Yesterday morning (Wednesday) I was responsible for leading devotions for the group taking part in the Window on Wycliffe (WOW) course. We were looking at God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ and this being a translation of who God is into the world.

The summary of what I did and say goes as follows…

Activity

Taking Peter as an example (Peter is one of the leaders on the course but it could be anyone). Give a few words – in English – that describe who Peter is.

Now let’s translate these into Dutch (there are a number of people on this course from the Netherlands so it seemed to make sense, but the same principle could be applied to any language). What happens?

Some words have a direct, literal translation, but other words are more complex and there is no direct translation. Instead you have to use different words, phrases and examples to express what exists as one word in English.

Application

When you go away from the course and talk to your friends about Peter you can do this in any language. Peter stays the same regardless of the language used. There may well be some words in English that are better at describing Peter than there are in Dutch, but the reverse may also be possible. The good thing is that an accurate representation of Peter is possible in both languages, he remains the same person.

Now, if you’ve told your friends about Peter they may want to get to know him better, so, instead of just using single words to describe him you may tell a story about him that illustrates who he is. In English and in Dutch you will use different words to tell the same story, but the person will remain the same and the characteristics displayed will be the same.

With all this talk of Peter it’s no wonder your friends are really enthused about him, so they want to meet him. You can now bring Peter to your friends and show him to them. They can meet the real Peter.

Now read John 1:1-18

John 1

Prologue: Christ, the Eternal Word

¹ In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
² He existed in the beginning with God.
³ God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
⁴ The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
⁵ The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.

⁶ God sent a man, John the Baptist, ⁷ to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. ⁸ John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. ⁹ The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁰ He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. ¹¹ He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. ¹² But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. ¹³ They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

¹⁴ So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

¹⁵ John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’”

¹⁶ From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

From Bible Gateway.com

This is exactly what God did through Jesus Christ. He revealed himself to us through Jesus.

Andrew Walls in his book The Missionary Movement in Christian History says,

Incarnation is translation. When God in Christ became man, Divinity was translated into humaity, as though humanity were a receptor language.

Walls, A., 1996, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Orbis Books: New York, p27

In what ways does Jesus translate God into human?

Hebrews 1:1-4 says,

Hebrews 1

Jesus Christ Is God’s Son

¹ Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. ² And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. ³ The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. ⁴ This shows that the Son is far greater than the angels, just as the name God gave him is greater than their names.

From Bible Gateway.com

Christ’s incarnation shows us what God is like. Not by giving us a good description in words that we need to imagine for ourselves, but by God in human form and ‘making his home among us’. Jesus stepped into human history, in a specific location and at a specific time and existed under the specific conditions of the culture of that time and place.

Do you think Jesus would have looked different and talked differently if he’d lived somewhere in Europe or the Far East instead of being born in Bethlehem? Do you think his core characteristics would have been the same as they were with him growing up in Galilee? I think that the core of who Jesus is would have been the same where ever he was born, what would have changed is the language he used, the clothes that he wore and the cultural events that he contributed to.

This all means that the message of the Bible becomes about Jesus and not about the words used to describe him.

My personal reflection

Reading through the first few chapters of the book of Acts I’ve had to reflect on what is meant by the apostles when they talk about preaching Christ. Suddenly preaching Christ isn’t about the vocabulary used, it’s about using the best words to descibe God’s son most accurately.