=13. Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.= That is, not by inheritance (Luke 3:8); nor by resolution (Rom. 8:5-8); nor by human teaching (1 Cor. 3:6, 7); but by the direct personal influence and contact of the Spirit of God on the heart (Titus 3:5, 6). Thus, John emphasizes the declaration of the preceding verse, that _God gives the power to become the sons of God_, by declaring that Christian character is not the product of either good parentage, a strong will, or a good education, but directly of a divine recreative act. (Gal. 6:15.) The Greek student will observe that the preposition used is _of_ (ἐκ), not _through_ (διά); the writer is speaking of the _origin_ or _source_ of Christian character, not of the _instruments_ by which it is developed. Good parentage, will power, and education, are all _means_ for the development of divine sonship; the original cause, without which a true son of God is never produced, is the creative act of God himself. 14 And the Word[40] was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and[41] we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full[42] of grace and truth. [40] Luke 1:35; 1 Tim. 3:16. [41] 2 Pet. 1:17; 1 John 1:1, 2. [42] Ps. 45:2; Col. 2:3, 9. =14. And the Word.= The self-manifesting God, as described in the first verse.--=Became flesh.= Not _a man_ (ἄνθρωπος) nor _a body_ (σῶμα), but _flesh_ (σάρξ). The word is one whose signification would probably be best rendered to the English reader by the phrase _human nature_. Though occasionally used in the N. T. of the literal and material flesh (Acts 2:31), it almost always indicates man in his corporeal or earthly nature, sometimes signifying the predominance of that over the higher or spiritual nature, sometimes simply signifying this aspect of his nature, without any indication of its corrupt tendencies. Here, then, the declaration is that the Word became human nature; _how_ is not indicated. The language gives no sanction to either of the two principal theories of the incarnation; the first, that Christ _took on_ human nature as something superadded to the divine, so carrying through life a double nature, both divine and human; the second, that he simply entered a human body and became subject to the limitations which it imposed on him. _How the divine became human_ we must learn elsewhere in the N. T., if the N. T. reveals it at all; but the declaration here is explicit that the divine Word became human.--=And tabernacled among us.= _Pitched his tent with us._ As God in the wilderness dwelt for a time in the transitory tabernacle, so the Word dwelt in the flesh, which is elsewhere in the N. T. compared to a tabernacle (2 Cor. 5:1, 4; 2 Pet. 1:13, 14). As God dwelt subsequently in the permanent Temple at Jerusalem, so the Word makes its permanent abode in the soul of the believer, which is the _Temple_, not the Tabernacle of God (ch.