The Word became flesh and lived amongst us.

Yochanan 1:14

And then, in the fullness of time, the Father kept every promise at once: the Word became flesh.

For Elohim so loved the world that He gave His only born Son. Not lent, not sent at arm's length — gave, the way Avraham raised the knife over Yitzhak; except that this time no voice from heaven stopped it, and no ram was found in the thicket, because this time the beloved Son was the Lamb. In a small town under a foreign empire, to a young woman who had known no man, the only born Son of the Father was born — conceived by the Ruach HaKodesh, the Son of the Most High. He was laid in a feeding trough because there was no room, and the first to be told were shepherds in the fields and stargazers from the east. He was a true son of David, born in David's town of Beit Lechem, and the prophets' words began to land one after another. They called His name Yeshua, for He would save His people from their sins, and Immanu'el — Elohim with His people. The Father who had walked in the garden, dwelt in the tent, and filled the house had now come the whole way: not in cloud and fire, but as a child you could hold.

For thirty years He lived hidden, and then He stepped into His work — and the Father would not stay silent about His Son. When Yeshua came up from the water, the heavens were torn open and the Father's own voice came down: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. The whole Story had been the Father pointing forward to this Son; now He pointed straight at Him and said, listen to him. And everything Yeshua did showed what the Father is like. He announced that the Kingdom of Elohim had come near. He healed the sick and opened blind eyes and cleansed the outcast with a touch. He drove out demons and stilled storms with a word — the same kind of word that once spoke the light. He welcomed the people everyone else discarded — tax collectors, the shamed, lepers, children, foreigners — and He forgave sins, which only Elohim can do. He told stories that turned the world upside down: the last shall be first, the lost sheep is hunted down, the wandering son is met on the road by a father who runs. Whoever had seen Him had seen the Father. He did not abolish the Torah and the Prophets; He said He had come to fulfil them, and in Him every shadow found its substance. He is the Lamb the altars pointed to, the Priest who needs no sacrifice for Himself, the King David's son was promised to be, the Prophet greater than Moshe, the true Temple where Elohim and humanity meet.

The crowds loved Him and the powerful feared Him, and in the end they conspired to kill Him. He knew, and He walked towards it on purpose, because it was for this that the Father had given Him and to this that He had given Himself. On the night of Pesach He took the bread and the cup and told His friends that this was His body and His blood, given for them — the Lamb explaining His own death before it happened. He was betrayed by one of His own, abandoned, falsely tried, and handed over to be crucified. On the cross the deepest pattern of the whole Story came to its point: the substitute, dying in the place of the guilty; the blood on the doorposts of the world; the curse of the broken garden borne in His own body. What Avraham was spared, the Father was not — He gave up His only born Son, and the Son gave up Himself, and between them they paid what you could never pay. Yeshua cried out that it was finished, and gave up His spirit, and at that moment the curtain of the Temple — the one that had kept the people out of the holiest place since the wilderness — tore in two from top to bottom. The way to the Father was open.

They buried Him, and for one long Shabbat the Story held its breath. And then, on the first day of the week, the tomb was empty. He had risen — not a ghost, not a memory, but Yeshua alive, the same wounds in His hands, eating with His friends, more solid than death. The serpent's head was crushed; the promise made at the garden gate was kept. Death, the great intruder since the Fall, had been beaten on its own ground, and Yeshua walked out the far side of it as the firstfruits of a whole new creation. And the Father set His seal on it all, raising Him, exalting Him, and giving Him the name above every name — so that at the name of Yeshua every knee would bow, to the glory of Elohim the Father.

Everything before this had been leaning towards it; everything after flows from it. This is the centre of the Story and the centre of the world — the hinge on which Bereshit turns towards New Creation. The Father gave, and the Son was given; the Maker became one of the made, took the death the made had earned, and rose to share His own unending life. If you remember nothing else as you read, remember this: the whole of Scripture is the road to this hill and the road away from this empty tomb, and the One the Father is pointing you to, standing alive at the centre of it all, is His only born Son. His name is Yeshua.