Understanding the Incarnation
Msgr Peter J. Elliott

Many issues are involved in accurately understanding the key Christian truth, the Incarnation. Our key is the majestic opening to the prologue to Saint John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word." These words echo the first sentence of Genesis "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But John writes not of the creation of the universe but of its salvation through a unique event, the Incarnation, when God became man in Jesus Christ. Unlike the other Gospels that introduce the Incarnation with a human genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth, John chooses to give us a kind of divine genealogy, the "story of God", if you like. He has a specific purpose in mind.
"In the beginning was the Word" immediately calls for some explanation of this mysterious "Word", or logos in Greek. This language opens the mystery of God being in relationship with God: "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John goes on to describe this Word who is always with God in the divine act of creation: "He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made."