In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
If the stories of the Nativity in Matthew and Luke emphasize the humanity of Christ while acknowledging his divinity we see in John's account the emphasis is clearly on his divinity.
The Word always existed before any created thing was made. He enjoyed perfect fulfillment for all eternity together with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. He was not created but "through him all things were made" as we say in the creed. Yet the Word that always existed in eternity was not always visible to the human race. In the past, "God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets" but it was only on Christmas morning when "the Word became flesh and made his dwelling us" that he spoke "to us through the Son". The Word always existed. But on Christmas he revealed that he had joined to his unchanging divine nature a human nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As Gregory said, "He remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed" (see Oration 37).
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.
The Word did not remain distant but took on flesh and pitched his tent among us. He become not only intelligible but fully visible such that those who knew Jesus could say, "we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth". What John the Baptist predicted and John the Evangelist proclaimed was therefore not merely an abstract truth, an idea, or a symbol. Rather, as John wrote in his first epistle, Jesus was not only "from the beginning" but also that "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands" (see First John 1:1). He did not merely appear human as though he were a divinity wearing a costume and a mask that would drop to the stage the moment he no longer needed it. Rather he was "made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest" (see Hebrews 2:17).
The humanity manifested in the Nativity of Our Lord was not a temporary solution when God needed to communicate in a particular way or to add an exclamation point to the story of salvation history. He would not later disentangle himself from human nature once he had attained our salvation. Rather the human flesh of Jesus, who was born of the Virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, who died and rose again, is now and forever seated at the right hand of God in heaven. His unwillingness to let go of the humanity of Jesus is a testimony that he will not abandon any of us either. God and man have been irrevocably untied in Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that the psalmist can sing in all truth that, "All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God".
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