Blessed are...

Word Made Flesh

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

Who is the One who challenges us to live out the characteristics of the Kingdom, who empowers us by His Spirit to be so much more than we ever could be by ourselves? He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.[1] He is the Word made flesh who made His dwelling among us.[2]

Jesus Christ has the authority to command and to bless because He is, as Wesley wrote, “God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.” Though we cannot fully understand how it happened, we believe that it did. In the person of His Son, God came to earth and lived among us. He lived as we live, yet was without sin. He taught as noone had ever taught, and He died, the innocent for the guilty, the just for the unjust, in order that we might be redeemed. Our sins had condemned us. We were heading for the destruction we deserved; but God in His great mercy sent His Son to pay the debt we could not pay, and to reconcile us to Himself.

The characteristics of the Kingdom, seen in the Beatitudes, were brought to us by none other than the Author of the universe: “the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.”[3] His words are more than pleasing, pious platitudes, more than quaint phrases to be converted into cross-stitch, ignored behind glass. They are the words of the One who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.[4] We may ignore these words, if we so choose, but we cannot do so forever.


Living Lord,
Your words still astonish me,
for You teach, not like the scribes, but as one with authority.
May I recognize, in You,
the Mind that made all things,
the Word that spoke them into being, and
the Love that came to earth, in Bethlehem.
Then, may I respond, eagerly, gladly to Your call.
For Your love’s sake.
Amen.


[1] Colossians 1:15
[2] John 1:14
[3] Hebrews 1:3
[4] Revelation 22:13