The Glory of the Incarnation

February 1, 2026|The Glory of the Incarnation|John 1:14-18

Will Davis

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John 1:14-1814 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 For 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.

This morning we will be continuing  our study through what is known as the prologue of the Gospel of John. 

The prologue is the first 18 verses of John’s Gospel.  In this prologue John is speaking very theologically, and when we get to verse 19 he shifts to a narrative form to tell the story of Jesus’ life in the world.  John will go on to tell us many of Jesus’ good works, statements, and miracles He performs to include His crucifixion on a Roman cross and His victorious resurrection.  But here in the first 18 verses, in his prologue, John gives us his thesis statement for his gospel.  John wants all who read his gospel to know that Jesus is God in human flesh, that He is the Creator of the universe who has stepped into His creation.

Many scholars believe that even in his gospel John is already addressing and combating many false claims about who Jesus is.  One group John would be refuting would have been the Docetists, a group that held to the idea that all physical matter is inherently evil and only the spirit can be good.  Because of their philosophical view they taught that Jesus only seemed to be human, that he did not have a real physical body, His humanity was an illusion or appearance, His suffering and death were not real—He only appeared to suffer, because the divine Christ could not truly be born, bleed, be hungry, suffer, or die.  Some versions of the heresy taught that the “Christ-spirit” came upon the man Jesus temporarily and left before the crucifixion. Others said His body was a kind of phantom—visible, but not physical. 

Church family, it’s important for us to understand that not every group that uses the name “Jesus” is speaking about the same Jesus the Bible reveals. Throughout history—and still today—people tend to drift in one of two directions. Some make Jesus less than God. While others make Him less than truly human.

When Jesus is reduced to just a great teacher, just a prophet, or just another created being, we lose His power to save. A Jesus who is not fully God cannot forgive sins, conquer death, or give eternal life. At the same time, when Jesus’ humanity is softened or spiritualized—when His suffering, obedience, or death are treated as symbolic—we lose our substitute or the propitiation for our sins. A Jesus who is not also truly human cannot stand in our place.

Scripture does not allow us to choose between these truths. It insists on both. The Word truly became flesh. God the Son, entered real human life, obeyed where we failed, suffered where we deserved judgment, and died a real death for real sinners like you and me. And because He is fully God, His sacrifice is sufficient, His grace is endless, and His salvation is secure.

So when we hold fast to the full deity and full humanity of Christ, we are not splitting theological hairs—we are guarding the gospel itself. This is not about winning arguments. It’s about knowing who our Savior truly is, worshiping Him rightly, and resting fully in the atonement only He alone can provide.

The prologue of the Gospel of John is so foundational to forming our doctrine of who Jesus is and it sets the lens through which we see and know God. 

My prayer for us this morning is that we will be able to clearly see who scripture says Jesus is.  I know for most of us here this morning these truths are not new to you.  We know these truths. We have sung about them,we have confessed them, we have taught them, and we have defended them. They’re familiar—like an old hymn we don’t need the lyrics for anymore. But familiarity can quietly dull our wonder and awe if we’re not careful. And the New Testament never treats the person of Christ as something we just “move past.” It treats Him as someone we must continually return to, look at again, and see more clearly in order that we might be more conformed into His image.

So, if verses 1–13 lift our eyes to eternity, verse 14 brings eternity crashing into time. This is where the eternal Word steps onto earth. This is where the invisible God makes Himself known. John 1:14 is not just another verse—it is the heart, the climax, the defining factor of Christianity itself.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Those four words—the Word became flesh—carry more weight than the human mind can fully absorb. They are the most staggering claim ever made in human history. John is saying that the eternal Word, who was with God and was God, the One who spoke all things into being, did not merely visit us, did not merely speak to us, did not merely appear to us—but became one of us. God did not shout from heaven; He did not jsut speak through a whirlwind or a fire, He did not seek a prophet to meet Him on a mountain top, God Himself condescended to us and stepped fully into His creation.

