And the Word Became Flesh

An Exposition of John 1:1-18

Luke and Matthew begin their gospels with the incidents leading up to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Mark begins with the sudden burst of the adult John the Baptist and then Jesus coming on the scene. These events are grounded in the space-time history we are accustomed. They fit well together to present human and historical Jesus. Although the true divinity of Jesus is not absent in the gospels, it is the humanity of Jesus which comes out.

This leads us to the Gospel of John which begins with the full statement of Jesus’ divinity. The story of Jesus precedes and transcends both space and time. John presents Jesus as being omniscient, even while on earth. For example, he knew what was in people’s hearts. In the same way as the other gospels present the human portrait of Jesus without denying His divinity, John presents Jesus as Divine without denying His human nature. It is hard to put together the two natures of Christ, the Divine and the human. Early Christian theologians struggles with this mightily, and the Creed of Chalcedon gives as good an answer as we can give. Truly it is a great mystery how an infinite God could become a finite man, the Creator becoming a creature of His own creation. So we are blessed to have John’s portrait of Jesus to hang alongside the portrait mage by the other gospels, affirming each to be equally true. Only God can understand Jesus in a single portrait. For the rest of us, the two portraits side by side present a single Christ.

The Gospel of John begins with a group of simple sentences. Yet these simple short statements together create a very complex picture. It begins with the words “In the Beginning.” Anyone who has read Genesis recognizes that the same words appear there as well. This is not a coincidence. John immediately sets our mind to the Creation itself. He continues with “was the Word.” Just six simple words, yet some of the most sublime words ever recorded. There have been arguments over the meaning of the simple word “is.” The verb of being is the most basic of words. Here the past tense “was” is used. In Greek it is in a tense called the “imperfect” as there is no simple past tense of the “I am” verb. When the Creation occurred, the Word already “was.” John has not yet revealed the identity of the “Word,” but He existed before Creation. This idea will be further refined by the words that follow. The Word is not part of the created order.

“And the Word was with God.” John begins the sentence with the words that ended the previous on. This is another short sentence. The Greek preposition “pros” is used in Septuagint Greek to mean “in the immediate presence of” or “with.” It also indicates a sort of intimate relationship between God and the Word. There is oneness between God and the Word. They are one, yet there is distinction made as well. There are overtones of the Doctrine of the Trinity here.

“And God was the Word.” Again, John takes the last word of the previous sentence as the first word in the new sentence. But it is very important to state that it is NOT the subject of the sentence but a predicate adjective which describes the subject which is “the Word.” The article “the” makes “Word” the subject. There are things called reversible propositions in which both nouns are equally subject. When this happens, the sentence can be read equally forward or backwards. But there is no article with God. If there were, it would read “The God was the Word.” The trouble that would occur is that we would end up with a “Jesus-Only” or Modalist view of God. This would dent the Trinity. What has to be read that Jesus is “fully and equally Divine” and not to say that Jesus is all that God is. There is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A group called the “Arians” caused much difficulty by making Jesus a lesser ‘god” who was the first creature of God. The Jehovah’s witnesses today hold to such a view. They translate the verse “And the Word was a God.” The indefinite article “a” does not exist in Greek, but it is at least grammatically possible to translate it this way. But we must observe that the context of the Greek sentence does not permit this translation. “God” is thrust forward into the sentence, which places extra emphasis on it. Secondly, in a monotheistic worldview, there is room for only one God. If John had wanted to subordinate the Word, he would have written this verse differently. So we are left with the sublime doctrine that Jesus is fully God in Himself without saying that He was all there was to God. The doctrine of one God in three persons is affirmed.

In the next series of statements, John fine tunes what he has previously stated and extends them. “The same was in the beginning with God. This restates verses one and two and links them closely together. Then John states that this mysterious Word is the creator of all. He does this by pairing a positive and negative statement. “All things came into being “through” Him which makes Him the active agent in all Creation. The negative statement is “Without Him was nothing made” or “Without Him was nothing made that was made,” depending how one punctuates the Greek text which was originally without punctuation marks. It makes clear that the Word was intimately involved in all creation as well as implies that He is not created. By being the agent of all Creation does not make Him the solitary actor in all Creation. We can still rightly state: “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” We could look at it this way from Genesis. We see the words “Let us” there. This is the way most of the early Fathers read this, that creation was the work of the Trinity. We also see the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of creation. We could loosely make this analogy of Creation: “the Father willed, The Son spoke, and the Spirit provided the support by which the word could speak. The entire Trinity is at work in creation. Of course, John singles out the Son’s role in creation to show that the Word is fully Divine.

