John 01(16–18)

Introduction

I made the point last week that what John tells us about the divine Word in the opening verses of his gospel develops or progresses verse by verse or line by line.

John began his gospel by telling us about the Word who was there in the beginning. So, before the creation of the world, there was the Word. And then John told us that the Word was with God and the Word was God. So, he is God, but there’s more to God than the Word, because there’s God the Father and there’s God the Word or God the Son. And we know from elsewhere that there’s also God the Holy Spirit.

And then John told us that God made all things through this divine Word. And this divine Word has all life in himself. So, all the life we see around us and in us has come from the divine Word who has all life in himself. And the divine Word not only gives us life, but he also gives us light: he gives to every living person the knowledge of God. But because of the darkness of our sin and unbelief, we don’t see the light which is continually shining all around us and in us. We’re like people who are wearing dark sunglasses on holiday who don’t notice the sunshine all around them. And our minds are darkened by our sin and unbelief and we don’t know God.

But our darkness hasn’t overcome the light. It hasn’t obliterated the light, because the light is still shining continually and because God sent his Old Testament prophets to reveal himself even more clearly to his people. And the last of those Old Testament prophets was John the Baptist. And John the Apostle tells us that God sent John the Baptist to testify to the light and to give people the knowledge of God by preaching to them.

And then John went on to tell us that the light, which has always been shining in the world, came into the world in a new way. The light came into the world as a person. And that person came to his own people, but they did not recognise him. But some did receive him and they believed in him. And to them he gave the right to become children of God so that they would know God in a new way as their loving, heavenly Father.

So, the divine Word, who was there in the beginning, and through whom all things were created, and who has been shining continually, giving every living person the knowledge of God, came into the world as a person to give us the right to become children of God. And how did he come? He came — as we saw last week when we were studying verses 14 and 15 — in flesh. The divine Word became one of us.

And last week we thought about how, without ceasing to be who and what he eternally is, he took to himself a body and soul like ours and became one of us. From the time of his incarnation, when he was conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit, he is and will continue to be God and man in one person.

He is one person: he is the Word, the Eternal Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the only Begotten Son of God. That’s who he is. And so, when people looked at the man Jesus, they were looking at God’s Only Begotten Son. That’s who he is.

And then, from the time of his incarnation, he possesses, not only the divine nature, which he possesses eternally, but also a human nature. He is fully God and he is fully human. He is perfect God and he is perfect man. As God, he is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being and wisdom and power and holiness and justice and goodness and truth. Whatever it means to be God, that’s what he is. But he is also, at the same time, one of us. And so, whatever it means to be human, that’s what he is also.

He is, then, God and man in one person. So, while Mary held him to her breast and sustained his human life with her milk, he was, at the very same time, sustaining all things by his powerful word. As one of us, he needed his mother to hold him in her arms, but as mighty God, he was upholding all things at the very same time. As one of us, he lay in a manger in Bethlehem. but as God, he was present everywhere all at once.

The Word became flesh and therefore he was made like us in every way. However, unlike us at the present time, he received the Holy Spirit without limit or measure from the time of his conception. And the Holy Spirit enabled him to be and to do everything he needed to be and to do in order to save us from our sin and misery. So, he was sanctified by the Spirit from the moment of his conception. And in this way, he was kept from sin and he always did what was right. And since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, then the Holy Spirit gave him the understanding he needed when he spoke to the teachers of the law in the temple when he was only twelve years old; and when the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and the Sadducees questioned him when he was an adult. And the Holy Spirit enabled him to proclaim God’s word to his people and to cast out demons and to heal the sick and to perform other miracles. And by the Spirit, he offered his perfect human life up to God as the sacrifice for our sins.

The divine Word became flesh and lived among us. And because he was the divine Word, then, although he was born at a particular time in history, nevertheless he was also before all things. He was before all things, because he was there in the beginning before anything had been created.

Today we come to the remaining verses of the opening of John’s gospel. And John tells us two things about the Word in these verses. Firstly, from the fullness of his grace we have received one blessing after another. That’s how the NIV puts it. A better translation is: of his fullness, or from his fullness, we have all received grace instead of grace. And secondly, no one has ever seen God, but the only Begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, has made God known. I explained last week that while modern English translations prefer phrases like ‘the One and Only Son’ or ‘the Only Son’ to translate the Greek word which John uses in verse 18 and in other places, it’s perhaps more accurate to use the phrase ‘Only Begotten’. The Lord Jesus is God’s Only Begotten Son. Indeed, he is the Only Begotten God. He is begotten from the Father before all ages.

Grace instead of grace

Let’s turn to the first point: of his fullness we have all received grace instead of grace.

