extreme, and the "Humanists" have insisted so much on the essential humanity of Christ,

that they have to obscure or even deny His equal Deity. Neither the Deity nor the

humanity of Jesus Christ can be understood separately.  They must be considered

together. This essential unity is referred to in I John 5: 8, the last clause of which should

be rendered, "and the three are unto the one", viz., unto that unity which obtained

between the humanity and Deity of the Son of God. It is also made very clear in Paul's

epistles. In Rom. 1: 3, for example, we read that the Lord was "made of the seed of

David according to the flesh", while in  Rom. 8: 3  the Apostle safeguards His

sinlessness by saying that He came in "the likeness of sinful flesh". In the same epistle

we find the strongest terms used in connection with His Deity:

Both in Ephesians and in Colossians we meet with references to "His flesh", and "the

body of His flesh", while in Heb. 2: 14 we find that He Who is "God" and "Creator" in

Heb. 1: 8, 10 becomes a partaker of "flesh and blood".

Returning to John's Gospel, we find that there are six references to soma, "body",

each referring to the Lord's physical body (John 2: 21; 19: 31, 38, 40; 20: 12).  In

John 1: 1 where we read that "the Word was God" the verb is eimi, "to be", but in

John 1: 14: "The Word was made flesh", it is ginomai, "to become". The two verbs come

together in John 8: 58, where the Lord says of Himself: "Before Abraham came into

being (ginomai), I, I am (eimi)." In John 1: 1 and 14 we have two modes of existence,

but however much the mode may change, the Person remains. He was just as much the

Word after His birth at Bethlehem as He was "in the beginning".

"and dwelt among us."--The word "dwelt" here is eskenosen from skene, a "tent", or

"tabernacle". The word is allied to the Hebrew shaken, "to dwell as in a tabernacle", and

gives us the expression--often used without recognition of its true meaning--"The

Shekinah glory". Not only does the Apostle intend by the use of this word to indicate

the transient character of this life, in which the Lord for thirty-three years shared (see

II Cor. 5: 1), but he is also referring to the tabernacle in the wilderness as a type of

Christ. When we come to the second chapter of John, we shall find the Lord speaking

also of the Temple as a figure of His body. Here it is the tabernacle. All that the

tabernacle typified, with its mercy-seat, ark, light, shewbread, altar of incense, laver,

brazen altar, and veil, was at length seen in reality in the "Word made flesh". The words

"grace and truth" in verse 17 really signify "true grace" i.e. that which was real and

antitypical, in contrast with the shadows of the law. This, however, we must deal with

more fully when we come to the verses concerned.

The A.V. places in parenthesis the words:

In the original, the reader is at once struck by the sudden vagueness of the words here,

which read literally: