The Seven Signs

Three reasons for why the Word became flesh and dwelled among us can be discerned from the first eighteen verses of this amazing Gospel. First, He came because He wanted to commune with us. The word “dwelt” in verse 14 is the aorist, active, indicative, third-person, singular form of the verb skenoo. This verb means to tabernacle or to pitch one’s tent. Jesus could have chosen to come as an adult to die on the cross and then quickly return to heaven, and He could have done so all within a short period of time. So why did He instead choose to be born of the virgin Mary, grow up as any human being would, and live over thirty years on this planet? Jesus chose to pitch His tent with us because He wanted to live with us and among us. He wanted to have a close and personal relationship or intimate fellowship with us. He (the Creator) wanted us (the created) to know that He understands our pains, our weaknesses, and our challenges because He chose to come here and go through them Himself: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Just as we are able to love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19), we are also able to relate to Him because He first related to us.

Second, He came because He wanted to communicate with us His glory, truth, and the way He intended humans to be. The word “glory” is translated from the Greek word doxa. The glory of God is defined as “His unchanging essence … what He is essentially.” To glorify God means to declare His divine character and moral attributes. Therefore, “giving glory to God is ascribing to Him His full recognition.” God possesses two main attributes under which all of His other innumerable attributes can be placed: God is holy (1 Pet. 1:15–16), and God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). At no time in the history of humankind have these two main attributes of God been on display in a greater or more profound way than during the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ: the Word who became flesh and dwelled among us. God’s holiness demands judgment and punishment for our sins, yet His love demands forgiveness for those same sins. The substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, as we will learn in detail in chapter 11, is where these opposing attributes collided and were reconciled, which in turn provides the ultimate manifestation of the glory of God. The cross is the cosmic intersection of God’s holiness and His love (i.e., His glory). Therefore, nothing communicates the glory of God to a greater degree than the sinless Son of God allowing Himself to be sacrificed on the tree for you and me. He also came to communicate truth by delivering the true gospel to a lost and dying world. He came to bring divine truth concerning salvation and what each individual must do to receive it. Religion, legalism, traditions, and human efforts cannot provide the true salvation that people seek. As Jesus informs us in chapter 3, the truth is that true salvation requires one to be born again, which means both born from above as well as born a second time. Since the verb received in the phrase “as many as received him” in verse 12 is speaking “metaphorically of a teacher, to receive, acknowledge, embrace and follow his instructions,” all those who receive the divine truth that He has come to deliver are given by Him the exousia to become “the sons of God.” The word exousia is a unique word in the Greek because it has a dual meaning. Like the Greek word dunamis, it means power in the sense of having the might or strength to do something, but unlike dunamis, it also means power in the sense of having the authority or right to do something. The Holy Spirit had John use exousia instead of dunamis to hammer home the point that Jesus Christ—because He is God—has the full power and authority (i.e., the right and the might) to grant salvation and adoption into His family to all those who receive Him by receiving the divine truth that He came to deliver. In addition, He came to communicate the way He intended humans to be. The phrase “of his fullness have all we received” in verse 16 implies our reaching the intended goal set by His example. He came to be the personal example of what God intended people to be. Therefore, we are to strive to be like and to follow the example of the God-man Jesus Christ “[t]ill we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13); “[f]or whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).

Third, He came because He wanted to bestow His compassion (i.e., His grace) upon us, which required two components: the flesh of a man and the righteousness of God. The word “compassion” not only means to have sympathy for the distress of others, but also to have a desire to do something to alleviate the distress. Jesus could have left us in the distress of our sin and the state of spiritual death that results from it. Instead, He chose to provide the two components necessary to alleviate the cause of our distress. Since all humans must die because of sin (Rom. 5:12), either we must die or someone else must die in our place, but not just anybody could die in our place. In order to die in our place, that person would have to be perfectly sinless, else he or she would need to die for his or her own sins and would not be available or eligible to die for ours. The only way that a man could provide the perfectly sinless flesh and blood required is if that man was also God. Therefore, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us so that He could bestow His compassion upon us.

Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers, 1994), 1295.

Ibid., 478.

Ibid., 478.

Ibid., 908.

Ibid., 606.

Ibid., 1178.

Ibid., 1306.