John first mentions the Lord’s fullness. And when John refers to the Lord’s fullness, we can think of everything that makes God what he is and without which he would not be God. So, think of God’s power and his holiness and his justice and his knowledge and his goodness and his aseity and so on. And since the Lord Jesus is God, then everything that makes God what he is belongs to the Lord Jesus and is included in his divine fullness.

However, since John refers to the Lord’s grace and truth in verse 14, then that’s perhaps what he has in mind specifically when he refers to the Lord’s fullness. And grace is God’s kindness to sinners. Instead of treating us as our sins deserve, he is good to us. He fills our lives with good things even though we don’t deserve it. And above all, his grace leads to salvation. He graciously saves us from our sin and misery and gives us eternal life, not because of anything we have done or will do, because solely because of Christ. That’s God’s grace. And his truth or truthfulness is his faithfulness. He promised to save his people from our sin and misery. And he kept his promise when God came to earth in the person of his Son to be our Saviour. That’s God’s truthfulness or his faithfulness.

God is full of grace and truthfulness. And since the Lord Jesus is God, then he is full of those things too. And John goes on to say that of his fullness, or from his fullness, we have received grace instead of grace. So, the fullness of his grace and truth has overflown and come down to us. Think of a bath which overflows and the water comes pouring down the sides of the bath and soaks the floor and everything on the floor. And the Lord’s grace and truth overflow from him and they come pouring down to us.

But what does the phrase ‘grace instead of grace’ mean? The NIV translation suggests that John means that we receive one blessing after another. We receive more and more and more of God’s grace. He continually pours out his kindness upon us and we benefit from his grace in more and more ways. And that, of course, is true. God is continually gracious to us.

However, I think John means something more specific than that. And what he means lies in what we read in verse 17, where John contrasts the law which was given to God’s people through Moses and God’s grace and truth which came to us through Jesus Christ.

And what he means is that the giving of God’s law to his people through Moses was a gracious thing for God to do. It was an act of grace on God’s part. He graciously gave his law to his people in the days of Moses.

What do I mean? Well, the law is summarised by the Ten Commandments. And do you remember how the Ten Commandments begin? They don’t begin with ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’ That’s not how the Ten Commandments begin. The Ten Commandments begin with these words: ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.’ The Ten Commandments begin with a declaration about God and what he has done for his people. Who is he? He’s the LORD, their covenant God who graciously chose them to be his people. And he therefore bound himself to them with a promise to be their God. They did not deserve this privilege, but he graciously gave it to them. And what has he done? He saved them. He saved them from slavery in Egypt to bring them to the Promised Land.

That’s how the Ten Commandments begin. The Lord has graciously chosen his people and he has saved them. And then he gives them his commandments to keep. And giving them the commandments was also a gracious thing to do, because his commandments showed them the right way and the best way for them to live. A place where the true God is not worshipped and where children dishonour their parents and where husbands and wives are unfaithful and where people harm and kill one another and steal from one another and lie to one another and resent one another is not a good place to live. But a place where the true God is worshipped and where people love and care for the people around them is a good place to live. And so, giving his people his law was a gracious thing to do.

And in God’s law he showed them what to do whenever they sinned against him. He showed them what sacrifices to offer to avoid his curses and to receive his blessings.

So, giving his law to his people was a gracious thing for God to do. And yet, the law was not enough. It was not enough. The law told them what to do, but it did not help them to keep it. The law told them what God required of them and it showed them how to live a good life. But the law did not help any of them to keep it.

And while the law showed them what sacrifices to offer when they sinned against God, nevertheless it was clear that the blood of bulls and goats could not take away their guilt. The blood of bulls and goats could not deal with their sin once and for all. That’s why the had to repeat the same animal sacrifices over and over and over again. In fact, those animals sacrifices were only a reminder to the people that they were sinners and they needed a better sacrifice for their sins if there were to have forgiveness and peace with God.

And so, the law, while gracious, was also insufficient. It was not enough. And in fact, it pointed beyond itself to something better. It pointed beyond itself to the coming of Christ, who offered himself as the once-for-all, perfect sacrifice for sins when he gave up his perfect human life on the cross to pay for our sins and when he shed his blood to cleanse us from our guilt. And because of what he has done for us by his self-sacrifice on the cross, all who believe in him are justified: pardoned and accepted by God. Though we may have done everything wrong in this life, God treats us as if we’ve done everything right. And he treats us like this even though we have done nothing to deserve it. A mother gives her son a treat when he’s done something to deserve it. But we have done nothing to deserve our salvation. God gives it to us graciously and freely.

