The Word is the communication of the Father. He is the rational force of Fatherly fulsomeness overflowing in infinite goodness. That Word was no impersonal force but a full person, alongside the Father at the principial moment of all things. The Word was both with God and was God. Was and with. What God was, the Word was. The Word was God, and the Word was with God. Coequal, indistinguishable, yet distinct.
John declares the mystery of the Trinity in the fewest words possible. Could more be stated with less? These two verses, John 1:1–2, invite us to contemplation and meditation. We must repeat these statements until they are etched on our minds, then ponder them, read about them, and respond to them by worshiping the incomparable God these words describe.
John has chosen to use a philosophically loaded term, logos, in these references to the “Word.” John ministered in Ephesus, so his audience probably would have been at least vaguely familiar with the use of the term in Greek philosophical discussion. There were probably also some ethnic Jews in John’s audience who might have been aware of the use of “word” (Aramaic memra) in various Jewish traditions. Two factors, however, are most significant for understanding what John meant when he chose to use logos, “the Word,” as a way of referring to Jesus: first, the use of “word” in the OT; and second, the way John fills out the meaning of the term through his descriptions of Jesus in this Gospel. In other words, if we want to understand what John means by referring to Jesus as “the Word,” we should not allow our thoughts to be controlled by Greek philosophy or Jewish tradition but by the OT and John’s own Gospel.
John has invoked the creation account in Genesis 1 with the opening phrase of John 1:1, so when he continues in verse 3 with the statement, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made,” it would seem that he has in mind the way God spoke creation into existence in Genesis 1. John seems to indicate that God created by speaking, and that Jesus was the Word through whom God made the world.
When John writes that “without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3b), he asserts that God the Father through the Son is responsible for all that is. Nothing has slithered into the world apart from the sovereign purpose of the world’s Creator (cf. Isa. 45:7). John asserts without equivocation or qualification: all was made through Jesus; without Jesus nothing was made.
The Word was in the beginning (John 1:1–2). Through the Word the Father created (v. 3). And the power of animation that makes created things alive was in the Word, as John puts it in verse 4: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Life was in Jesus. That life is the source of any light leading to any perception by any man. John here asserts that creation and life came from God’s direct activity in Christ. This excludes the possibility of a random process of natural selection in which life simply happened. There can be no more rapprochement between belief that God created the world and belief in evolution than there could be between Churchill and Hitler, fidelity and adultery, or ultimate significance and morose nihilism.
God created through the Son, without whom nothing could exist (v. 3). Life was in the Son, and light comes from this life (v. 4). The origin of light (“Let there be light”) is the life force pulsating in the very Word of God, and darkness will neither overcome nor comprehend that Light. John writes in verse 5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The term rendered overcome could just as well be rendered “comprehended” (NASB) or “understood” (NIV 1984). The term bears both meanings, and John likely employs it as a double entendre: the darkness will not prevail over Jesus, and even if the forces of darkness kill him, he will rise. Life is in him. Nor can people in darkness understand that light unless they are born of God (1:13). Darkness can no more overcome the light than creation could overcome its Creator. And those who flee from the light to hide their evil in darkness (cf. 3:20) need the words of spirit and life (6:63) to give them the ability to see and enter the kingdom (3:3, 5).
1:6–15 The Baptist, the Light, the Birth. As noted above, 1:1–18 is structured chiastically. The structure of 1:6–15 can be simplified and summarized in these few words:
- 1:6–8: Testimony
- 1:9: Light
- 1:10–11: Rejection
- 1:12–13: Reception
- 1:14: Glory
- 1:15: Testimony
The way John the Evangelist describes John the Baptist is significant for both the Evangelist’s self-understanding (cf. 20:31) and that of his audience. John does not present the last old covenant prophet as an end in himself; rather, the man named John, “sent from God” (1:6), “came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him” (v. 7). John the Baptist came as one who testifies. What he testified to was the Light, the light that is the light of men (v. 4), which the darkness will neither comprehend nor overcome (v. 5).
