The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word (Hebrews 1:3a).

Last week, we looked at a very Pauline claim (that Jesus was the reason for creation and the glue that holds all things together). This week, we encounter an idea that seems much closer to the Apostle John. Not only does the gospel writer introduce Jesus as the pre-existing creator, he also describes Jesus as the word become flesh (John 1:14). The incarnation is, perhaps, one of the greatest arguments for why God rejected the possibility of being represented by “any graven image.” When setting in the stone the second of the Ten Commandments, God not only refused to allow His people to bow to other gods, He also set aside any attempt at imitating His own likeness. By the way, when Aaron made that golden calf, he declared that it was “the god that brought you up out of Egypt.” Nope.

Later, as John was growing old, he wrote letters to those he had discipled through the years. We usually refer to these letters as 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. In the first and longest of the three, John introduces Jesus in very physical terms. The passage is similar to the first few verses of John’s Gospel but is more interested in proving that the Son of God (the radiance and exact representation, as the Hebrew writer would say) was no phantom, spirit or apparition. He was, indeed, human flesh:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life (1st John 1:1-3).

Of course, we can’t ignore Paul, altogether. In his letter to Philippi, he challenges his readers to think like Jesus who, though He was in the very form of God ... emptied Himself and took on the form of a servant (Philippians 2:5f) – the very God become human flesh – radiance and representation in human form.

See you Sunday.