John has been very deliberate in how he builds to this moment. In the opening verses he has told us who Jesus is from eternity past: He is the Word, He is life, He is light, He is God. Now, in verse 14, John tells us what that eternal Word did. He became flesh. Not the appearance of flesh. Not the illusion of humanity. Flesh—real, vulnerable, weak, human existence. The infinite became finite. The eternal entered time. The Creator entered His creation.

John says He “dwelt among us.” Literally, He pitched His tent among us. That language is not accidental. John wants you to hear echoes of the tabernacle, the Shekinah glory, the God who once dwelled among Israel in the wilderness. What the tabernacle symbolized, Jesus fulfilled. God is no longer dwelling behind curtains and veils—He walked our streets, sat at our tables, touched our wounds.

John is not speaking theoretically here. He speaks as an eyewitness. “We saw His glory.” Not only the visible glory on the mount of transfiguration, but the moral glory of divine attributes lived out in human life—”grace and truth”. The glory that once would have consumed sinners now comes clothed in mercy.

This is why John is so relentless about this doctrine. This is not optional theology. This is not a secondary issue. If Jesus is not God in human flesh, then Christianity collapses. There is no salvation, no grace, no gospel, no eternal life. John writes this toward the end of his Gospel in 20:31 “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name”. Everything hangs on who Jesus is.

Here, in verses 14–18, John brings his prologue to its crescendo. He shows us three unmistakable evidences of the incarnation: Jesus displays divine glory, dispenses divine grace, and defines God Himself. If you want to know what God is like, you do not speculate, you do not philosophize—you look at Jesus Christ. He is the exegesis of God. Jesus explains God. Jesus makes God known to us. 

So as we dive into this passage this morning, understand what we are dealing with. We are not standing at the edge of a manger scene calling for some sentimental reflection. We are standing before what C.S. Lewis called, the “Grand Miracle”. The eternal God has come near. He has taken our weakness as His own. As the hymn says “He has not despised the virgin’s womb”. And because the Word became flesh, grace has overcome our condemnation, light has invaded darkness, and eternal life has entered the world.

This brings us to our first point this morning:

I. The Word Became Flesh

John 1:14 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.

Now if you were with us for our study through the book of 1 John you will recall that who we say Jesus is as a follower of Christ is not up for debate.  Remember, John opens his first letter with language that is unmistakably intentional:

1 John 1:1-2 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us”.

In other words John says, we heard Him, we saw Him with our own eyes, we looked closely at Him, and we touched Him with our hands. This is not some abstract theory or manifestation. This is eyewitness testimony.

John can hardly get over it. He is overwhelmed by the reality that the One who was “from the beginning,” the Creator of all things, stood in front of him in real human flesh. He listened to Him speak. He watched Him walk. He leaned against Him. He touched Him. The eternal Son of God was not an idea He was not a phantom—He was present.

But why was John so insistent in proclaiming his eyewitness testimony:

John says in the next two verses 1 John 1:3–4 “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete”.

John wanted us to know this truth is foundational to having fellowship with God. This is entrance into the kingdom. This is where true joy is found—knowing the real Christ as He truly is.

Because knowing who Christ is so foundational to our fellowship with Him, John is relentless when it comes to guarding the truth about Christ.

He says plainly and clearly in 1 John 2:22-23:“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also”

To tamper with who Christ is to lose God. John does not leave any room for alternate interpretation. He only presses it further in 1 John 2:24: “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father”.

IF you move away from the apostolic Christ, then you move away from God Himself.

In chapter 4 verse 1, John intensifies this warning: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world”

How did John say we were to test them? Chapter 4:2-3 “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist”

It is really quite simple church those who confess both the true deity and true humanity of Christ are from God. Those who deny either are not.

