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Bible Study Guides – The Word Became Flesh

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April 21, 2013 – April 27, 2013

Key Text

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” John 1:14.

Study Help: The Desire of Ages, 19–26; “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, 903–905.

Introduction

“Jesus was the Commander of heaven, one equal with God, and yet He condescended to lay aside His kingly crown, His royal robe, and clothed His divinity with humanity.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, 1130, 1131.

1 THE ETERNAL WORD

  • How does Scripture confirm the eternal existence of Christ? Micah 5:2; John 8:58; 17:5.

Note: “If Christ made all things, He existed before all things. The words spoken in regard to this are so decisive that no one need be left in doubt. Christ was God essentially, and in the highest sense. He was with God from all eternity. God over all, blessed forevermore.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, 1126.

“In speaking of His pre-existence, Christ carries the mind back through dateless ages. He assures us that there never was a time when He was not in close fellowship with the eternal God.” The Signs of the Times, August 29, 1900.

  • Besides the creation, what other important work has Christ accomplished? Isaiah 43:1; John 1:29.

Note: “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. He gave His precious, innocent life to save guilty human beings from eternal ruin, that through faith in Him they might stand guiltless before the throne of God.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, 914.

2 DIVINITY AND HUMANITY COMBINED

  • What should we understand about the divinity of Christ even after His incarnation? Isaiah 9:6; Matthew 1:22, 23; Philippians 2:5–11.

Note: “Although Christ’s divine glory was for a time veiled and eclipsed by His assuming humanity, yet He did not cease to be God when He became man. The human did not take the place of the divine, nor the divine of the human. This is the mystery of godliness. The two expressions ‘human’ and ‘divine’ were, in Christ, closely and inseparably one, and yet they had a distinct individuality. Though Christ humbled Himself to become man, the Godhead was still His own. …

“Equal with the Father, honored and adored by the angels, in our behalf Christ humbled Himself, and came to this earth to live a life of lowliness and poverty—to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet the stamp of divinity was upon His humanity.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, 1129.

  • What fact should we bear in mind concerning the human nature of Christ? I Peter 2:22; John 14:30, last part.

Note: “Be careful, exceedingly careful as to how you dwell upon the human nature of Christ. Do not set Him before the people as a man with the propensities of sin. He is the second Adam. The first Adam was created a pure, sinless being, without a taint of sin upon him; he was in the image of God. He could fall, and he did fall through transgressing. Because of sin his posterity was born with inherent propensities of disobedience. But Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. He took upon Himself human nature, and was tempted in all points as human nature is tempted. He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity. …

“Never, in any way, leave the slightest impression upon human minds that a taint of, or inclination to, corruption rested upon Christ, or that He in any way yielded to corruption. He was tempted in all points like as man is tempted, yet He is called ‘that holy thing’ (Luke 1:35). It is a mystery that is left unexplained to mortals that Christ could be tempted in all points like as we are, and yet be without sin. The incarnation of Christ has ever been, and will ever remain a mystery.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, 1128, 1129.

3 A NEW RELATIONSHIP

  • What was the purpose for which divinity was united to humanity? John 1:14; 14:7–10.

Note: “The Saviour was deeply anxious for His disciples to understand for what purpose His divinity was united to humanity. He came to the world to display the glory of God, that man might be uplifted by its restoring power. God was manifested in Him that He might be manifested in them. Jesus revealed no qualities, and exercised no powers, that men may not have through faith in Him. His perfect humanity is that which all His followers may possess, if they will be in subjection to God as He was.” The Desire of Ages, 664.

  • Into what new relationship do we enter by receiving the provisions brought by the mystery of godliness (I Timothy 3:16)? John 1:12, 13.

Note: “Divinity and humanity were mysteriously combined, and man and God became one. It is in this union that we find the hope of our fallen race.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, 1130.

  • What words of Christ should be echoed in our experience? John 8:29.

Note: “As Jesus was in human nature, so God means His followers to be. In His strength we are to live the life of purity and nobility which the Saviour lived.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 289.

