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not convinced by an appeal to O.T. Scripture that Jesus was the Christ, or that He was
risen again. He was convinced by the testimony of his own senses.
"Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust
it into My side: and be not faithless but believing" (John 20: 27).
In Nathaniel's case, too, the evidence was personal rather than scriptural. He was
convinced that the Lord was the Son of God and the King of Israel, not by the fulfillment
of O.T. prophecy, but by evidence of a purely personal character--"Because I said unto
thee, I saw thee under the fig tree" (John 1: 50). So here, in the prologue, John says
nothing about the prophecy of Isa. 7: 14 that we find stressed in Matthew, and nothing
about the revelation made by Gabriel to Mary that we find in Luke. He simply makes a
statement of fact: "The Word was made flesh", and follows it by a personal testimony,
"We beheld His glory". As we proceed in our study of the Gospel we trust that we too
will be able to behold His glory, and gladly acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God.
The occurrences of the word "flesh" in relation to Christ in the Synoptic Gospels are
very few indeed. If the words of Matt. 26: 41 and Mark 14: 38: "The flesh is weak"
may be taken to be the Lord's words with reference to Himself and His physical
weakness in the garden of Gethsemane, they constitute the only reference to His "flesh"
found in those two Gospels, while Luke has only one reference, in 24: 29, where the
risen Christ says: "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have." Over against
these three references in the Synoptic Gospels (or one reference only if those cited from
Matthew and Mark are of doubtful application), we have seven references in John's
Gospel, and three in his Epistles. The seven in the Gospel are 4: 14; and 6: 51, 52, 53,
54, 55, 56. The expansion of John 1: 14 in 6: 51, where the Lord says: "The bread
that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" shows the essential
purpose of the incarnation. We have the same thought in Heb. 10: 5: "Sacrifice and
offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me."
The three references in the epistles are I John 4: 2, 3 and II John 7.
These
references are in contexts of great solemnity.
"Hereby know ye the spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is not of God" (I John 4: 2, 3).
"For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist" (II John 7).
John uses two different tenses of the verb "to come" in these two epistles. In the
earlier passage he is speaking of the historic fact, and so the verb is eleluthota, the perfect
participle, meaning "has come". In II John 7, on the other hand, it is not in effect a
question of time, and the present participle, erchomenon, is used. In the first passage it is
a question of the historicity of the incarnation; in the second it is its possibility.
In the very early Church it was not so much the Deity of Christ that was the subject of
attack, but rather His humanity. To-day the pendulum has swung over to the other