Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
The Word Became Flesh
John 1:14-18
14 The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. · WEB
The claim the whole prologue was built for, and the word chosen for it is the crudest one available.
The Word became flesh and lived among us John 1:14.
This is the sentence the prologue exists for, and every word in it is doing work.
Became is the verb used of created things three times in verse three. The one who was not made now enters the category of the made — without ceasing to be what verse one said he was, since the book will go on saying it.
Flesh is the shock. Greek thought held the material world at arm's length and the divine as necessarily above it; a writer wanting to soften this would have said he became a man, or took a body. Flesh is the word for meat, for what is weak and mortal and gets tired and dies. It is chosen because nothing less would do.
Lived among us is literally pitched his tent. The verb belongs to the tabernacle — the tent God had made so that he could dwell in the middle of a camp Exodus 25:8 — and it is why the next clause is about glory. In the wilderness the glory filled the tent and no one could go in Exodus 40:34–35. Here the tent is a body, and men shared meals in it.
We saw his glory John 1:14. The writer puts himself in the sentence. It is the first we in the book, and it is a claim to have been present.
Such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. The two nouns are covenant words. When Moses asked to see God's glory, what he was given was a name proclaimed — abounding in loving kindness and truth Exodus 34:6 — and those are the two qualities named here as what the glory looked like when it was seen.
From his fullness we all received grace upon grace John 1:16. The phrase is grace in place of grace, one arriving as the last is spent, which is a picture of supply rather than of a quantity.
For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ John 1:17.
The name is finally spoken, in verse seventeen, after sixteen verses of the Word. And the contrast is not a rejection: the law was given through Moses, which is a true and honorable thing, and the verse does not say it was replaced. What is said is that grace and truth came to be — the same verb as became in verse fourteen — through a person. One was legislation; the other walked into the room.
No one has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him John 1:18.
The first half is the settled position of the older Scriptures — even Moses was shown only what could be survived Exodus 33:20. The second half says the problem has been solved, and not by improved eyesight.
In the bosom of the Father is the position of the guest at a meal nearest the host, and it is the exact phrase used of the beloved disciple leaning on Jesus at the supper John 13:23. The one closest in has come out to describe him. The verb behind declared is the one from which we get exegesis: he has explained him, set him out, made him legible.
Which is what the remaining twenty chapters are.
settled What this mark means