The Word That Moved Into Our Neighborhood

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. These ancient words from John's Gospel have echoed through centuries, but their full weight might still surprise us. What if the toughest miracle God ever performed wasn't creating the universe or raising the dead, but simply getting us to understand who He is and how He feels about us?

The Scandal of Christmas

Christmas celebrates something so scandalous that it offended nearly everyone who first heard about it. John's prologue declares that "the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." For ancient Hebrew readers, this sounded like idolatry—claiming that God could somehow be both one and multiple persons. For Greek philosophers, it was disgusting—their worldview taught that the physical body was evil, a prison for the soul. The great God, the eternal Logos who spoke creation into existence, would never stoop to actually becoming flesh.

Yet John insists: "We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

This isn't abstract theology. This is eyewitness testimony. And facts, as they say, are stubborn things.

Why Revelation Matters

Consider how knowledge works. Understanding a rock or a rose requires minimal effort—they don't need to cooperate with your investigation. A dog is slightly more complex, but still manageable. But knowing another human being? That's an entirely different challenge.

You can observe someone from a distance and learn surface things—their appearance, mannerisms, sense of humor. But the deeper realities—what they love, what they fear, what makes them weep—these things remain hidden unless that person chooses to reveal themselves to you. They must give you their word.

If revelation is necessary to truly know another human being, imagine how much more we need it to know the eternal God who dwells in unapproachable light. Scripture tells us that no one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known.

Jesus is God's Word to us. Jesus is God's self-portrait. As Hebrews declares, the Son is "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being." If you want to know what God loves, what God hates, what moves God's heart—look at Jesus and listen to Jesus.

The Tent Outside the Camp

In the wilderness, Moses pitched a tent of meeting outside the camp where God would descend to speak with him. The people would stand at their own tent doors, watching from a distance as the glory cloud descended. They worshiped from afar because God's glory was too much for them to bear.

Even Moses, who spoke with God "face to face, as one speaks to a friend," could only see the trailing edge of God's glory. When he came down from the mountain after receiving the law, his face glowed with reflected glory—and the people couldn't even look at him. He had to wear a veil.

The message was clear: God must pitch His tent outside the camp. His holiness, His glory, His perfection—it all had to remain at a safe distance from sinful humanity.

Until the Word became flesh and "pitched his tent among us." The Greek literally means He "tabernacled" with us. God didn't stay outside the camp. He moved into our neighborhood.

Glory in the Ordinary

What does divine glory actually look like? We might expect thrones and crowns, pomp and majesty. Instead, Jesus began His ministry by attending a wedding reception and making sure a young peasant couple didn't run out of wine. John tells us this was "the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory."

This is how God chose to unveil His glory—by showing up at a wedding and meeting a practical need so people wouldn't be embarrassed.

The glory continued to reveal itself in unexpected places: God kneeling to forgive a woman caught in adultery while others held stones. God touching a leper that no one else would approach. God eating lunch with prostitutes and tax collectors and bringing salvation to their homes.

Moses asked to see God's glory, and God replied, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Of all the adjectives available to describe divine glory—holiness, power, majesty—God chose these three: goodness, mercy, and compassion.

That's the ultimate glory of God. And in Jesus, we didn't just glimpse it—we saw its fullness.

Grace Upon Grace

John writes that "out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given"—or as some translate it, "grace upon grace," "favor upon favor," "gift heaped upon gift."

The law came through Moses, and that was grace—God telling us the truth about how to live. But truth without grace is like math: technically correct but cold, hard, and unconcerned with your feelings. When God's perfect law meets imperfect people, it can only bring condemnation.

Jesus came full of both grace and truth. The truth shows us how to live; the grace provides the forgiveness and strength to actually live that way. The law was written on stone tablets; Jesus writes it on human hearts.

And here's the stunning reality: the grace never runs out. It flows from the fullness of Christ, which means when you think you've exhausted it, more arrives.

You'll never face a problem that Christ's grace can't carry you through. You'll never fall so far that His grace can't find you. When you're running out of strength, He whispers, "My grace is sufficient for you." When challenges seem too big, He reminds you that His strength is perfected in weakness. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.

The Heart of Christmas

This is what that baby in Bethlehem came to show us: God is not distant, demanding, or disinterested. He is good, merciful, and compassionate. He loves us enough to leave heaven's glory and move into our neighborhood, to take on flesh and blood, to touch lepers and forgive sinners and transform broken lives.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." And by that Son, He freely continues to give us everything we will ever need.

The Word became flesh. God moved in next door. And we beheld His glory—not the glory we expected, but the glory we desperately needed: grace upon grace upon grace, never-ending, always sufficient, flowing from the inexhaustible fullness of Christ.

That's the scandal of Christmas. That's the miracle we celebrate. Not just that God is powerful, but that He is good. Not just that He is holy, but that He is near.