MPV Commentary

1. In the beginning—of all time and created existence—the Word gave it being (John 1:3, 10). Therefore, "before the world was" (John 17:5, 24); or, from all eternity.

The Word is He who is to God what man's word is to himself—the manifestation or expression of Himself to those without Him. This title occurs only in the writings of John and is a lofty and consecrated description of Christ.

He was with God—having a conscious personal existence distinct from God (John 1:18; 17:5; 1 John 1:2), where "the Father" is used in the same sense as "God" here. He was God—in substance and essence God; or, possessed of essential or proper divinity.

These statements are the complement of each other, correcting any misapprehensions that might arise from them. Was the Word eternal? It was not the eternity of "the Father," but of a conscious personal existence distinct from Him and associated with Him. Was the Word thus "with God"? He was not another being, but One who was Himself God—transferring the absolute unity of the Godhead from the region of shadowy abstraction to essential life and love.

2. The same, &c.—The stress is laid on the property of the Word as His eternal distinctness in unity with God—the Father (John 1:2).

3. All things were made through Him—absolutely all things (as evident from John 1:10; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16, 17). Without Him was not anything that was made—that is, nothing came into being.

4. In Him was life—essentially and originally, as the previous verses show to be the meaning. He is the Living Word, or, as called in 1 John 1:1, 2, "the Word of Life." The life and light of men are all that in men which is true light—knowledge, integrity, intelligent willing subjection to God, love to Him and to their fellow creatures, wisdom, purity, holy joy, rational happiness—all this has its fountain in the essential original "life" of "the Word" (1 John 1:5-7; Psalm 36:9).

5. He shines in darkness—this dark, fallen world, or mankind "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death," with no ability to find the way either of truth or of holiness. In this thick darkness, and consequent intellectual and moral obliquity, "the light of the Word" shines—by all the rays whether of natural or revealed teaching which men (apart from the Incarnation of the Word) are favored with.

6. But as many individuals of the disobedient and gainsaying people gave he power—to become sons of God in name and in nature. Believe on his name is a phrase never used in Scripture of any mere creature, to express the credit given to human testimony, even of prophets or apostles, inasmuch it carries with it the idea of trust proper only towards God.

7. Which were born—sonship therefore not of mere title and privilege, but of nature, the soul being made conscious of the vital capacities, perceptions, and emotions of a child of God, before unknown. Not of blood, nor of human generation at all, nor of man in any manner of way. By this elaborate threefold denial of the human source of this sonship, immense force is given to what follows.

8. But of God—Right royal gift, and He who confers must be absolutely divine. For who would not worship Him who can bring him into the family, and evoke within him the very life of the sons of God?

9. And the Word was made flesh—became man in man's present frail, mortal condition, denoted by the word "flesh" (Isaiah 40:6; 1 Peter 1:24). It is directed probably against the Docetæ, who held that Christ was not really but only apparently man.

10. And dwelt—tabernacled or pitched his tent; a word peculiar to John, who uses it four times, all in the sense of a permanent stay (Revelation 7:15; 12:12; 13:6; 21:3). For ever wedded to our "flesh," He has entered this tabernacle to go no more out.

11. Full of grace and truth—He dwelt among us full of grace and truth, or in Old Testament phrase, "Mercy and truth," denoting the whole fruit of God's purposes of love towards sinners of mankind, which until now existed only in promise, and the fulfillment at length of that promise in Christ.

12. And we beheld his glory—not by the eye of sense, which saw in Him only "the carpenter." His glory was spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:7-15; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:4, 6; 5:16)—the glory of surpassing grace, love, tenderness, wisdom, purity, spirituality; majesty and meekness, richness and poverty, power and weakness, meeting together in unique contrast.

13. The glory as of the only begotten of the Father—not like, but such as became or was befitting the only begotten of the Father [Chrysostom in Lucke, Calvin, &c.], according to a well-known use of the word "as."