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The Incarnation Explained in John's Gospel

 The doctrine of the incarnation, that God became man, is an essential teaching of Christianity.  Beyond affirming the fact that Jesus is God made flesh, two questions are worth asking.  First, is there an Old Testament basis for such a teaching or is this a truly new doctrine in the New Testament for Christians?  In answering this, we should focus on what the New Testament authors said.  Did they believe that Jesus’ incarnation was ‘Biblical’ (Old Testament)?  Second, relatedly, what theological significance is there to the doctrine of the incarnation?  I would like to explore John’s answers to these questions in his Gospel, focussing on John’s prologue (1.1-18) and Jesus prayer in chapter 17.

John affirms the preexistence of Jesus by declaring the divine identity of Jesus such that, in the beginning when all things were created, He was present and active (1.1-2).  In various other statements and ways, this Gospel continues to present Jesus as ‘one with the Father.’  To state that the preexistent Son was eternal meant that He Himself was not created or ‘born’ in the sense of having a beginning.  Being the ‘Son’ had to do with representation, as a ‘son’ represents the father: ‘what God was, so was the Word,’ as John puts it (1.1c).  Or, Jesus was the ‘only begotten’ (monogenēs) in the sense that He was the one and only representation of divine identity (1.14, 18; 3.16, 18).  Or, Jesus was ‘at the Father’s side’ and therefore the ‘only begotten God’ (1.18).

This unwavering identity of Jesus with the Father and therefore affirmation of His divine identity continues as a theological theme for the rest of the Gospel of John.  It is so firmly stated in the prologue (1.1-18) in order that the humanity of Jesus throughout the Gospel might not undermine this truth.[1]  Jesus' identity was that of uniquely being fully God and fully human.  Already in the prologue, however, the doctrine of the incarnation is introduced, and that with an Old Testament undergirding.  We read,

And the Word became flesh and dwelt [from skēnoō] among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (1.14).

Jesus’ incarnation in this verse captures two understandings in the Exodus narrative, with Israel dwelling in the wilderness.  The first is that God dwelt in the midst of the Israelites in the ‘tent of meeting’ or tabernacle—the precursor to the temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem.  The Greek word translated by the ESV as ‘dwelt’ in this verse is the verbal form of the word for ‘tent’ (skēnē).  The invisible God made Himself visible in the cloud of glory in the most holy place of the tabernacle, and He whose Holiness allowed only Moses to approach Him atop Mt. Sinai when He delivered the Ten Commandments now dwelt with the Israelites.

The second Old Testament reference in John 1.14 is in the wording ‘full of grace and truth.’  This is one of the ways to represent the phrase appearing a number of times in the Old Testament and translated in Exodus 34.6 by the ESV as ‘steadfast love and faithfulness.’  In Exodus 34, God reveals Himself to Moses, descending in His cloud, standing with him, and proclaiming His divine name.  He then expressed His divine character, using this key phrase.  God’s revelation of His character explains to Moses why He, the holy God, would go with Israel, the sinful people, and dwell among them in the tabernacle.  He would do so because of who He is, full of grace or steadfast love, and full of faithfulness or truth in His covenant commitment to this people.

Both Old Testament references in John 1.14, then, point to the incarnation of the Son being an extension of God's incarnate presence among the Israelites.  He who is the full representation of the Father because of His divine identity has come to be among us.  As God came in His glory shrouded in a cloud and tabernacled among His sinful people because of who He is, so Jesus came in His divine glory to tabernacle among us.  The significance of God’s presence in the tabernacle for His covenant commitment to a sinful people was that here the people could come and confess their sins, pray for forgiveness, and offer sacrifices for sin and thanksgiving.  The significance of Jesus’ coming to dwell among us was so that He could manifest the Father’s name among His people (17.6) and offer Himself as a sacrifice for our sins that we might share in His glory with the Father (17.22).  The unity for which Jesus prays in John 17 is not communal fellowship and agreements among diverse peoples despite their different views, as is sometimes suggested, but a unity in sharing in divine glory.  This unity involves being ‘set apart’ or sanctified in truth (17.19).  It is not any unity but unity in the truth.  In John 17, the words ‘glory,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘love’ appear several times as ways to identify Jesus’ incarnational revelation with God’s incarnational revelation in Exodus.  The disciples—representing the Church—in John 17 also are a divine, incarnational presence to the world.  Jesus prays,

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (17.22-23).

The incarnation, then, is part-and-parcel with a doctrine of Christian unity: God, who is full of grace and truth, comes to be amidst His sinful people that they might become set apart through Him by means of sacrifice (Jesus’ being ‘lifted up’ on the cross and at the same time glorified) in order to share His glory.  The incarnation is a divine work in that it is for salvation.  Just as God made His name known to Moses (Exodus 34.5), so Jesus has made the Father’s name known to His disciples (John 17.26), and they make it known to the world.


[1] Rather famously—or infamously—a mid-20th c. New Testament scholar, Ernst Käsemann, failed to understand this basic theological point in John’s Gospel.  See his The Testament of Jesus: A Study of the Gospel of John in the Light of Chapter 17 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017, orig. pub. 1966).  He stated that the character of Jesus in this Gospel floats above the ground, as it were, meaning that He is presented as so ‘divine’ that He is not very human.  Käsemann continues to be referenced in Johannine scholarship as a starting point for scholars to discuss the humanity of Christ in the Gospel, thus correcting the misunderstanding.  Among any number of scholars, one might pursue the discussion further with Marianne Meye Thompson’s The Incarnate Word: Perspectives on Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub., 1993).

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