John 1:14-18

Just as a warning, some of today’s post may be a bit complicated. Please let me know if anything is unclear!

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ John testified about Him and called out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has proved to be my superior, because He existed before me.’” ¹⁶ For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. ¹⁷ For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.

V14 – We read previously how the Word of God is God himself and was yet with God from the very beginning. In another post I mentioned that the beginning of John allows for introductory remarks on the Trinity. We have historically understood God to exist as three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we get to verse 14, though, we see something extraordinary – the Word became flesh and lived among us. The reason for him becoming flesh is given in verses 17 and 18. He came to give grace and truth and to reveal the Father. I will come back to this in a little bit, but may we never underestimate the goodness of God in these verses! God could have left us without revealing grace and truth, but yet he chose to. Jesus could have stayed with the Father, and yet he voluntarily decided to be like one of us. It would be like a king or president revoking their privileges in order to serve common people… but multiply a king or president’s honor and privilege a billion times over! We should be amazed at the God who condescended to us to then die for us. And that’s something else to contemplate… God, in eternity past, decided to die for his creation. Why would God create or allow these circumstances to occur, such that God himself would die in the flesh on a cross? Why not create a world where sin would never occur and therefore avoid death and resurrection? Why even create a universe where the first two humans sin? These are questions we don’t have exact answers for, but a basic response would be that God did it simply because he wanted to and to receive glory. God doesn’t need the praises of anyone, but his receiving glory results in benefits for us. Colossians 1:16 says that all things exist FOR him. He also says in Ephesians 1 that he has redeemed a group of people to be “to the praise of his glory”.

Something else to think about is how is it possible for God to become flesh? How is it possible for a body to contain all the deity of God?? This, again, is a mystery in God. It seems an impossibility to put together these two natures into one person! However, detracting from either nature detracts from Jesus’ mission on earth. If Jesus is just a man or just God, then he couldn’t accomplish anything for us. If Jesus were just a man, then it would be impossible for him to not sin. If Jesus were only God, then it would be impossible for him to serve as a sacrifice for us. As such, early Christians who thought and debated over this said that Jesus is both fully man and fully God. This is expressed in the Athanasian Creed, which was a declaration and clarification of the Trinity. This creed was traditionally attributed to a man named Athanasius in the 300’s AD, but some think that it was written somewhat later in the 400-600’s AD. And then later on in 451 AD the Chalcedonian Creed was written to further define the unity of God and man in the person of Jesus. The Athanasian Creed addressed the question of the union of God and flesh more on a side note, whereas in the Chalcedonian Creed the dual, but united, nature of Jesus is front and center. Here is one translation of the Chalcedonian Creed with my underlinings,

“We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.¹”

The union of God and man in the person of Jesus is called the hypostatic union. There were others who denied this perfect union. Groups such as the Nestorians, monophysites and Arians denied this teaching. I won’t go into more detail here, but the union of God and man in Jesus is something to marvel at, deeply appreciate, and realize that without it there would be no redemption!

Going back to our passage, in verse 14, John says that in Jesus we see God’s glory. In other words, we see God’s excellence and magnificence in Jesus. As a side note, if you had never the read the Bible John 1 could be a little confusing. He seems to give a very majestic description of someone who, to the majority of the world, is just a nice man or prophet. To add more mystery to Jesus and the nature of God, we then read a word that has never been fully understood by anyone. The NASB says, “glory as of the only Son of the Father”. The Greek says, “glory as of the ‘only-begotten’ of the Father”. Jesus is said to have been “begotten” by the Father. The NASB reflects the preference of some to abandon the idea of Jesus being “generated” from the Father. Rather, “only-begotten” is taken to refer to Sonship only. However, classical understandings of the Trinity support the notion of the Father “begetting” the Son. Personally, it is hard for me to understand the Trinity in general, but this aspect of it is the most difficult part to understand. To beget someone is typically understood as conceiving a child. However, this can’t have the same meaning here. If God is the Father of Jesus like humans are fathers, then that means that Jesus was created and there might potentially be a mother. The Jehovah’s Witnesses affirm that Jesus was created, and the Mormons affirm both parts of the above statement! Mormons believe that God the Father has a “wife” called Heavenly Mother! However, we should strongly deny any creating of Jesus where Jesus had a beginning point. I’ve written in other posts why we should deny this. To combat this, church fathers and scholars typically have said that Jesus is “eternally generated” by the Father. He is not created!

