamental and foundational in the transformation of sinners into saints. For the Christian, the incarnation is distinctive and unique--and personal. It is in a particular life, in a particular person that "the word became flesh" (John 1:14, NIV).

This is not an idea or philosophy. It is not an ideology or mere theology. It is not an all-pervasive force. It is in Christ and Christ alone that God became man. He is the monogenes [only begotten]. There is none other like Him.
This Creator became a creature--He who by the word of His mouth established this vast universe in all its immeasurable and inconceivable complexities.

This God, who established millions of galaxies and mighty stars not visible to naked mortal eyes; this God, who made the world in six days, creating humanity from the dust of the ground; this God became flesh. His signature appears on the hard drive of Creation, and He, out of His great love for humankind, chose to become like one of them.

Celsus, who attacked the Christians with such vigor toward the end of the second century A.D., wrote: "God is good, and beautiful, and blessed, and that in the best and most beautiful degree. But if he came down among men, he must undergo a change, and a change from good to evil, from virtue to vice, from happiness to misery, and from best to worst. Who, then, would make choice of such a change?"

This is precisely the message that John brings.

John, the last of the original disciples, whose Gospel differs significantly in content from his other three Gospel-writing companions, seemed eager to make his point. John, writing from Ephesus, according to tradition, sometime around A.D. 100, delivers this:

"When the world had its beginning, the word was already there; and the word was with God; and the word was God. This word was in the beginning with God. He made all things and there is not a single thing which exists in this world which came into being without him. In him was life and the life was the light of men. . . . so the word became (flesh) a person and took up his abode in our being" (John 1:1-14, paraphrased).

"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9).

The Humanity of Jesus
John's Gospel uncompromisingly stresses the real humanity of Jesus.
1. Jesus was physically tired as He sat by the well of Sychar in Samaria (4:6).
2. His disciples offered Him food as an ordinary hungry man (4:31).
3. He had sympathy for those who were hungry and with those who were afraid (6:5, 20).
4. He knew grief, and He shed tears as any mourner might (11:33, 35, 38).
5. In the agony of the cross, the cry of His parched lips was "I thirst" (19:28).

The fourth Gospel shows us a Jesus who was no shadowy, docetic figure. It shows us one who knew the weariness of an exhausted body and the wounds of a distressed heart. It is the truly human Jesus whom the fourth Gospel sets before us.

The Divinity of Jesus
On the other hand, there is no other Gospel writer who sets before us such a view of the deity of Jesus.
1. John stresses the preexistence of Jesus: "In the beginning was the Word, . . . and the Word was God" (1:1); and "Before Abraham was, I am" (8:58).
2. He speaks of the glory that He had with the Father before the world was made (17:5).
3. He speaks again and again of His coming down from heaven (6:33-38).
4. No human being took His life from Him. He had power to lay it down and power to take it up (10:18; 19:11).

John presents us with a Jesus who was undeniably human and who yet was undeniably divine.

Love and the Incarnation
The force that moved God to experience the Incarnation, the foundation of our transformation, was the very essence of His nature--love. It is a love that is saving and revelational, and the mystery of redeeming love will occupy the minds of the redeemed throughout eternity.

He came down to our level because we could not get up to His, and with loving arms He is lifting us up to show what living is. In this, God's love is manifested. He is saving us, transforming us in the process as He reveals Himself to us.

On page 18 of the book Steps to Christ, Ellen G. White states: "It is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin in which we are sunken. Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them. . . . Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart."

Left to ourselves, we would self-destruct. Sin, like a cancer, has permeated every tissue of the human soul, made painfully evident in acts of brutality (covertly and overtly expressed), in our gross inhumanity one to the other, even in sacred circles.

The saving love of God is revealed in the birth of Christ. For John, the purpose of His coming is that we might live through Him. It is only as He lives in us, transforming us, empowering us, that we can experience true life--and only because He became one of us--all because of His saving love.

The Transforming Power of the Incarnation
By His becoming one of us, the transforming power of God, in Christ, is available and accessible to any and every believer.

This, for John, is the prime purpose of the Incarnation: "God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9).

The Incarnation is the fundamental source and foundational platform for our transformation. The weakest, vilest, most wretched recalcitrant sinner, sinking beneath the weight of transgression, asks: Can God change and save a sinner like me? In the incarnation, God shouts His response in an open-ended "Yes, I can, and I will!"

Paul says, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" (2 Cor. 5:17). Transformed from a power-seeking despot with a desire to rule into a loving, caring undershepherd, the individual is called to serve, chosen to model the life of the transforming Christ.

My brothers and sisters of God's worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church, we have been transformed in Christ in order that we may be agents of transformation through Christ.

For whether we be doctors or patients, presidents or district pastors, teachers or students, administrators or lecturers, accountants or secretaries--let's be agents of transformation seeking to change lives by the spirit of God.

Let us lift others, worldwide, with the hand of love and share with them the word of hope--that He is God with us, lifting humanity, saving humanity, transforming humanity, and preparing humanity to live with Divinity. Eden will be restored, and God and humankind will dwell together again--this time together forever--all transformed because Christ became "flesh" and dwelt among us. Amen.