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The Greatest Mystery
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14a).
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and nothing else was there, nobody to the right nor to the left of Him. He, God, is the beginning.
Already before the creation in Genesis 1:1, God, the eternal and invisible One, had planned in His mind to reveal His eternal power and invisible divinity. His thought (Logos) was that one day He would take on a visible form for His creation, whereby He would rule through it with complete authority and power. His creation should see Him exactly as He is. God would one day reveal Himself to mankind and His whole creation through his body, which he Himself would create. He would work and govern through this body. Whoever sees this body, would see the body of God, which He had prepared for Himself.
The Scripture tells us that this was already in God's mind and in His plan ever since the beginning. The word was made flesh. When He created man, He created him in His own image, according to His blueprint. He gave Adam a body which He would put on for one time only (in Bethlehem). Before Bethlehem, God manifested Himself in various ways to people. (see Hebrew 1:1-2) As an angel of the Lord, He appeared to Abraham, Jacob, Hagar and Moses; but none of these divine manifestations in the Old Testament were permanent forms! These revelations of Jesus in human form pointed to the day when He would become a man. After the incarnation in Bethlehem, this theophany of Jesus was no longer chosen and became unnecessary for He now had His body. This and His plan of how He would bring salvation was a great mystery.
Because Jesus is the eternal God, He can say, "I have all power in heaven and earth. I am the first and the last - the Living One." As according to His heavenly descent He is God, and as according to His earthly descent He is a man. "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). The Word became flesh, God came as a man to mankind. Emanuel, God with us.
Pastor Raymond Wey