John goes on to state: “In Him was life.” I prefer the traditional punctuation rather than “that which came into being in Him was life.” This seems to be clumsy and breaks the poetic sequence. Not all of creation was animate. The physical universe was created first, then the means to support life, and then life itself. The Word who is eternally alive, who is the creator of all the Universe, is the creator of all living things. Only God is said to have life in Himself. This is true of the Word. All other life is derived and dependent upon the one who has life in Himself.

Now John starts to make a turn from the physical creation in historical space and time to a more existential look at the Word. The physical creation included the creation of light. But “light” can be understood metaphorically as well, as we well know. The metaphor has no power apart from the physical reality the metaphor draws from. We must not deny the literal when we go to the metaphoric realm. The Word is the physical Creator of light. But there is also more to light than light. John makes the statement “And the life was the light of men” which interestingly is an example of a “reversible proposition” which shows that John knows how to make such a statement. Obviously, this meaning of “light” is not a physical manifestation but a moral and spiritual one. There was something given to humankind that was not given to the other animals. This is called “the Image of God.” There has been much discussion on what this Image of God is, but as God is invisible, it is not a physical image. Is it that humans reason? Or is it moral? We don’t exactly know, but we are given a hint in John 20 when Jesus breathes on His disciples and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This reminds us in Genesis of God breathing into Adam and making Him a living soul.” The restoration of this Image of God is central to the Gospel of John itself.

In the Creation account, the Word is spoken, “Let there be light!” Where there is light, the darkness must recede. The sun rises in the morning and darkness disappears. Darkness cannot overcome light, but light always overcomes darkness. Darkness only occurs where there is no light. The Word is said to shine in this darkness. The darkness must retreat. But what if people are blind. There the light shines in darkness, and yet it is not perceived. The word “katelabon” has several meanings, two of which have been described above. Should it be translated “overcome,” as in “the darkness was unable to stand up to it?” Or is it “comprehend” as in which says that even though the light was clearly shining, humankind was blind and could not understand. It seems from the rest of the prologue which says “His own people did not receive Him” seems to favor the latter.

We now come to a major break in the revelation of the Word. The witness of John the Baptist breaks into the sequence. We must ask the question, “Why.” Is John disorganized? It seems that it would be good form to talk about the Word in its entirety and leave all the statements about John the Baptist to Chapter 2. Or is John deliberately placing it here which seems likely. What would a deliberate intrusion of John the Baptist mean? The answer to this is that if you want to draw attention to something, put it out of place. If one comes to work with their sweater on inside out, does it not draw attention? If someone who is habitually late to a meeting comes early, does it not draw attention. If one wants to attract attention to their social media profile, one could put his or her picture upside-down. The attention drawn might not be flattering, but it does draw attention. The use of dislocations in writing or speaking have the same effect. Greek is very flexible with word order. The general use of word order prevails, so when a particular word is put out of place, usually to the front, it attracts attention and emphasis. We already saw this in verse 3” “And God was the Word.” The same technique can be used to put sentences and even paragraphs out of order. In this case, it puts emphasis upon the role of John the Baptist in the plan of God above that which it would have had if John had waited to chapter 2 to introduce Him. John has not ended His exposition of the Word but interrupts it for John’s role as a witness.

John left off with the Light shining in the darkness of fallen humanity, and that the people were blind to the light. In order to be able to appreciate that the Light had been shining all along, they need to have their sight restored. All of the cosmic words by which John introduce the Logos mean nothing without eyes to see and ears to here. So the witness of John the Baptist comes front and center. The importance of witness is one of the key themes of John’s gospel. In fact, his stated purpose is that the readers might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that through this belief might have eternal life through His name.

John the Baptist is the ultimate example of the faithful witness. His witness is the witness we all are to bear to the Word. It is important to notice here, that the Baptist was a man, and that he was sent by God. This means that he was a servant who spoke the message God had given him to speak. We should likewise realize that if we have not been sent by God and speak the words which God has given us to speak, we are but one blind man speaking to another. What is worse is that we claim to see. John 9 tells us that false sight is the greatest blindness of all.

