Advent continues with a truth that feels both intimate and unsettling: God didn’t just arrive on earth, He moved in. Not as a distant observer, not as a temporary visitor, but as a neighbor. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
This week in Divinity in Dust, Pastor Jason invited us to consider what it actually means that God chose proximity over distance and presence over abstraction.
Using the image of someone new moving into a neighborhood, Pastor Jason framed the incarnation as a moment of holy interruption. When someone moves in next door, everything changes. You notice. You observe. You wonder who they are and what they’re like. John’s announcement in his Gospel is exactly that kind of moment, except on a cosmic scale.
God doesn’t just visit, He dwells
Pastor Jason emphasized that when John says the Word “dwelt” among us, he is making a deliberate theological claim. The Greek word John uses is σκηνόω (skēnóō), meaning to dwell in tents or to tabernacle.
This language intentionally echoes the Old Testament, where God’s presence filled the tabernacle during Israel’s wilderness journey. Just as God once made His dwelling among His people in a tent, He now does so in flesh.
Rodger Fredrikson explains it this way: God literally dwelt among His people just as He did when His glory filled the tabernacle in the wilderness. The Old Testament story wasn’t abandoned; it was fulfilled.
Pastor Jason took us to Exodus 40, where the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle so fully that Moses could not even enter. This is typology at work, showing the connective tissue between the Testaments. What God did symbolically then, He does personally now.
In Jesus, God has now come to dwell among His people as the living Word who created all things.
Fredrikson concludes with a staggering statement Pastor Jason highlighted:
“The final tabernacle, the ultimate place of God’s dwelling, became the flesh of Jesus. And here His glory is fulfilled.”
The God who once revealed Himself in cloud and fire now reveals Himself in a carpenter from Nazareth.
God has spoken through His Son
Pastor Jason pointed us to Hebrews 1, where we’re told that God, who once spoke through prophets in many ways, has now spoken definitively through His Son. Jesus is not simply delivering God’s message. He is the message.
Christ is the walking, dwelling Word of God.
This makes the incarnation not just an Advent theme but a necessity for Christian faith itself. Without it, we lose God’s self-revelation.
The incarnation as the boundary of true faith
Quoting theologian Gerald Borchert, Pastor Jason underscored a weighty truth:
The incarnation is one of the defining boundary doctrines of Christianity.
According to Borchert, confession of Jesus Christ coming in the flesh is the test for discerning whether the Spirit of God is present. Pastor Jason anchored this claim in 1 John 4, where Scripture states plainly that denying the incarnation is the spirit of antichrist.
This led to a starred conclusion in the notes:
The incarnation is a determining truth regarding authentic faith in Christ.
Because of this, the incarnation should shape not just how we think during Advent, but how we walk, speak, feel, and engage throughout the season.
Three truths John announces when he says “He dwelt among us”
1. The incarnation declares the heart and mind of God
John 1:18 and John 14 make something clear: to see Jesus is to see the Father. Pastor Jason reminded us that Jesus does not merely point to God. He reveals Him.
Gerald Borchert writes that the divine characteristics once attributed only to God in the Old Testament are now present in the incarnate Word. Warren Wiersbe summarized it simply: just as our words reveal our hearts, Jesus reveals God’s heart and mind.
Christ is God made knowable.
2. The incarnation declares the authority of God
Pastor Jason shifted our attention to Matthew 28, where Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Him.
This reframes how we understand Jesus’ actions. His works were not occasional miracles breaking natural laws; they were demonstrations of rightful authority. He didn’t just heal bodies. He made them. He didn’t just speak truth. He is truth.
The incarnation confronts our tendency to shrink Jesus into something manageable. God’s presence is His rebuttal to our small thoughts.
Rodger Fredrikson put it this way:
“In this act of incarnation, eternity and time, the divine and the human, salvation and creation, are reconciled.”
There is no longer a divide between sacred and secular. God has claimed all of life as His own.
3. The incarnation declares the glory of God
Pastor Jason closed with John 2, where Jesus turns water into wine at Cana. John tells us this was the first sign where Jesus revealed His glory.
Jesus is not presenting God. He is God present.
In the Old Testament, God’s glory was the visible manifestation of His excellence. In Jesus, that glory is no longer confined to a place but embodied in a person.
Matt Carter explains that when Jesus came to dwell with humanity, God’s glory was seen in its fullness. God’s faithfulness and grace, once experienced in fragments, now stand fully revealed in Christ.
If you want to see the greatest demonstration of God’s grace and truth, you don’t look to a structure, a symbol, or a story. You look to Jesus.
Why this matters
God didn’t shout from heaven.
He didn’t remain distant.
He moved into the neighborhood.
Christmas is not the story of God visiting humanity.
It is the story of God dwelling with us.
Divinity in dust.
Glory in flesh.
God with us.
