What the Heck is Going on With John's Prologue?
John 1:1-18
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
The prologue of John's Gospel (1:1-18) can be as blinding as it is radiant, as confusing as it is revelatory. It is notoriously obscure. What is he doing there?
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
So John begins his Gospel- that is, his announcement of the "Good News" of the accomplishments of the Messiah of Israel, namely, Jesus of Nazareth.
How many commentaries have I read, and sermons have I listened to, where by "Word", John is explained to refer to the pagan Greek/Stoic notion of the Logos as "logic", and specifically, the primal "logic" or ordering principle of the cosmos? Perhaps these are accurate as far as they go, but at the risk of stating the obvious, John is a Jew writing about the expected "anointed one" of the Jewish nation of Israel. He is writing from within a very specific religious matrix. What sense then does it make to presuppose from the outset that at the very beginning of his record, John is importing a concept from pagan philosophy, when there is a simpler, more coherent explanation for his use of that word, "Word"?
In the Old Testament, the notion of God's "word" recurs frequently. The Hebrew is dabar, and it refers most often to the way by which God manifests his creative and restorative will for creation: "by the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all their host..." (Ps. 55:6). In the context of John 1, this makes total sense, given his first words: "In the beginning..." which call to mind the beginning of the Book of Genesis, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
And how does God do this work of creation? He speaks: "And God said, 'let there be light', and light was made" (Gen. 1:3). John is calling to mind for the reader God's habit of creating things, and clues us in to the fact that there is probably a kind of "new creation" being inaugurated which he is going to describe in what follows. "All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made."
John continues his riff on Genesis: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." As God's first creative act, or "word," took the form of light (Gen 1:3), so this "Word" that John is describing also brings light. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
The word popularly translated here as "overcome" is the Greek word katalaben, which can mean "overcome", "overtake", "withstand" (as the darkness of the formless void of Genesis 1 fled from the light of God's creation); it can also mean "understand" or "comprehend" in a derivative sense (as understanding something is like "overtaking", "overcoming" or "conquering" it).
While this "Word", this dabar is light for all men, some of those men will be incapable of either "understanding" (as we will discover in John 3:19: "...people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil"), or "conquering" in the sense of "defeating" it. This is perhaps a foreshadowing of the incomprehension and hostility with which he who is the "light of the world" (John 8:12), Jesus, is met with in the rest of the book, but also his triumph and glorification despite the best efforts of his opponents.
In verses 6-8, John seems abruptly to interrupt his train of thought, so abruptly that some commentators think this verse is a later addition by some other author. I don't believe we need to resort to such complicated explanations.
The notion of courtroom imagery with witnesses and acquittal or conviction is a prominent feature in the rest of the Gospel, as is light/darkness which has already been introduced. John here is therefore simply alluding to another of his major themes (which itself will become prominent later on in chapter 5). John the Baptist is merely the first "witness" of who and what this dabar is (as we see later in John 1:29-34), and partially on the basis of whose testimony Israel and the unbelieving world will be "convicted" (criminally) of rejecting the light.
Verses 9-11 introduce another important concept in the gospel, which is that of "the world." There are many ways of interpreting this word kosmon, but a few comments should suffice here.
First, John generally does use the word in a negative sense; "the world" signifies that dark anti-creation which is in a state of rebellion against God and his light. However, it is vital to note that John does not hold that "the world" as such -that is, creation specifically as that thing which God has made- is evil, since he acknowledges that "the world was made through him [the Word]", and is playing with Genesis which describes the creation of the world which God himself calls "good". John's negative use of kosmos is understood insofar as creation is in rebellion and rejection of God who created it; insofar as it is dead or decaying, but which God is taking pains (through this Word of his) to restore and renew. John is not a gnostic dualist. Creation and matter are not evil, as some commentators have suggested. They are good, but broken.
Some quick theology. A “chiasm” is an extremely common tool used in the scriptures. Put simply, a chiasm is where the same theme or idea is repeated at the beginning and end. In the middle of those repetitions is a third idea that the author wants to highlight as especially important.
The prologue as a whole is actually structured as a chiasm which pivots on verse 12 (“But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God”, and which introduces yet another theme of John’s gospel: the "children of God," or, more specifically, the question of "who are the children of God?"
This question is drawn out explicitly in John chapter 8, where Jesus' opponents will answer that the children of Abraham, that is, the nation of Israel, ethnic Jews, are obviously the children of God. Jesus will answer that, actually, the sons of Abraham are not those merely genetically descended from him, but those who do the "works" of Abraham, namely, those who, like him, have faith in, believe in, the work of God.
John here in his prologue summarizes that fact in this way: "to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood [as was the claim of ethnic Judaism], nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." John is implying that the right of divine adoption was forfeited by unbelieving Israel, but is now graciously extended to all who have faith in Jesus, the redeemer of Israel.1
Verses 14-18 must be read in view of Exodus 33-34. John says, "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us..." The word used here for "dwelt" is skenoo, which is taken from the word skene meaning "tent." It is the same word used in the Greek version of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint). This word is an allusion to the tent or "tabernacle" in which God "dwelt" during his 40 year sojourn with Israel through the wilderness which is recorded in the Book of Exodus.
And so, we finally get to the climax of the prologue: this creative "Word" of God which John has been describing is not different from, but is itself, the very God of Israel.
John goes on to say: "...and we have seen his glory...". Exodus describes how Moses spoke with God "face to face, as one speaks with a friend,"(Exodus 33:11) but it was always within the shekina, the "glory cloud", which had the effect, ironically, of obscuring God's face because "no one can see my face and live" (Exodus 33:20).
In Exodus 33:18-19, Moses asks God to "show me your glory". In response, God says "I will cause my goodness to pass before you." God's glory is his goodness.
He continues to Moses: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and compassion on whom I will have compassion." This is amazing. God is saying that his glory is his goodness, which is his mercy and compassion.
By this allusion, John identifies Jesus not simply with this God of Israel, but as the revelation of God’s glory- that is, the very embodiment of his goodness, mercy, and compassion. This sheds quite a bit of light then on why Jesus refers to the cross frequently in John's gospel as his "hour of glory," but I digress…
John continues "...the glory of the only begotten son of the Father, full of grace and truth."
In Exodus 34, God walks before Moses and pronounces his name, and what it signifies: "YHWH, YHWH, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love for thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin."
The words in Hebrew for "love" and "faithfulness" are hesed and met, respectively. Hesed denotes gracious, unmerited, gratuitous love, and met denotes fidelity, steadfastness, trustworthiness and reliability. In a word, "truth". The phrase, "...Grace and truth," is John's way of conveying the paired notions of hesed and met, which God revealed to Moses as the content of his name and therefore, as shown here, the very identity, the substance, of the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
John continues: "For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
In verse 14, John says that God is "full of grace and truth", he is full of both hesed and met; that is, unmerited, reckless, unscrupulous, steadfast love. From this fullness therefore, comes the full-flowering in Christ of that grace that was seminally present in promissory form in the Mosaic covenant.
That is to say that one gracious act or dispensation has followed upon a previous one, “grace upon grace”; the steadfast love of God toward Israel expressed initially through the Law of Moses is now fully revealed and poured out through Jesus, not only for the nation of Israel, but for "all who believe in his name", that is, for the whole world.
And that’s why John begins his own Gospel in this way: because that's the Gospel, the “good news” of Jesus Christ in summary. Far from being bitter toward it, the heart of God is characterized by effusive, extravagant, and steadfast love for the world, and you and me in it.
Not incidentally, this will become a major argument of Paul in the 4th chapter of his epistle to the Romans regarding the "grafting" of the gentiles onto Israel.