“Not by outward display, not by worldly patronage, is the kingdom of Christ established, but by the implanting of Christ’s nature in humanity through the work of the Holy Spirit. ‘As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’ (John 1:12, 13). Here is the only power that can work for the uplifting of humanity. And the human agency for the accomplishment of this work is the teaching and preaching of the Word of God.” Evangelism, 531.

4 BLESSINGS RECEIVED

  • Once the new relationship becomes established, how is God manifested in us? John 14:15–18, 21, 23; I John 4:12.

Note: “Man is allotted a part in this great struggle for everlasting life; he must respond to the working of the Holy Spirit.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 65.

  • What promise belongs to us as we accept Christ, with the blessings derived from His incarnation? Hebrews 2:16–18; 5:2; Philippians 4:13.

Note: “Christ’s humanity was united with divinity, and in this strength He would bear all the temptations that Satan could bring against Him, and yet keep His soul untainted by sin. And this power to overcome He would give to every son and daughter of Adam who would accept by faith the righteous attributes of His character.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, 927.

“Christ came to give to the world an example of what perfect humanity might be when united with divinity. He presented to the world a new phase of greatness in His exhibition of mercy, compassion, and love. He gave to men a new interpretation of God. As head of humanity, He taught men lessons in the science of divine government, whereby He revealed the righteousness of the reconciliation of mercy and justice. The reconciliation of mercy and justice did not involve any compromise with sin, or ignore any claim of justice; but by giving to each divine attribute its ordained place, mercy could be exercised in the punishment of sinful, impenitent man without destroying its clemency or forfeiting its compassionate character, and justice could be exercised in forgiving the repenting transgressor without violating its integrity.” Selected Messages, Book 1, 260, 261.

“Let the self-distrustful, whose lack of self-reliance leads them to shrink from care and responsibility, be taught reliance upon God. Thus many a one who otherwise would be but a cipher in the world, perhaps only a helpless burden, will be able to say with the apostle Paul, ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’ (Philippians 4:13).” Education, 256.

“Christ has given His Spirit as a divine power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil, and to impress His own character upon His church.” The Desire of Ages, 671.

5 A PATTERN BEFORE US

  • How, and for what purpose, should we know Christ better and better? John 5:39.

Note: “No man, woman, or youth can attain to Christian perfection and neglect the study of the word of God. By carefully and closely searching His word we shall obey the injunction of Christ, ‘Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me’ (John 5:39). This search enables the student to observe closely the divine Model, for they testify of Christ. The Pattern must be inspected often and closely in order to imitate it. As one becomes acquainted with the history of the Redeemer, he discovers in himself defects of character; his unlikeness to Christ is so great that he sees he cannot be a follower without a very great change in his life. Still he studies, with a desire to be like his great Exemplar; he catches the looks, the spirit, of his beloved Master; by beholding he becomes changed.” Counsels on Sabbath School Work, 17.

  • What should we experience as a result of our communion with Christ? Romans 12:2. What must we do if we actually want Christ to be our Saviour? Revelation 3:20.

Note: “Just as a good tree will bear good fruit, so will the tree that is actually planted in the Lord’s garden produce good fruit unto eternal life. Besetting sins are overcome; evil thoughts are not allowed in the mind; evil habits are purged from the soul temple. The tendencies which have been biased in a wrong direction are turned in a right direction. Wrong dispositions and feelings are changed, new principles of action supplied, and there is a new standard of character. Holy tempers and sanctified emotions are now the fruit borne upon the Christian tree. An entire transformation has taken place.” “Ellen G. White Comments,” The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 6, 1080.

PERSONAL REVIEW QUESTIONS

1 What is revealed about the preexistence of Christ?

2 What should we realize about the nature of Christ after His incarnation?

3 On what condition can we reap the benefits of His incarnation?

4 Where is the merging of divinity with humanity to be seen today?

5 How are we to become transformed?

© 2007 Reformation Herald Publishing Association, Roanoke, Virginia. Reprinted by permission.

