Lesson Two: He Put On Flesh

artwork by Ryan, 10th Grade

We, like God, are nuanced and multi-dimensional beings.

Because we are made in His image we are endowed with many of the same qualities and characteristics of God. Like Him, we are rational, relational, aesthetic, and emotional. These God-given nuances separate us from the rest of the animals and put us in a unique space in the rest of the created universe.

God also made us nuanced with all of the sensory inputs with which we are designed. Our taste, sight, hearing, smelling, and touching senses give us the unique ability to construct and extract meaning and pleasure from the world around us. Through these different receptors we derive many of the joys and also many of the pains in life. For instance, through our eyes we become witnesses to the beauties and the horrors of living within a beautiful and broken world.

From the beginning of creation God utilized unique methods to connect relationally with His people. In Genesis 3:8 we know that God walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day. In Exodus 3 God speaks to Moses through a burning bush. In I Kings 19:11-13 God addresses the prophet Elijah through “a still small voice.” In each instance God appealed and appeared to people’s senses so that they could witness Him, worship Him, and interact with Him. God has always longed to have a relationship with His us as His greatest creation.

But in John 1:14 we discover these miraculous, “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” (ESV). Jesus, the Son of God took on human flesh and became a human.

Advent is the annual reminder that God took the ultimate steps of having a relationship with us by sending His Son as a human baby. Through the incarnation, the Son of God became someone that people could touch, laugh with, hold and be held by, cry with, fish with, and eat with. Advent is the celebration that Hope became embodied, physical, and present with us.

Lasting and eternal Goodness came to dwell with us and one day die for us.