An Invitation to Intimacy
One of my favorite worship songs is "For Your Glory" by Tasha Cobbs. It captures her longing to be in God's presence and to experience His incredible glory. But when I think about John 1:14, I'm reminded of something important that's missed in the song:
We don't have to jump through hoops to get closer to God.
We don't need to go to extremes to dwell with Him.
We don't have to do the most to experience His fullness.
While being in His presence every day does take some sacrifice on my part—like making time and putting in effort—I don't have to get tired in the wheel of performance to experience God.
God chose to become human and did all the heavy lifting for me, making His glory easy to access.
He went through so much, so I don't have to worry about fulfilling all the demands of atonement.
I can just come to Him as I am.
The Glory of God in the Old Testament
When we talk about God's glory in the Old Testament (kavodin Hebrew), we think about His divine presence, majesty, and holiness.
This glory is so overwhelming that, in places like Exodus 33:20, humans are warned that they cannot see God's full glory and live. Take Moses, for example. He had to turn his back on God just to avoid being consumed by His glory.
Out of His love for us, God chose to reveal His glory in ways we could understand, like through supernatural signs—think of the fire on Mount Sinai, the thick clouds, and the powerful winds that marked His presence.
God has always desired to be where we are.
That's why He instructed the Israelites to build a Tabernacle where His glory could dwell among them. Inside the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place housed His presence, reminding us that God is both greater/beyond us and right here with us. This whole system illustrates the gap between His holiness and our human struggles, but it also reassures us that His glory is still within reach.
The Glory Revealed in Christ
Now back to our background reading for today, John 1:14, reveals something deep: "The Word became flesh."
It's one thing for God to make His glory accessible through supernatural means, but His deep love for us drove Him to go even further. Through Jesus, God's glory is fully available to us. While the full weight of divine glory can be overwhelming, Christ veils it just enough so we can engage with Him without being consumed.
The latter part of John 1:14 says, 'And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' Jesus revealed His glory fully. He didn't withhold any part of His presence from us.
And here's the thing: God's glory, 'dwelling among us' fully in such an intimate, personal, real way, was part of His plan from the very beginning of time.
Imagine being one of the disciples, witnessing this glory firsthand through the way in which Jesus lived and interacted with people. He came to walk among us, embracing our humanity and showing us what God is truly like.
What a beautiful reality for the disciples! The fact that they could see His glory with their eyes—not through visions like the prophets—shows that God genuinely desires a relationship with us—always has and always will.
What Does This Mean for Us?
So, what does all this mean for you and me?
Just like Jesus walked with His disciples, He walks with us today—as we wrap up the month. We can experience His glory fully through prayer, worship, or even quiet moments of reflection.
Experiencing God's glory changes us. When we open our hearts to His presence, we let His glory work inside us. We become more aware of His holiness, which often leads us to repentance. Encountering His glory inspires us to share grace, love, and forgiveness with others, reflecting the grace we've received ourselves. Plus, when we feel His presence, we often find a deep sense of calm and a new perspective, even on the most painful experiences we're trying to process.
God is full of truth and grace. This means that in our relationship with Him, we can access His truth, holiness, and limitless grace. It's incredibly freeing to know that we have a Savior who offers grace—no strings attached. We can come as we are and receive His love without pretending or hiding in shame.
Embracing the Paradox
My prayer for you, just as it is for myself, is that we really embrace this beautiful paradox: God's glory is so great that we can't fully grasp it, yet it's accessible to us right now through Jesus.
- Dentrecia B.
It’s worth noting that the idea of the Logos didn’t originate with Christianity. The term comes from Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who described the Logos as the rational principle or order behind the flux of reality. Later, in Alexandria, the Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus reinterpreted this Logos concept through a Hebrew lens. He identified the Logos with figures like the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Scriptures: a divine intermediary, not unlike a proto-Christological figure.
So when John 1:14 says “the Logos became sarx (flesh),” it wasn’t a radically new theological idea. In fact, Greco-Roman culture already had categories for divine figures becoming flesh. Heroes like Heracles, Asclepius, and Dionysus were all understood as sons of Zeus who embodied a fusion of divinity and mortality.
This connection was made explicit by Justin Martyr around 150 CE. He argued that Christians should not be persecuted for believing in a divine-human savior since Greeks already accepted the same idea in their mythology. He pointed directly to the similarities between Jesus and the sons of Zeus to make his case.
Even later, in the 5th century, the poet Nonnus of Panopolis wrote elaborate mythological verse about Dionysus undergoing kenosis (a self-emptying and embodiment) and then applied the same poetic-theological framework to his Gospel of John epic.
So when John describes Jesus as the Logos made flesh, he isn’t inventing a new metaphysics. He’s positioning Jesus within an already existing Greco-Jewish conceptual landscape, where divine intermediaries and incarnate gods were familiar, not foreign.