John the Evangelist probably intends to present John the Baptist as heralding the fulfillment of passages such as Isaiah 8:20–9:2. There, “gloom of anguish” and “thick darkness” (Isa. 8:22) symbolize the curse of the covenant and exile from the land, while “dawn” (Isa. 8:20), making “glorious the way of the sea” (Isa. 9:1), and “great light” (Isa. 9:2) all symbolize what God will do for his people at the new exodus and return from exile. The light to which the Baptist testifies, then, is the hope of Israel for the glorious eschatological restoration God promised his people through the prophets. John bears witness to the light—the way Jesus will bring the dawn of salvation—“that all might believe through him” (John 1:7). John bears witness to the fulfillment of the OT promises in Jesus, and the response he seeks from his testimony is belief—faith.
Lest anyone be distracted by the extraordinary stature of the prophet sent from God, or the God-given clarity and power in which he ministers, John says that the Baptist relates to Jesus the way the moon relates to the sun: “He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light” (v. 8). The renewal of prophecy in John’s ministry, apparently dormant since Malachi, is not the point. The point is the light to whom the prophet points: Jesus.
We must understand John 1:9, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world,” in near and broad context. In the near context, Jesus is clearly the true light (1:4–5, 7). In the broad context, we see the sense in which Jesus “gives light to everyone” from 3:19–21 and other passages such as 8:12, where Jesus asserts that he himself is the “light of the world.”
In 3:19–20 we read that some people responded to the light by loving the darkness and fleeing from the light. In chapter 8, after Jesus declares himself the “light of the world” (8:12), the Pharisees immediately object that his testimony to himself is not true (8:13). These instances show that the use of the verb rendered “gives light” in 1:9 is closer to the use of the same verb in Revelation 18:1 than to its use in Ephesians 1:18. In Ephesians 1:18, when Paul speaks of the eyes of the hearts of believers having been enlightened, the metaphorical enlightening of the eyes of the hearts is related to spiritual insight and ability to believe. By contrast, in Revelation 18:1 the earth is enlightened in the sense that it is made bright by the angel who descends from heaven. Those who flee from the light in John 3:20 and accuse Jesus of false testimony in 8:13 have not had the eyes of their hearts enlightened. Rather, the light has shone on them, exposing them, and they respond by hating the light.
I contend, therefore, that in the context of John’s Gospel, 1:9 does not support the notion of prevenient grace, as though by his coming Jesus has given light to everyone in the sense of somehow lifting them out of deadness in sin to have the opportunity to believe. John explains what does that in verse 13—not the coming of Jesus to give prevenient-grace-light to all, but the new birth. What separates those who receive Jesus from those who reject him is the new birth (cf. vv. 10–13).
John 1:10 joins with 1:9 to stand against the idea that Jesus by his coming wrought some kind of prevenient-grace change on all people. John puts into words the shocking irony that the Light of the World, the true light that gives light to all (v. 9), the light that is the life of men (v. 4), the light that the darkness cannot overcome (v. 5), “was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (v. 10). The world here has not been lifted out of deadness in trespasses and sins to perceive reality. Rather, the world is so darkened within itself that it does not recognize the light, even though the world was made by that very light!
Lest anyone think this darkened condition applies only to the Gentile world, John adds in verse 11, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” The Jewish people are not exempt from deadness in trespass and sin. The Jewish people, though hoping for the Messiah, did not receive Jesus (cf. Acts 13:27). One of the proofs of John’s skill in writing this Gospel—to say nothing of God’s skill in crafting the story John retells—is the ability to make this convincing. We never recoil from the idea that the Jewish people would reject the one for whom they had hoped so long. John tells what happened in such a way that it rings true to life.
In the chiastic structure proposed for this passage, verses 10–11 and 12–13 stand at the center of the chiasm. John seems to be indicating hereby that everything depends on how one responds to Jesus.