One of the greatest blinders we can have is to have too high opinion of ourselves. What a tragedy when in the attempt to put a dislocation into someone’s life and get them to realize that they are blind and on the path to destruction that we point these people to ourselves and not to Jesus. We must instead relocate their attention to Jesus. He is the light, not ourselves. John the Baptist was great enough to do such. He knew how to decrease that Jesus might increase. He was satisfied to be a herald to the Word. It seems that some of His followers got that message. When John says: “Behold the Lamb of God!” two of his disciples followed Jesus instead. But others clung stubbornly to the Baptist. These became a snare to the early church, and the apostles had to constantly put their elevated conception of John the Baptist in its place. John was not the Light but was only a witness to it.

The Apostle now goes back to His original exposition of the person of the Word. He has already describes the divine Word as Creator of All, and now reminds us that it is this Word is always shining even it it is not perceived. The knowledge of God is indelibly etched in both creation and the human soul. The light is there, because God has shone it everywhere. Humankind is responsible because it has willfully shut its eyes to the light. Everyone stands responsible before God for repressing this light.

The punctuation here is important. Is it “enlightens every one who comes into the world” or should it read: “Enlightens every one. He came into the world.?” I think the latter is the case, so let us go on here. Paraphrasing the text, it then says: “He came into and was in the world, But He, who was the creator of the world, was not known by it. He came unto His own Creation, But His own people rejected Him.” So we see two parallel statements which together accentuate the totality of human blindness. In parallel statements, we should zero in on what is different in the two statements. The first statement shows that the world as a whole was ignorant of the Light. This was true of Jew and Gentile. For all but a tiny few, Christmas went unnoticed. Augustus went on decreeing without care as to what His decree on taxation would actually accomplish in the eyes of God, that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. For the thirty-some years He spent on the earth, the world was totally ignorant of Jesus. The Light of the world had come, and they were in the dark.

In the second part of the parallelism, the difference is in “His own People rejected Him.” The very people who had been given the Law and the prophets, Moses, the Temple, and the Covenants were just as blind as the Gentiles! The Jewish nation went along on the first Christmas Day as they would any other. They were making bricks for a new Pharaoh and did not realize that God had raised up a deliverer among them. They groaned under their new taskmasters. They talked about the Messiah. But they were totally blind to who and what the Messiah would prove Himself to be.

This gloomy portrait of the human darkness is invaded by words of hope. Many did not know. Others knew and rejected. But not all! There were some who would accept Him. There were conditions to this. They could not come to the light by themselves. They would have to be reborn. This sets up the passage about Nicodemus in chapter 3. This birth would have to be as miraculous as Jesus’ own birth of the Virgin Mary. The several negative statements clearly show the impossibility of coming to the light unaided. They would have to be born of God. God would have to beget them. God had to open their lives to the new light. We like John the Baptist can act as midwives of sorts. We are called to bear witness to the light. We are to get people disrupted from the ordinary cares of life to hear the message of faith. But even here, we are only assisting the work which only God can perform.

Now we come to another powerful statement. “And the Word became flesh.” As I read recently, there have been many men who have desired to be God, but this is the only case where God became a man.” Here the Divine Logos, the Creator of All, becomes a part of His own creation. Here the Divine and the human come mysteriously together in the person of Jesus Christ. It then says “and tabernacled among us.” A tabernacle, or tent, is a temporary dwelling place, such as the children of Israel had in the wilderness. This also indicates that the flesh Jesus took upon Him was not the new body, but the mortal body of human experience, a body subject to decay and death. He could be tempted as we are and was to the most extreme degree without yielding to sin. But human flesh He took on for a while. He would return from whence He came after the resurrection to prepare a place for us. We live in human tabernacle for a season, but He shall return and cross us over Jordan to a new, eternal and incorruptible reality.

John the Apostle, using the “we” which should probably be taken as the collective witness of the Apostles, uses the past tense “beheld.” They had been given a unique look into the person of Jesus. They were taught by Him. They walked with Him. They ate with Him. They saw His miracles. They saw him die on a cross. They witnessed the resurrection and ascension. This “beheld” tales about the tabernacled body of Jesus. We can not see as they saw. That is why we must believe their witness of thus unique individual. We cannot see or touch in a human sense. We have to be enlightened by the written word and the witness of the Holy Spirit. As the source of our birth is God and not ourselves, we are not eternally disadvantaged, even though we all yearn to have physically seen what John and the Apostles saw.

A lot of people saw a man called Jesus. They saw Jesus do remarkable things. They heard His powerful and gracious words. It did them no good at all, because they were not awakened to the truth. The Apostles saw much more in Jesus, although they did not figure these things out by themselves. They saw His glory. Peter, James, and John were even given a special glimpse of Jesus and His glory on the Mount of transfiguration. This accentuated just how unique Jesus is. He is the unique child of God. Does that mean we are not children also? Of course, all who believe have been given authority to believe and become God’s children. But that is it. We become children, whereas Jesus is eternally the Son of God, even though He was also born in a human sense through the Virgin Mary. The word “only-begotten” which has often been used to translate “monogenes” is misleading and is better translated “unique.”