The Mystery of the Three Clocks

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People are born with a remarkable alarm clock in their head. Most people find it difficult to measure the passage of time with a degree of accuracy while awake but when they are asleep it is a different matter.

A great deal of research has been done on the subject of sleep and for many years it was assumed that there was a sleep center located in the brain; a mechanism that puts us to sleep when we need rest. But years of the most painstaking research, has failed to uncover the slightest trace of such a mechanism.

Scientists, in search of finding a sleep center, instead found an arousal center, an awakening mechanism located in the hypothalamus, which is deep in the brain at the top of the brain stem. This leads to the rather startling conclusion that man’s normal state is to be asleep and he is only awake when the alarm clock in his head is ringing. To appreciate this function of the human brain it is helpful to understand just a bit about the fantastically complicated mechanism inside our head.

The human brain is essentially an electrical device. When a piece of electrical equipment is operating, a magnetic or electrical field surrounds it. You can’t see it, or feel it, or hear it, but it is there. A simple coil of wire connected to an amplifier can pick up and amplify the invisible field surrounding the motor.

Science has devised a way to detect and record the delicate impulses of the brain by cementing tiny electrodes to the scalp to record brain activity while asleep. The results of these experiments show that our alarm system is connected to our various senses. Sound from our ears can awaken us as well as light from our eyes and also our other senses. We can be awakened by hunger or pain.

We have become so accustomed to the almost miraculous things accomplished in the human body that nothing seems to surprise us anymore and we just expect great performance from such wonderful beings as we modestly admit we are. Any such attitude we may have had while doing these experiments was dispelled recently when discovering some other living alarm clocks.

Cameramen set up their cameras outside the town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. As soon as the sun went down the whole countryside started to crawl with strange looking insects. Residents who had lived in the area for many years could not recall any other such visitation.

They all seemed to be climbing upward and soon the clumsy looking insects stopped. Each one seemed to heed some mysterious signal that they had gone far enough. With their grotesque claws they searched for a spot where a firm grip may be obtained, sometimes on the bark of the tree, sometimes on the outermost leaves. Here a mysterious and wonderful thing happened. While this is the most common phenomena in all of nature, it is surprising how few people have actually witnessed the spectacular and awe inspiring event—the drama of insect metamorphosis, the transformation of an earth bound nymph to a beautiful free-flying adult insect.

The soft, moist, pale body of the adult insect frees itself from the dead adolescent shroud. In spite of a beautiful creamy white coloring and large red eyes and jet-black markings on its shoulders, the adult cicada presents quite a bedraggled appearance. Inflation of the wings will change all of this. As they are pumped up, the wings change from useless wrinkled pads to beautiful transparent air-foils capable of flight. One cannot but marvel at the beautiful construction of these wings; a framework of veins for strength, a fragile membrane to provide ample lift for a heavy bodied insect.

Within a few hours the ghostly whiteness of the new adults is changed to a glossy, brownish black. Simultaneously, the soft outer shell hardens to form a strong protective exoskeleton. All of this has happened throughout the course of a single night starting with a nymph climbing a tree and now we have a mature insect outfitted with armor plate, camouflage and wings ready for the serious business of life.

The new day dawns and the hoards of insects struggling up the tree have disappeared, but by mid-morning a new sound breaks the contented buzz of the spring woods, the unique sound of the cicada. What is mystifying is how a little insect can make such a loud noise. Only the male makes the sound. The incessant noise and severed branches on the ground are always associated with the cicada. The male makes the noise but when it comes to the fallen branches, mama cicada is the culprit. The branches of the trees are literally covered with punctures made by her ovipositor or egg placer. The ovipositor is driven into the branch as though the wood was putty and eggs are pumped through the hollow center into the protective fibers of the wood. Removing the outer layer of the wood reveals the cicada eggs laid neatly in double rows. After the female deposits 200 to 600 eggs in this way her life work is complete and she dies.

