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5th March 2026
ThursdayReflection
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'John Piper'
is founder and teacher of Desiring God.org
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us"
.... John 1 v 14-18
We Beheld His Glory, Full of Grace and Truth
14 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.
15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'")
16 And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
Verse 1 recalls who the Word refers to. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).
So the Word refers to God the Son.
I use the term Son because the term is used here in verse 14.
Muslims stumble over this word Son, as do many others.
Some of them think we mean that God had sex with Mary and produced a son.
That is not what the Bible means.
The Son of God did not have a beginning.
He was there in the beginning.
He was there as far back as you can go - to eternity.
And verse 3 says, "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."
That means that he was not made.
He is not part of creation in any way.
So here is what we know about the Son of God:
1) He is God. 2) The Father is also God.
3) The Son is not the Father; he was with the Father.
4) He is uncreated and eternal.
There is so much more to say about the doctrine of the Trinity - the teaching that God exists as one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
But keep that much in your mind and heart for now.
The Son and the Father are one God, but they are two Persons. They have one divine nature. They are one God with two centres of consciousness.
Now, what verse 14 says - and this is one of the most important events in history - is that the Word, the Son, became human without ceasing to be God.
The divine Son of God, became a human without ceasing to be God.
How do we know this? And what does it mean for us?
The angel said in Matthew 1:23, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).
The Word, the Son, did not cease to be God when he became man.
The second reason we believe this is the next clause in verse 14, "We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father."
Whose glory? The glory of the Word - the Word who is God.
And what sort of glory is it?
It's "the glory as of the only Son from the Father."
When John says that the glory of the incarnate Word is "the glory as of the only Son from the Father," does the word as mean that it's an imitation glory?
If I say, for example, "I have a book to give away, and I would like to give it to you as my first choice," you don't respond, "I'm not really your first choice; I'm only as your first choice."
No. That's not what as means when I say, "I give it to you as my first choice."
It means: I give it to you as you really are my first choice.
When John says, "We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father," he means, "We have seen his glory, glory as it really is - the glory of the Son of God."
"We have seen his glory" - no qualification.
Whose glory? The glory of the eternal Word, the Son.
So there is no diminishing of the wonder of the incarnation.
The Word became flesh, and he did so without ceasing to be God. He manifests God's glory.
Verses 15-18 give more reasons for believing that the Word became flesh without ceasing to be God.
It means that in Jesus Christ we can see the glory of God.
And it means that the glory of God revealed in Jesus does not consume us in our sin. Instead, it is "full of grace and truth."
That is, the glory of God in Christ is his gracious disposition to us without compromising his truthfulness, his faithfulness to himself.
And this gracious disposition is very, very great.
That's why he uses the word full-the word full modifies glory. The glory of the Son of God is full of graciousness toward us sinners without compromising God's truth.
This is really good news. God could have chosen to become flesh as a judge and executioner.
And all of us would be found guilty before him and be sentenced to everlasting punishment.
But he did not become flesh that way.
The Word, the Son, who is God, became flesh to reveal a divine glory that is "full of grace and truth."
The Word became flesh so that this graciousness to us would come in accord with God's truthfulness. This will not be a wishy-washy, unprincipled, sentimental grace.
This will be a righteous, God-exalting, costly grace. It will lead straight to Jesus' death on the cross.
In fact, this is why he became flesh.
He had to have flesh in order to die.
He had to be human in order to die as a God-man in our place (Hebrews 2:14-15).
And the reason it happened through death is because the Son of God is full of grace and truth.
God is gracious to us and true to himself.
Therefore, when his Son comes, he is full of grace and truth. When Christ died, God was true to himself, because sin was punished.
And When Christ died, God was gracious to us, because Christ bore the punishment not us.
"The Word became flesh" means for us that the glory of God has been revealed in history as never before, namely, in the fullness of grace and the fullness of truth that shines most brightly in the death of Jesus for sinners.
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This is an edited version.
The full article is avaiable on request
John Piper
is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God:
Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy
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