John makes this abundantly clear in chapter 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God” 

Then he brings it home at the end of chapter 5 verse 20: “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” 

Jesus Christ is not merely from God—He is the true God and eternal life. So it is no surprise that no doctrine has been more attacked throughout church history than the incarnation. There have always been many “Jesuses” offered to the world, and Scripture warns that false Christs will only multiply as the end draws near see Matthew 24:5, 24.

This must be said as plainly as possible: believing in the wrong Jesus is just as damning as believing in no Jesus at all. A false Christ cannot save. Salvation requires the true Christ—fully God and fully man—come in the flesh, crucified, risen, and reigning.

That is why we must be clear in our doctrine and put our faith in Jesus as He has been revealed to us in scripture. 

Now let's get back to the Gospel of John, And the Word became flesh.  The word flesh there in the Greek sarx, can be used in two different ways. Sometimes it is used by Paul in a moral sense, as in “deeds of the flesh” used in places like Romans 8 and Galatians 5. Other places like Romans 1:3 which says that Jesus was the Son of David,according to the flesh it speaks to His humanity.  This is how it is used here, speaking of Jesus’ human flesh.

When Scripture says, “the Word became flesh”, it means exactly that—the eternal Word truly became human. The eternal God, who simply is and does not become as His creatures do, entered His own creation. God and man were united in one Person, never to be separated again. Not confused. Not blended. Not mixed. Two natures— one fully divine and one fully human—perfect, distinct, and indivisible in the one Christ.

His deity is not diminished by His humanity, and His humanity is not overwhelmed by His deity. And this is not temporary. The risen Christ who walked with the disciples for forty days after the resurrection is the same Christ who reigns in heaven now…Acts 1:3. He did not cease to be a man when He ascended. He remains the God-man forever.

His humanity is not some abstract or ideal version of man. He did not take on Adam’s pre-fall humanity. He lived, grew, suffered, and died—realities of life in a fallen world…Luke 2:52; Hebrews 2:14.  As one commentary put it “He made our creaturely weakness his very own form of being, just as Paul tells us in Romans 8:3…”By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh”…

That is precisely why He can sympathize with our weaknesses and be tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin Hebrews 4:15. He was truly human as we are, with one exception: He was without sin 2 Corinthians 5:21.

John then says the Word “dwelt among us”. The word means He pitched His tent among us. God moved into our neighborhood. For over thirty years, the Son of God lived in this world, took on our nature, and became one of us Philippians 2:6–8; Hebrews 2:17. To deny that Jesus Christ truly came in the flesh is not a small error—as we have seen from 1 John it is outright heresy.

So how do we know He was God?

John gives us clear evidence. He points us to what the disciples witnessed.

First, they saw His glory. “And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father”.

In Scripture, God’s glory is the fullness of His attributes—who He is in all His perfections Exodus 33:18–23; 34:5–7. At times, that glory was visibly manifested as radiant light—or the Shekinah glory—filling the tabernacle and the temple Exodus 40:34–35; 1 Kings 8:10–11. Moses was only allowed to see the afterglow of it, because sinful man cannot behold God’s full glory and live Exodus 33:20.

That same glory appeared in Christ. At the transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw His divine glory break through the veil of His flesh Matthew 17:1–2. Peter later said in 2 Peter 1:16–18, “we were eyewitnesses of his majesty”.

But John means more than that one moment. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, they saw God’s glory displayed in His works and character. They saw His power, wisdom, compassion, holiness, authority, mercy, and truth. John in chapter 2 verse 11 says that Jesus’ signs “manifested his glory”. Whether in miracles or mercy, judgment or grace, the attributes of God were on full display in the life of Christ.

So when John says, “we have seen his glory,” he means both the visible glory and the lived-out glory—the light and the life.

And finally, John says this glory was “full of grace and truth”.

Not partial. Not measured, but Full. In Christ, grace is not abstract, and truth is not cold. God’s saving kindness and God’s faithful revelation meet perfectly in the incarnate Son.

Grace and truth are inseparable in this passage. You cannot pull them apart. The only way grace is ever experienced is through believing the truth. There is no grace apart from truth, and there is no saving truth that does not lead to grace. They come as a pair.