It doesn’t seem possible that a delicate insect like this, less than an inch in length, could dig deeply into the wood with such ease but it has a secret weapon that makes it possible. The tapered ends of the ovipositor are equipped with saw teeth and, with alternating motions, it literally saws its way into the woody fibers. The consuming zeal with which she goes about her task suggests that this is her ultimate purpose in life.

Within a few weeks the noisy honeymoon is over, life functions have been faithfully completed and one by one the adult cicadas fall to the ground as their flame of life flickers and goes out. As suddenly as they appeared, they depart. The future of the species is all wrapped up in those tiny eggs hidden in the branches of the trees. After six or seven weeks there is a stirring of activity when the newly hatched nymph shakes off the egg shell, drops to the ground and buries into the earth there to remain for seventeen long years.

Over two hundred years of scientific research has revealed that the cicada is the Methuselah of the insect world, living longer than any other insect. The cicada nymph lives alone in an underground passage several feet below the surface of the earth. As the seventeenth year of its existence draws to a close the cicada nymph tunnels up and stops just one quarter of an inch from the surface, there to wait a mysterious inner prompting. As soon as the sun goes down on the appointed day, millions of cicada alarm clocks go off all over the eastern states of the United States. Responding to the signal the cicadas push their way from their dark prison. Exactly seventeen years ago parents of these cicadas were enacting this same role at this very spot.

The time keeping ability of the cicada makes man’s mental alarm clock pretty rusty. We felt we might be on the trail of a significant truth so the investigation was carried one step further. In the field of chemistry some chemical reactions take place instantaneously. Others take time to react. With an accurate knowledge of the conditions involved it is possible to predict not only what will happen when certain chemicals are mixed, but exactly when it will happen.

How can we explain the marvel of these clocks? How do you explain the alarm clock in the human brain? Some believe man is a highly developed creature with a highly developed intelligence but how about the cicada. He is probably smart too. How about the chemicals; are they smart? Obviously that cannot be the answer. As we go from the chemicals through the cicada to man, we are ascending a scale of intelligence. As we ascend the scale of creature intelligence we also descend another scale, that of accuracy and dependability.

Man’s mental clock is much less reliable than the cicadas and even the cicada can’t match the chemicals. The chemicals are completely dependable because they are completely subject to God’s law. Did you ever stop to think what this world would be like if the chemicals were not dependable? I’d hate to walk into a chemistry laboratory and try to perform an experiment if chemical behavior was no more predictable than human behavior. You could not take a drink of water or draw a breath of air without any safety or certainty. We are fortunate indeed that chemicals obey the law of God but how about man? The submission of the chemicals to the law of God is a blind involuntary thing. Man on the other hand has a mind, a will and a God given power of choice. He can submit his will to the will of God or he can choose to defy God and go his own way and defy His laws. But how smart is it for a man to disobey the God who created him? Is it a mark of intelligence? Some seem to feel it is.

In a criminal society composed of those who defy human law, disobedience of the law is sometimes considered a mark of distinction and obedience a sign of weakness. Today there is a segment of intellectual society that seems to feel that obedience to God’s moral and spiritual law is a sign of weakness and that simple faith and humble submission to His will is somehow intellectually degrading. Yet down through the centuries there comes the quiet voice of One who said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent me.” John 6:38.

In this age when some have almost deified the human intellect there are those who say I will trust nothing but myself, I will follow my own reasoning regardless of where it leads me and again that quiet voice says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Proverbs 14:12.

Today, man is frantically searching for a solution to his problem, but isn’t the first step a recognition of what the problem really is? Isn’t the problem in the things that we have been considering? Unlike the chemicals, man has a will of his own. He can choose to obey God’s law or defy it. Take two liquids, one water and the other deadly poison. I have the power of choice; I can drink the water or the poison, but right here my power of choice stops. I cannot choose the result. Laws that are immutable and absolute fix the result.

We have another choice, you and I. We can choose to believe God and obey Him or we can go our own way in unbelief, but here again we cannot choose the result, which is fixed by the eternal law of God that says, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” John 3:36.

A Moody Institute of Science Presentation, Moody Publishers, Chicago, Illinois.