3. JOHN 1 v 14–18 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14) Or, as The Message memorably puts it, He “moved into the neighbourhood.” Perhaps we have heard this verse so often that we no longer notice how astonishing it is.
The Word whom John has just described as existing “in the beginning”; the Word who was with God and was God; the Word through whom everything was created — became flesh. God did not merely send us information. He came Himself. Christianity makes the extraordinary claim that the eternal God entered His creation and experienced human life from within it. The God Christians worship is therefore not remote from ordinary human existence. The Greek expression literally carries the idea of pitching His tent among us or tabernacling among us. God's presence is no longer centred upon a tent or a building. It is found in a person. Jesus is where God meets humanity. The things Jesus did, the way He taught, the way He lived, provide a great challenge for every person: as the Christian scholar, C.S. Lewis, wrote: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”