So John says, we didn’t just hear about Him—we experienced Him. At His very core, He is the “only Son from the Father”. That is who He is in His essential being. And we saw that reality made visible. His glory came to us clothed in grace and truth—displayed in His words, confirmed by His works, and embodied in His life.

This brings us to our second point this morning:

II. Witness of Abundant Grace

John 1:15 (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.’)

Now you may noticed in your Bible that John 1:15 is set in parentheses. That doesn’t mean it was added later, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s an aside we can ignore. It’s simply a way our English translators help us follow John’s flow of thought.

John is describing the glory of Christ—the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth. Then,it is almost like he pauses and says, And remember—this didn’t come out of nowhere, he reminds us that John the Baptist already testified to this. That’s what verse 15 is doing. It’s a confirming eyewitness testimony dropped into the middle of the argument.

If you read verse 14 and then verse 16 straight through, the thought flows naturally. Verse 15 steps in briefly to reinforce the point: Jesus may have appeared after John in history, but He existed before John eternally. That’s the heart of John the Baptist’s testimony—“He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.”

The parentheses are not inspired—God didn’t put them there—but the words are fully inspired. They simply help us see that John is showing us that John the Baptist came before us and declared the same thing.

Verse 15 roots the incarnation in real history and with public testimony. The eternal Word didn’t just appear mysteriously or in a vacuum, Jesus was announced, witnessed, and confessed.

So why does John the apostle borrow from and add John the Baptist testimony? Is this necessary information for us to have or need?  If you’re Jewish and you believe the Scriptures, especially Deuteronomy, you know that truth must be established by two or three witnesses according to Deuteronomy 19:15. So John doesn’t leave this resting on a single voice. He brings in a second witness—and it’s John the Baptist.

The language John uses here shows that this wasn’t a one-time statement from John the Baptist. This was his settled message, his constant testimony. Over and over he said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me” John 1:15. And that raises the obvious question: how can someone who comes after me in time exist before me—unless He is eternal?

So we see the two Johns bearing witness together. John the apostle says, we saw His glory. John the Baptist says, He existed before me. And their testimonies converge on the same conclusion: Jesus Christ is the divine glory—God Himself made visible. 

Now here’s the crucial point: the testimony of John the Baptist doesn’t just establish who Jesus is—it prepares us to understand what Jesus gives. The witness settles the question of Christ’s identity before John ever moves to Christ’s provision. Once we know that Jesus is eternal, once we know He is God in the flesh, then we are ready to hear what flows from Him. The witness clears the ground; the grace fills it. And that leads us directly to John’s final emphasis in this section—not simply that Christ is glorious, but that from His fullness grace has been poured out on us. 

This brings us to our final point this morning:

III. Grace upon Grace

John 1:16-18 16 For 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.

He is full of grace and truth. John says it again in verse 16: “From his fullness we have all received.” And then he explains it with that beautiful phrase—“grace upon grace”. Literally, grace in the place of grace. One grace gives way to another, and when that grace has done its work, there is more grace ready to take its place. There is no depletion, no shortage, no thinning out. Grace just keeps coming.

We don’t receive a fragment of His grace—we receive out of the fullness of the grace that belongs to Him. Grace replacing grace, again and again. Paul says in Romans 5:2, “This grace in which we stand”. This is the realm of those who follow after Christ live in. Because we have believed the truth of the gospel, grace continually flows to us.

That’s why when Paul pleaded with the Lord about his thorn in the flesh, the answer was simple and final: “My grace is sufficient for you”. Sufficient—always enough, never running dry.

Hebrews 4:6 tells us to “draw near to the throne of grace”. Why? Because there is an inexhaustible supply for every need we will ever face. John’s point is this: how do we know Jesus is God? Because we are living in an unending flood of grace that only God can give.

