Today’s Passage: John 1:1–18
No Gospel begins the way this one does. Matthew opens with a genealogy, Mark with a preacher crying out in the wilderness, and Luke with a historian’s careful preface, but John opens before the world was ever made. These eighteen verses sound every theme the rest of the book will play, the Word and life and light, witness and belief, glory, grace and truth, and the right to become children of God. Read them once as a single sweep, and then we will walk through them slowly together.
As you read, hold this: The Word was God, and the Word became flesh.
Context The world of John 1:1–18
John writes somewhere around AD 85 to 95, likely from Ephesus, into a world where Jews and Greeks were reading side by side, and he chooses the word logos because both worlds are listening for it. The Greek tradition had made it a name for the rational order behind the cosmos, and the Hebrew Scriptures had made the word of the LORD the very agent of creation and of the prophets. John reaches into both of these inheritances at once, and then he says the thing neither of them ever dared to say, that the logos is a Person who was God and became flesh.
That last claim was the scandal. To many Greek minds the divine was, by its very definition, beyond a body: spirit was pure and matter was lesser, so for God to become flesh was not merely surprising, it was offensive. Within a generation some would try to soften it and say that Christ only seemed to have a body, but John gives that escape no room at all. When he writes that the Word became flesh he chooses sarx, the blunt word for human meat and mortality. The Gospel that soars highest into the eternal Word is the very one that lands hardest in real skin.
John 1:1–5 (BSB)
¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. ⁵ The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John opens at the very rim of eternity. His “In the beginning” echoes Genesis 1:1, but where Genesis says that God created, John says that the logos, pronounced LOH-goss. Strong's G3056, word, reason, the spoken expression of thought. Logos is the hinge of the whole Prologue. To the Greek ear it named reason and account, the logic that holds things together, and for the Stoics it was an impersonal principle pervading the cosmos. To the Hebrew ear the Septuagint had used it for the word of the LORD, the word by which God said, “Let there be,” and there was (Genesis 1), the word that “will not return to Me empty” (Isaiah 55:11), standing beside Wisdom who was with God before the world was made (Proverbs 8:22–31). John takes that word up and will not let it stay a mere principle or a message. This logos is a Person. He was with God, He was God, and He “became flesh” (1:14). The Reason behind the whole universe took on a heartbeat. already was. There are three clauses in verse 1, and every one of them is needed. The Word was, which is eternal existence with no point of origin. The Word was with God, a distinct Person standing face to face with the Father. And the Word was God, fully divine and not some lesser being. Drop the third clause and you lose His deity; drop the second and you collapse the Father and the Son into one. This is not a point we hold with an open hand. Article 4 is settled right here: Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures.
Verse 3 places Him firmly on the Creator’s side of the line, “Through Him all things were made,” so that nothing which exists is either His rival or His source. Then verses 4 and 5 sound the theme the Gospel will never drop. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men, and the Light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The Greek behind that word “overcome” can also mean “comprehend,” and both senses are true, for the darkness has neither understood the Light nor managed to put it out. Written by a man who watched that Light hang on a cross and then walk out of a tomb, this is not optimism. It is testimony.
John 1:6–8 (BSB)
⁶ There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that through him everyone might believe. ⁸ He himself was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.
After all that eternity, suddenly a man with a name. This is John the Baptist, though this Gospel never calls him that, and the contrast is the whole point. The Word was, but John came. He was sent, he had a beginning and a brief errand, and his entire role is gathered into one word that will run through the book: witness. He is not the Light himself. He is only the finger pointing to it. Verse 8 sounds almost protective, because some still revered the Baptist too highly, and the Evangelist will not let any servant be confused with his Master. The aim of all true witness is stated as plainly as it can be, “so that through him everyone might believe.”
John 1:9–13 (BSB)
⁹ The true Light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. ¹² But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.
The tragedy and the invitation arrive together. The true Light came into the very world that was made through Him, and the world did not recognize its own Maker. Worse still, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” He came to the people who had been prepared for centuries, and they turned Him away. That is John’s honest summary of the rejection the whole Gospel will go on to narrate.
Then verse 12 turns on a single word, But. Not everyone refused Him. “To all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” Receiving and believing are one and the same act here. The gift is not the achievement of becoming children; it is the right to be so, the authorized welcome home. Verse 13 then shuts the door on every human boast, not of blood, not of the will of man, but born of God. No one argues his own way in. To become a child of God is to be born from above, the very thing Jesus will press upon Nicodemus in chapter 3.
John 1:14–18 (BSB)
¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ John testified concerning Him. He cried out, saying, “This is He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me.’” ¹⁶ From His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.
Here is the hinge of the whole Prologue, the sentence the series is named for. “The Word became flesh and eskēnōsen, pronounced es-KAY-no-sen. Strong's G4637, to pitch a tent, tabernacle, dwell. Skēnoō means to pitch a tent, to encamp, to tabernacle. Its root, skēnē, is the very word the Septuagint uses for the tabernacle, the tent in the wilderness where the glory of God came down to dwell among Israel (Exodus 40:34–35). So when John writes that the Word “made His dwelling among us,” the sense of it is that He tabernacled among us. The God whose glory once filled a tent of skins now pitches His tent in human flesh. The wilderness tent was only the shadow, and here at last is the substance. When John says, “We have seen His glory,” he means that the very thing Moses longed for and could only glimpse from behind (Exodus 33:18–23) has now walked into full view in a human face. among us.” The eternal logos of verse 1, the One who was God, became sarx. He did not merely appear to be human, He truly became human, and without ever ceasing to be God the Son took our nature to Himself. That is Article 4 in John’s own words: fully God, fully man, one Person.
The verb is eskēnōsen, He tabernacled among us, and so the next clause follows naturally. “We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Verse 15 brings the witness back for a single line, telling us that the One who came after John in time was before him in eternity. Then verses 16 and 17 pour out the gift, for from His fullness we receive grace upon grace. The law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The law was good, but it was a diagnosis, and the grace and truth that came in Christ are the cure.
Verse 18 returns to where the Prologue began, and it answers the long ache of the Old Testament, and of Job too, if that is where you have come from. “No one has ever seen God.” That is true. Job longed for a mediator and was given a whirlwind, and Moses was allowed to see only God’s back. But, John says, “the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.” The invisible God now has a face. The verb behind “made Him known” is the root of our word exegesis, for the Son has explained the Father, and all the rest of the Gospel is that one great exposition.
Study notes Going deeper
The Prologue does not offer us a menu of views on the Word. It confesses Him: eternal, personal, divine, the Maker of all, and then flesh. Paul and the writer of Hebrews say the very same thing in other hands.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light." Genesis 1:1–3 (BSB)
John’s “In the beginning” is no accident. He writes the opening of Genesis again and tells us who was speaking when God said, “Let there be light.”
"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." Colossians 1:15–17 (BSB)
All things were made through Him, and He is before all things, for the logos of John 1:3 is the Son who holds the whole cosmos together.
"On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets. But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by His powerful word." Hebrews 1:1–3 (BSB)
The God who once spoke through the prophets has now spoken to us in a Son, the radiance of His glory and the exact imprint of His being. That is the Prologue again, set down in another writer’s hand.