“The world did not know him” (v. 10), the Jewish people as a whole did not accept him (v. 11), but some did receive him. John explains, “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (v. 12). John here explains that those who “receive” Jesus are those who “believed in his name.” In context, believing in Jesus’ name (v. 12) will entail believing the testimony of the Baptist (v. 7), and believing the Baptist means believing Jesus has brought to pass what was prophesied in the OT (vv. 6–8).
Believing and receiving make one a child of God, and in verse 13 the concept of being a “[child] of God” (v. 12) is elaborated upon through the concept of being “born . . . of God.” In verse 14 Jesus will be presented as the “only begotten from the Father” (AT), as he is “begotten” of God in a way distinct from all others who are “born of God.”
Why would John speak in verse 12 of the “right to become children of God”? God chose Israel and declared to Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son” (Ex. 4:22). John has just related how the people of Israel did not receive Jesus (John 1:11), and now he relates that those who do receive Jesus are given the right to stand where Israel should have stood: as God’s children.
These new children of God, John explains in verse 13, “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Not being born of blood probably relates to how the Israelites were constituted God’s people under the old covenant: by genealogical descent from Abraham. Under the old covenant, the people of God were born of blood—God’s people were a physical nation descending from Abraham through Isaac. Not so in the new covenant. The second phrase in verse 13, “nor of the will of the flesh,” seems aimed at human desire, perhaps encompassing base instincts and passions with the term “flesh” (same term used, however, in verse 14, “the Word became flesh”). The third phrase in verse 13, “nor of the will of man,” may direct things away from flesh to other, perhaps more rational, expressions of human desire. In any case, John presents a twofold negation of the idea that people are born into God’s family because of human choice, whether by instinct or reason. These three clauses state that people are born into the family of God and given the right to be children of God not because of who their parents are, any desire they felt, or any choice they made. How, then, do these people experience this birth? The last words of verse 13 state that those who receive Jesus, who believe in his name, are born “of God.”
The logic of these statements seems to indicate that the birth of God these people have experienced happened prior to their reception of and belief in Jesus. If the choice to believe in Jesus resulted in the birth, it would be difficult to see how John could say that they “were born” neither “of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man” (v. 13). From other statements in John’s Gospel (cf. 3:3, 5; 6:63), it appears that this birth of God gives people a new ability to perceive what God is doing in Jesus. This new ability to perceive reality naturally results in faith, because Jesus is convincing.
Only now, at 1:14, is it specified that the Word is Jesus, as John writes, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” In verse 1 John had articulated the divinity and eternality of the Word, as well as his distinguishability from the Father, and now he communicates the profundity of the incarnation. The Word became flesh. God became man. Jesus did not cease to be the Word when he became flesh. The phrase “dwelt among us” could just as well be rendered “tabernacled among us.” John uses the cognate verb for the noun used in Greek translations of the OT to refer to the tabernacle, thus recalling the way God dwelt in the tabernacle in the midst of the people of Israel, and this is the first of a number of ways John will communicate how Jesus fulfills the temple and its ministry.
In verse 14, John writes of himself and others who were born of God, received Jesus, and believed in his name: “We have seen his glory.” There seems to be a connection between Jesus as the light (vv. 4–5) and display of his glory (v. 14), bolstered by how verse 14 balances verse 9 in the chiastic structure of this passage. Those who are born of God are enabled to see the work of God in Christ (cf. 3:3), so rather than flee the light they perceive it as glorious (1:14; 2:11; 3:21).
John describes the glory further in verse 14: “glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (AT). The phrase “only begotten” translates the Greek μονογενης (rendered in the ESV as “only Son”). I render the phrase this way because of the immediate context and the way John uses this term to distinguish Jesus from the rest of the children begotten of God. John has just referred to those “born [egennēthēsan] . . . of God” in verse 13, and now, in verse 14, he refers to Jesus as the “only begotten [monogenous] from the Father” (AT). Similarly, in 1 John 4:7 John asserts, “Whoever loves has been born [gegennētai] of God,” and then in 4:9, “God sent his only begotten [monogenē] Son into the world” (AT). Using different terminology for the same concepts, John writes in 1 John 5:18, “We know that everyone who has been born [gegennēmenos] of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born [gennētheis] of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.” Clearly, “everyone who has been born of God” refers to believers, while “he who was born of God” is Jesus. Thus John uses monogenēs to differentiate God’s unique begetting of Jesus (his “only Son”) from his begetting of the elect.
