“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have
seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and
truth.”                   --John 1:14

According to Mormon teaching, if
you live the good Mormon life, following all of their rules and regulations,
then when you leave this life, you can become the god or goddess of your own
planet, spending eternity having celestial babies to populate your planet with.
My friend Earl in Salem, Oregon—the
one who claimed to be God—claimed that he had not always been God. Rather, he
once was a mere man. But after several reincarnations, he went through a
spiritual evolution and became God.
In the Person of Jesus Christ, we do
not see a man who became a god. Instead, we find Him to be the One true God who
became a man.
After introducing us to the
wondrous mystery of the Word being with God and the Word being God, John then
tells us of something even more glorious. “The Word became flesh.” Theologians
refer to this truth as the Incarnation.
Herein we also see a tremendous
difference between Christ and the angels. For at various times throughout
Scriptures (such as at the Ascension in Acts 1), angels are said to
occasionally take on the form and appearance of men, but they do not actually
become human. But Jesus Christ, the Second Person within the Trinity, actually
became a man; the God-Man. And, as we are about to delve fully into the
Gospels, we will see (as we already know) that one evidence for His humanity is
the manner in which He entered this world. Unlike the angels, who just seem to
show up from out of nowhere, appearing as full-grown men, Christ entered this
world as all humans since the time of Adam and Eve have come into this world;
by being born of a woman.
In addition, He dwelt among us. He
did not just come down out of heaven for a short visit, nor to simply deliver a
message from God, and then quickly return home. He was born into humanity, and
He lived on the earth. For 33 years, the earth was His dwelling place, just as
it is ours. This serves as even greater testimony to the fact that Jesus Christ
was indeed fully human.
The significance and the majesty of
the Word becoming flesh is noted by John in this very same verse. Other
versions of the Bible, such as the New King James, word it this way: “And the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of
the only begotten of the Father…”
“We beheld His glory!” What a
fascinating statement, particularly in light of the fact that when Moses asked
to see God’s glory, the LORD told him, “No man shall see Me, and live” (Exodus
33:20). So now, the question arises, what does John mean when he says, “We
beheld His glory”? Was it a lesser glory, a diminished glory, that John and his
companions saw? Is he here referring to the glory that he, James, and Peter saw
at the Transfiguration? What glory was seen by those who walked with Christ
while He was on the earth?
It is true that they did not see
the fullness of the glory of God. I believe that such glory cannot be beheld by
sinful men, not even those who are saved, lest they die. Not even at the
Revelation, as described by John in the first chapter of that book, did John
see the full glory of God. Nor did Isaiah witness it in all of its majesty when
he saw the LORD seated on His throne, high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1). If they
had, they most surely would have died. And even as it is, the glory they were
permitted to see struck them with awe and terror, causing them to fall facedown
before God, wishing they were dead.
But this does not mean that those
who walked with Christ did not see any of His glory. And the glory they did see
was not something to be sneezed at. They saw a marvelous, wondrous aspect of
His glory previously unimaginable to men! They saw God in the flesh.

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