John goes on to say that Jesus was full of grace and truth. Here is another dichotomy to human thinking. We tend to think it an act of grace to withhold truth from someone. Whoever would be graceless to call a child “ugly” for example. We often think of God’s grace as calling us something we are not. This is not correct. If God has called us to follow Him, we actually ARE a new creature. We are molded and taught the truth. Truth and grace are not opposites. The most graceful thing we can say to the sinner is to let them see the truth of who they are and where they stand. Jesus is both grace and truth.

In verse 15, John the Baptist breaks again into the text and interrupts it. This means there is some special reason John has done this. John the Baptist again shows himself to be the perfect witness to this truth and grace. He clearly states that Jesus, who followed Jesus in time and space, is actually far superior to him. Normally, age is revered. The one who is older is to be respected above the younger. As John the Baptist baptized Jesus, does that not make John the Baptist the Rabbi over Jesus? This is the way the world still thinks. But John the Baptist clearly says this is not the case. Jesus is to be preferred before me because He was first. We can see from the prologue how this works out in space and time as the eternal Word was before all things. As Creator of all, He is also over all creation. So whether one is talking about first in time or first in rank, both are true. The Apostles and all the witnesses of Jesus need to help people behold Jesus and not ourselves.

John the Apostle had the opportunity in this life to see the fullness of Jesus, a privilege only granted a select through. This is not because John was better than anyone else, but that he would testify to us what he had seen and heard. The same is true of the other apostles. Now the text says they beheld “grace upon grace.” It is a little hard to translate the prepositions here from the Greek, but perhaps the idea of “grace added upon grace” with the idea of lavish grace and growing in this experience of grace.

Now we have the verse: For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ.” Some misinterpretations have occurred here, especially among Protestants in that They see Moses and Jesus as being antithetical as well as law and grace being antithetical. A reading of the Book of Hebrews should provide some remedy to this fault as the book portrays Moses as the faithful servant in the house which was owned by Jesus. We must also not here that “was given” would be translated in Old English by “was giften.” The Law is properly a gift. Exodus 20 begins with words of grace in that it reminds us that the Children of Israel had been gifted by God by the release from Egyptian bondage which was entirely an act of God’s grace. The Law is grace, upon which the grace of the Gospel is added.

One more not about grace. Some think grace as a mostly Pauline word. The four times that grace appears in these few verses are the only occurrences of “grace” in the gospel. Does this mean that grace isn’t a major theme to John. The answer is not to count how many times a word us used by itself. Rather one has to see where it occurs. In many ways, the prologue of John’s gospel is a summary of all the themes of the rest of the gospel. Grace is given an important place in the prologue. Perhaps that tells us that rather than saying that John is comparatively uninterested about grace, we should see it as the theme of the gospel. The gospel is then an exposition of the grace of God. Likewise in the Apocalypse, grace appears only two times, one at the beginning and once at the end. This is what is called an inclusio. So grace is a them of the Apocalypse as well.

The prologue ends with the assertion that no one has ever seen God. This is a mystery as it is recorded that Moses at least saw his hinder parts as He passed by. Jesus in John 14 says that He who had seen Him had seen the Father. So has He or has He not been seen. I think this answer is best answered “yes and no.” Obviously the Father is spirit. But the Son is visible as He is God in flesh. We can only observe the divinity of Jesus indirectly, through His earthly veil. And we shall see Him in Heaven as well. Perhaps the idea that the unique Son of God makes God the Father known. We cannot see the Father otherwise. The Father is seen when He is made known, and He is made known by the Son. Other than this, I don’t know what to say.

We conclude the study of the prologue with this observation. John is not interested in making a systematic theology for its own sake. This is not one’s speculation about God to be placed among others. This book was written to convince people to believe on Jesus Christ and enter into eternal life. So we have to approach it in the same spirit. We don’t need to show off out theological skill. We need to show Jesus. The doctrine of the Word is an essential handmaiden to this task. Our task is to witness to this truth and show how it relates to others. It is to encourage others to look to Jesus and see Him in His glory. Let us this Christmas season show that there is more to the Christmas story than holiday cheer and doing a bit of philanthropy. Mat the LORD use us to open the eyes of the blind.