The glory, then, that John and those with him have seen is the glory of the “only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 AT). John will return to these ideas of glory, grace, and truth in verses 16–18, and when we take what he says there with these references to glory in verse 14, it appears he has Exodus 33:18–34:8 in mind.
These words of John 1:15 are in parentheses in the ESV because of the way this note about John’s testimony interrupts the flow of thought regarding grace and truth and glory that moves from verse 14 to verses 16–18. The location of verse 15 can be accounted for by the chiastic structure of the passage, in which these words balance the reference to the Baptist’s testimony in verses 6–8.
John the Baptist was born before Jesus (cf. Luke 1:36), so more than physical age is in view when he asserts, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me” (John 1:15). John the Evangelist has already asserted, “In the beginning was the Word” (v. 1), and this testimony from the Baptist matches other things the Evangelist will present him as saying later (3:27–30), things that point to Jesus’ unmatched status (3:31).
1:16–18 The Only Begotten Reveals the Father. Resuming the reference to how the glory of Jesus is “full of grace and truth” (v. 14), John writes in verse 16, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” John is probably using this reference to “his fullness” in a way corresponding to the references to the “fullness” of God’s glory in Christ in Paul’s writings (Eph. 1:23; 3:19; 4:13; Col. 1:19; 2:9). In view of what John will say in John 1:17, receiving “grace upon grace,” likely refers to the grace given to the people of God under the old covenant being added to and surpassed by the grace God gives to his people in Christ. John explains in 1:17, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” This does not imply that the law was not a gracious gift. No other nation was shown the kind of grace God gave to Israel when he gave them the good gift of the law. Still, the revelation God makes in Christ is better than what God gave Israel in the law (cf. Heb. 1:1–3). Moreover, John seems to be reflecting here on the gracious revelation of himself that God made to Moses in Exodus 33:18–34:8.
Moses asked to see God’s glory (Ex. 33:18); John asserts, “We have seen his glory” (John 1:14). When God proclaimed his name to Moses, he asserted himself to be “merciful and gracious . . . abounding in steadfast love and truth” (Ex. 34:6 AT). Similarly, John asserts the glory of Jesus to be “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), and “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (v. 16). God told Moses, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious” (Ex. 33:19), and to God’s gracious revelation of himself to Moses he has added the gracious revelation of himself in Christ.
When John says in John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God,” God’s assertion in Exodus 33:20 comes to mind: “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” On that occasion, Moses did see God’s back (Ex. 33:23), and Exodus 33:11 and Deuteronomy 34:10 both say that God spoke with Moses “face to face.” The issue in Exodus 33:20 is not what is possible but what is not permitted for Moses. He is allowed to experience a degree of God’s self-revelation, but he is not permitted an unlimited experience of God, for it would be fatal to him. Along these lines, what is being stressed in John 1:18 is more than mere physical sight. The point of John 1:18 is that Jesus has an unparalleled intimacy with the Father and is revealing him in an unprecedented way. Thus, John says in verse 18, “The only begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (AT). Similarly, Jesus will declare in 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (cf. 12:45).
Jesus is the only begotten of the Father, and there is in John the concept that, as Jesus relates to the Father, so the disciples of Jesus relate to him. We see this in part in the description of Jesus being, literally, “in the bosom of the Father” (1:18, cf. ESV mg.). The same phrase will be used to describe the disciple “whom Jesus loved, . . . at Jesus’ side” in 13:23. The phrase “at Jesus’ side” can be rendered literally “in the bosom of Jesus” (13:23, cf. ESV mg.). As Jesus relates to the Father, so the beloved disciple relates to Jesus. It seems to follow from this that, as Jesus has revealed the Father, so John has revealed Jesus.