We have seen His glory …

I love the way that John starts his account of the Gospel with the same words which launch the Bible in the book of Genesis … “In the beginning”: Indeed the apostle sees in the coming of Jesus that not only is this a “new beginning” for creation but that the incarnation of Jesus was intended from the very beginning.

God, who knows all things, created us in His image and gave us the freedom to love Him, or not. He knew that this freedom would create a challenge and that we would fail to really embrace the fullness of His intentions for us – We would want to make other choices which seemed preferable to us, as in Adam and Eve’s choice to eat the forbidden fruit.

God knew that this would create a strain in our relationship with Him; just as a disobedient child or a wayward spouse creates strains in a relationship. But God was not satisfied with an extended separation, so He, who is beyond time itself, entered into His creation to resolve the differences. He “bent over backwards” so to speak, in order to restore our relationship with Him – He allowed us to kill Him, and still He loved us. In the resurrection appearances, Jesus showed again and again, that His desire is nothing less than that we should be “saved into eternity”. What does that mean? Simply put, it means that when we accept this “new beginning” which Jesus heralds and creates, then we enter into a restored relationship with God.

This restored relationship has implications for our life now – we can literally “walk with God” now as did Adam in the Garden of Eden. It also has implications for our life beyond which continues when our mortal bodies fail.

When we admit to our own failures in the broken relationship between God and ourselves, and accept that Jesus’ reconciling work on the Cross has shown God’s continued love for us and His forgiveness of our failures, we enter into a new and eternal relationship with God. He is with us always – “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”

That God became flesh (appeared as a human being, was incarnated) is the most profound mystery of all time. It is beyond our understanding and yet it is the claim of Jesus, and of the Bible. It propels us into the realm of the unbelievable, and yet … look around you, the evidence of the impact of Christ is everywhere: in our symbols, in our morals, in our living and in our aspirations. In a history which has been marked by several civilisations, wars, peace and giant strides in technology and human understanding, this humble Nazarene (or rather, incredible loving God) has stood out as offering the only real meaning and purpose to life itself. He offers us resurrection, new life, a new beginning – grasp it with everything you have got, there is nothing sweeter or more precious.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … in Him was Life, and that Life was the Life of all people … and the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us … we have seen His glory, the glory of the One and only Son. Hallelujah!