Robert Letham in his Systematic Theology has a helpful section on this. He says, “Eternal generation reflects the incomprehensibility of God and is a transcendent mystery, beyond the grasps of our minds…This was uniformly recognized by the fathers; for them it was a great mystery.”²

Wayne Grudem in his very popular Systematic Theology says the following, “Eternal generation means that the Father eternally communicates to the Son the divine essence so that the Son fully shares in every attribute of the Father…And because this generation is eternal, the Son was not created but eternally existed as ‘the only begotten Son’…Eternal generation means that the Father is the source of the personal distinctions between Father and Son, but he is not the source of their divine essence.”³

This might seem confusing, but to summarize Grudem…somehow in terms of personhood (not essence), Jesus should be thought of as proceeding forth from the Father. Jesus and the Father are the same in essence, but the personhood of Jesus is derived from the Father and somehow not lesser in status than the Father’s person. All this may seem irrelevant, but Herman Bavinck explained why eternal generation is to be appreciated, “Without generation, creation would not be possible. If, in an absolute sense, God could not communicate himself to the Son, he would be even less able, in a relative sense, to communicate himself to his creature.”⁴ So, while God expresses his nature through us in a partial sense, God’s nature is expressed in an eternal and infinite way through the Son (I hope my wording is correct)! Again from Bavinck, he says that eternal generation shows God to be “no abstract, fixed, monadic, solitary substance, but a plenitude of life. It is his nature to be generative and fruitful.”⁵ If anything, this doctrine shows me how I know so little about God! Also, please let me know in the comments if you’d like a separate post on this doctrine.

Going on to verse 15, John the Baptist teaches others the eternality of Jesus. Yes, Jesus was born in a body in Bethlehem a long time ago, but he existed before he was born. This has already been noted. As such, he is superior to us.

Verses 16 and 17 go together. Moses gave us the Law, which was good and necessary, but the Law was useless in fixing our broken relationship with God. The problem was not the Law; rather, the problem is us! If you read Romans chapter 2, you will quickly see that the Law could never put us in good standing with God because no matter how hard we try we can never always obey the whole Law. All it does is condemn us and declare that we’re guilty. So Jesus came to fix that. He gave us grace and truth. We had the truth as revealed in the Law, but there was no grace to be found in it. Without grace, we can never be in good standing with God. And thanks be to God that Jesus came in the flesh to give us grace! And truly, as John puts it, it is “grace upon grace”!

Now we come to the last verse for today, verse 18. No one has ever seen God. Yet, in the Son, we do see God because he is God. And once again in verse 18 we see the Greek word for “only-begotten”. “God the only Son” should be translated as “only-begotten God”. So again we see a clear indication that Jesus is God and yet is begotten by the Father.

John 1 so far is a huge problem for those who deny the deity of Jesus or confuse him in other ways. Over and over again we see this teaching that Jesus is God and yet is distinct from the Father.  But, it is understandable why it can be easy to misunderstand who Jesus is because his nature and essence are beyond our comprehension. He is fully man and fully God. He is God yet took on flesh. He is somehow eternally generated by the Father yet is still God. I certainly don’t know how to fully explain these things. While some may look at these mysteries and reject God because he is not 100% understood by us finite creatures or because they want a god that is tamer, these things make me lean into him more. They amaze me. They make me want to know more about God. And finally, they make me trust in his wisdom and power. If God can somehow work out how Jesus can be God and man at the same time, if he can work out how a baby can be born to a virgin, if he can work out things like eternal generation, then I can trust him with the details of life.

1 Schaff Phillip. The Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes. Harper & Brothers; 1877:62.

2 Letham Robert. Systematic Theology. Crossway; 2019:116.

3 Grudem Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. 2nd ed.  Zondervan; 2020: 298.

4 Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol 2 (Bolt J, ed.). Baker; 2003-2008:420.

5 Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol 2 (Bolt J, ed.). Baker; 2003-2008: 308.