The first Sunday in Advent season is here again and, with it, the church’s calendar will proclaim the awe and wonder of the Word becoming flesh for the next little while.

One of the most fascinating paradoxes which comes to light in the study of the Greek New Testament has to do with the contrast in the use of the word “flesh.”

The matter comes to a head in two famous sentences.

Writing to Galatians, Paul says bluntly, “Now the works of the flesh is manifest” (Gal.5:19,20,21).

On the other hand, the fourth Gospel declares with equal directness: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

The contrast seems sharp enough.

The flesh is so evil that it produces the ugliest and the worst things of which we can think.

On the other hand, the flesh is so good that it can be inhabited by the Word of God.

It is not too difficult, however, to resolve the problem.

Paul is speaking of the flesh when it takes the bit in its teeth and runs away uncontrolled by any higher power.

So it becomes evil and corrupts even the mind, for it will be observed that some in the above list of fleshly lusts, such as jealousy and wrath, are not physical at all, but represent the action of an evil intelligence.

On the other hand, in the fourth Gospel, the flesh is seen in its true place as responsive to that which is higher than itself and, indeed, as completely dominated by it.

It’s the flesh misused that becomes the instrument of evil.

It is the flesh rightly used which is the instrument of good and of God.

The sentence “the Word became flesh” is the most profound and far-reaching statement ever made about the Incarnation.

It is the clearest declaration that God did indeed enter into human life and that He actually took upon Himself the nature of man.

If we are to understand the mystery of the Incarnation, the first thing we must do is to look backward.

We must go back as far as Creation.

We shall find a clue in the Genesis stories of the beginnings of things and people.

We are told God created man in his own image.

And, after the whole story of Creation — consumating in man the ruler and the controller has been told — we read: “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good” (Gen.1:31).

Clearly enough, the creation stories see the nature of man as good and later the misuse of that nature turns everything to evil.

And all this fits perfectly with the later belief God became man, that the Word was made flesh.

Because man was made in God’s image, man could receive God into his own life.

And when we come to the New Testament, we can see that there was a relation between man’s nature and God which the dark evil of the world had not corrupted.

Otherwise, the Incarnation would have been impossible.

Not only was man originally made for God, but after all the centuries of sinning man’s very nature was always uttering an inarticulate cry for God.

His essential nature was still capable of being responsive to the divine.

Because the flesh was made for the Word, the Word could become flesh.

We must not forget the note struck in the eighth Psalm: “For you have made him but little lower than God and crown him with glory and honour.”

However low a man may sink, this higher life is that for which he was made.

However, he may misuse the flesh, until it seems to become the very symbol of all evil, not for this moral disaster was it made.

The call to man is always a call back to his original dignity.

It is always a call back to the true meaning of his nature.

He was made in the image of God.

And so, when God would save men, He makes their true nature visible through His incarnate life.

If we are to understand the religion of the Incarnation, we must look upward to the nature of God as well as backward to the creation of man.

We must think of the Word which was made flesh, as well as of the flesh which submitted itself to the Word.

It is the quality of a true Word to express the actual mind of the one who speaks it.

So it is the quality of the perfect Word to express with complete finality the character of God.

What God is in eternity, Jesus Christ made real to men in time.

He made it real in the very quality of human life.

God could become man because God had put into man that which is capable of responding to the divine will.

Man can become like God in character because God has already put eternity in his heart.

NarayanMitra is a

chaplain at Thompson

Rivers University