Under the law, all we knew were commands, warnings, curses, and condemnation. And then Christ came and defeated death—and through His victory grace takes the place of grace, again and again. Look at what John says in verse 17, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”.

Grace was promised in the Old Testament. Grace was present in the Old Testament—Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, Genesis 6:8. Every sinner who has ever been saved has been saved by grace. But grace was not fully realized until Christ came and paid for sin at the cross.

If you look this verse up in blue letter bible the phrase “were realized” is there.  The phrase literally translated is to become, and it means came into being, came into existence. So you could read the second part of verse 17 that way. Grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.

Not that grace didn’t exist before, but that it was finally accomplished, secured, and validated by Christ’s finished work. God applied grace before the cross because the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world Revelation 13:8 says “everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.” And that same grace now flows forward to us in full measure.

John is saying, this is no ordinary man. This is the Lord Jesus Christ—the Son of the living God. We have seen Him. We have heard Him. We have touched Him. He dispenses grace because He is God.

Finally, John wraps up his prologue with the incarnate Christ defining or explaining God to us. Look at verse 18 “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known”.

God is invisible. He has no form. But the only Son—the one who exists in the closest, most intimate fellowship with the Father—has made Him known to us. The word John uses means to explain, to interpret, to give full meaning.This is the same word we use when explaining scripture, exegesis.  Proper exegesis of scripture is simply explaining what a biblical text means primarily in its original historical and literary context. This is what I have been doing here this morning, exegeting or explaining so that I make known to you this passage. John says that Jesus exegetes, explains, and makes known to us who God is. So, when somebody says to you, “How do you explain God? Where would you go? Well, you’d go to that verse and say, Look at Jesus Christ, He explains God. In other words Jesus exegetes God. So you want to know about God? Jesus defines God. He displays glory, He dispenses grace, and He defines God.

This is why I get so fired up when people try to tell me or say that Jesus was merely a good man, a moral teacher, or a religious leader. That option is gone. John emphatically declares that Jesus is God, and all that truly believe that they what? Verse 12 tells us that we receive Him. To believe in His name is to believe He is who He says He is. And only then does He give us the right to become children of God.

John has not written this so that we would merely admire Christ. He has written so that we would believe. Every word in this passage presses us toward a response.

We have seen that Jesus displays divine glory. He is not a reflection of God—He is God made visible. We have seen that He dispenses divine grace—not sparingly, not occasionally, but grace upon grace, flowing endlessly from His fullness. And we have seen that He defines God Himself to us. If you want to know what God is like, you must look to Jesus Christ. There is no other way.

So the question is not whether Jesus is glorious—the witnesses have settled that. The question is whether you have received Him.

John says, “From his fullness we have all received”. But a few verses earlier he tells us not everyone does. Some saw Him and rejected Him. Some heard the truth and loved their sin more. Grace is not experienced by proximity—it is experienced by faith.

To receive Christ is not to clean yourself up first. It is to know that we come empty-handed before our Lord with nothing to offer but a soul that needs to be redeemed. Grace is always God’s work toward us; sin is always our work against Him. You do not bring merit—you bring need. And the good news is that Christ’s fullness is more than enough for our guilt, our rebellion, our weakness, and our shame.

So here is the call this morning.

If you have never believed in Christ—believe. Believe that He is the eternal Son of God. Believe that He took on flesh to save sinners such as you and me. Believe that He died in the place of the guilty and rose in victory. And receive what only He can give: the right to become a child of God.

If you do believe—then rest. Stop living as though grace might run out. Stop carrying burdens Christ has already paid for. Draw near to the throne of grace, not as a beggar hoping for crumbs, but as a child welcomed home.

Finally, for all of us—hold fast to the truth. Grace and truth never separate. You cannot have one without the other. Believe the truth, and you will experience grace. Drift from the truth, and grace will grow dim.

John’s message is simple and final: God has come near. God has been made known. God has given grace.

The Word became flesh—and He is worthy of your faith, your trust, your obedience, and your life.

“To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”