Being Thankful for Grace to Grace Redemption

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John *testified about Him and called out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has proved to be my superior, because He existed before me.’” For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:14-18, NASB)

I wanted to return to John, chapter 1 this week to finish up the little section that we’d been reading through together. I know, these opening verses seem so simple in nature, but they were really radical at the time they were written, and they really peel back parts of the gospel that might seem overplayed to us at times today. 

You see, those opening words in today’s key verse: And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us… those were radical thoughts to both sides of theology at the time. To the Greeks, they made God a deity– an all-powerful God that embodied scripture itself, that chose to be a man and dwell among us. To the Greeks, whose entire religious system was based on a suite of Gods that were essentially just glorified people with strange backstories, the God of the Jews didn’t come across as a deity higher than man. The Greek gods were deeply flawed and vindictively emotional; often jealous of mortal man and conniving in their plots to push their own selfish will. They lived separate from the mortal world, on Mount Olympus and only came to this world to play with the lives of men.

So for John to say that God was a deity higher than man that created the world they worshipped, and chose to come and quite literally pitch a tent amongst common man, that would have been foreign to a Greek’s understanding of a god all around.

The Jews were the opposite. They immortalized God so highly that He was unattainable. For the Jews, there were multiple names for the same God, because certain names were too high for sinful man to use. Yes, there was an appropriate reverence and awe for God, but there was also a hyper-religious tendency that the Jews would place on God that made Him unreachable for the average person, which is why they needed Pharisees to explain the scripture to them and priests to make their sacrifices for them, because they were too low and unclean to understand or meet with God.

So for John to say that God was scripture revealed in a man that chose to come and dwell amongst us, meant that God didn’t push us away because of our inherent sin, but instead drew us nearer to Himself so we could be made holy. It would mean that God did not hide his face from us in disgust of our sin or in judgment of our past, but He actually revealed Himself to us so that we could fully behold His glory full of grace and truth. We could know Him in His fullness. 

Yes, Jesus superseded John the Baptist, the man sent to reveal the coming of Christ, and John also fully realized that though John was older in the flesh than Jesus, Jesus was older than John in existence– having been present at the beginning of time itself. Jesus also superseded the law given to the Jews through Moses by shedding His blood on the cross and tearing the veil that once mystified God from His people.

And that’s how we get to that beautiful truth in the middle of those verses: through His birth, we have seen His face. Through His death, we have received redemption from our sin. Through His resurrection, we have received a victory that conquers even death, because of the salvation. Through His humanity, we have received so much wisdom and understanding of God’s character and nature. 

Through the fullness of God becoming man, we have been able to receive grace upon grace. Indeed, for those who have been adopted by God into His family, there is inexhaustible grace upon grace given. There is no end to the depths or heights of it. There is no way to fully consume and digest it in just one human lifespan. That is why you have 86 year old Christians that have been walking with God for 70 years that are still uncovering deeper knowledge of who He is; revelations that continue to drive them to their knees in reverence, awe, and wonder. 

God, previously unseen by man and unknown in many ways, sent His Son– which was really Himself in a human body– to reveal God to us. Jesus, the arms of the Father, explained God to us– His character, His desires, His heart for us, and His ultimate plan of redemption that would ultimately draw us to Him.

What an incredible thing we’ve been able to witness through scripture. We’ve not only been able to receive salvation and be adopted into God’s family, but we’ve also been able to behold God to really know Him through His Word, because the Word became man through Jesus and was recorded for us to read today.

Indeed, we have known grace upon grace. To not only be saved, but to also have God Himself revealed to us, to understand more of Him and to be beckoned deeper in love with Him. This grace never ends, and in fact, only exponentially deepens in the passing from this life into eternity, where all will be revealed. 

This grace we don’t deserve to understand or even encounter, is extended to us this morning, and praise be to God, the One who gave it to us in His great love.