You are listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

In this episode, Dan continues a conversation about the incarnation, Jesus coming to earth in the flesh.

What does it mean for us that Jesus embodied both the divine and human nature during his time on earth?

From a poem by William Butler Yates to the Psalms, Dan walks through the implications of Jesus

dwelling in and among us.

As we consider Advent, I'm inviting us to consider this central passage from John, the first chapter, verse 14.

The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory and the glory of the one and only son, who came from the father

full of grace and truth. As we thought last time of what it means or at least some of the

thoughts related to the word, want to focus more on the category of flesh. I was listening to Jim Gathigan, whom I just adore.

And I couldn't tell you which particular special he was doing and where it was. But he had this

comment about Jesus. And he was saying, you know, isn't it interesting? We only have

paintings of Jesus as a baby or Jesus as an adult male.

We don't have any paintings of Jesus as an adolescent. Jesus with pimples. Jesus with that awkward look of the adolescent as he makes his way into the

beginnings of adulthood. And he was asking, why not? And really, in some ways, this very topic

attempts to address why it is so hard for us to think of Jesus in the flesh. He's in the flesh as a baby,

in the flesh as an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old. We even have a picture of him of Jesus as a 12-year-old

coming from the temple with his parents.

And yet that only one small glimpse into Jesus in the synoptics or in the Gospel of John

lets us know that we're not to be thinking much about that, and yet the reality is there.

Jesus grew immaturity, and that maturity is something that we need to embrace with regard to the larger drama.

Jesus, in the flesh, in some ways, is an intensification of the concept of

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