So, we can see God’s grace in the giving of the law to his people in the days of Moses. But we see God’s grace — his kindness to sinners — much, much, much more clearly in the coming of Christ and in his death on the cross for our salvation. The people of Israel benefitted from God’s grace to them when he graciously gave them the law. But now that the Word has become flesh and has made his dwelling among us, we have received the grace of the new covenant instead of the grace of the old covenant. We have received more than the people of Israel ever received through Moses. We have received what the law was pointing to. We have received the salvation which their Old Testament sacrifices foreshadowed. And it comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word made flesh who gave up his life to pay for our sins and who died to bring us to God.

So, that’s John’s first point: of his fullness we have all received grace instead of grace. Let’s move on to his second point.

No one have ever seen God

And his second point is that no one has ever seen God, but the only Begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, has made God known.

Is it true that no-one has ever seen God? What about Adam in the beginning? What about Isaiah, who tells us in Isaiah 6 that he saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted. What about Ezekiel who saw the glory of God when he was in exile? Did these men not see the Lord?

In a sense they did see him, but in another sense they did not. We know that Isaiah and Ezekiel saw a vision of the Lord. But seeing a vision of the Lord and seeing the Lord are two different things. In a vision, God appears in our imagination in a visible way, but that’s not the same as seeing him as he is in himself. And then, God sometimes appeared to his people in a visible form. That’s perhaps how he appeared to Adam and Eve in the beginning and it’s how he appeared to Abram when Abram was visited by three strangers, one of whom was the Lord. God took on a visible form so that he could be seen. But again, seeing God appear in a visible form is not the same as seeing him as he really is. And in Exodus 33, when Moses asked to see God’s glory, God told him that he can’t see God’s face, because no one can see God’s face and live. And when the Lord passed by, Moses was allowed to look at God’s back, but he was not allowed to see God’s face.

Will we ever see God as he is? Yes, we will, because that’s the great hope that Christ the Saviour puts before us in the Beatitudes, when he said that the pure in heart will see God. And it’s the great hope that is put before us in Revelation 22 where it says that we will see God’s face in the new heavens and earth. And John tells us in his first letter that when the Lord Jesus appears, we will be like him because we shall see him as he is. And our church’s Larger Catechism says that in the life to come we will become perfectly holy and happy both in body and soul in the company of God’s people and angels and in the immediate vision and enjoyment of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to all eternity. So, our ultimate happiness will be found as we gaze upon the glory of our God in the life to come. Our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever; and we will glorify him for ever in the life to come and we will enjoy being with him for ever.

But how can we see God when God is a spirit and invisible? Some theologians say that we will see him with our intellect. So, we won’t see him with our physical eyes, but with our mind’s eye. He will so fill us with the knowledge of himself that it will be as if we were seeing him. He will give to us the most perfect and clear knowledge of God and of divine things which finite creatures can have of him. And so, we will know him more fully than ever before.

However, others say we will see him with our physical eyes, but what we will see with our physical eyes is God the Son who became flesh. In seeing him in the life to come, we will see God, because he is God. And as the Lord himself says, whoever has seen him has seen the Father.

So, some say we will see God with our intellect, while others say we will see him with our eyes. Or perhaps we’ll see him in another way. But we will see him one day. And in seeing him and all his perfections, we will be perfectly happy and holy for ever.

So, we will see God one day. But John’s point in verse 18 is that for now, in this life, no one as seen God as he is. However, the only Begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the only Begotten God. He’s the only Begotten God, because he was begotten from the Father before all ages. He was begotten, as we were thinking about last week, timelessly and in eternity. So, he did not come into existence at some point of time in the past or in eternity. He has always existed. And he has always existed as the only Begotten Son of God the Father.

And since he is begotten from the Father, then that means that, not only is he from the Father, but he’s the same as the Father. Fathers beget children of the same nature as themselves; and God the Son possesses one and the same nature as the Father. Whatever the Father is, so the Son is. Whatever the Father is in himself, so the Son is in himself. The Father is God and so is the Son. The Father is infinite and eternal and unchangeable and so is the Son. The Father is worthy of all honour and praise and so is the Son. The Son is a repetition of the Father. He is the image of the Father. He is the radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact imprint of his being. The only way they are different from one another is that one is the Father and the other is the Son; one is unbegotten and the other is begotten.

And so, who better to tell us about God than God himself? And to underline for us just how perfectly suited the Son of God is to tell us about God, John adds for us that he is at the Father’s side. More literally, he says that the Son is at the Father’s bosom. And that’s an expression which means there’s a wonderful intimacy between them. A man will let his wife or his child lay their head on his chest. No one else can get that close to him. And while his wife or child have their head on his chest, he might say things to them that he will not say to anyone else. And that’s the picture here: there’s this wonderful intimacy between God the Father and God the Son. And the Father says things to the Son which no one else knows.

But now the Son has come in the flesh and he has made his dwelling among us. And by his presence among us and by the things he said and by the things he did, he made known to the world what God is like. And he has made known to us God’s grace and truth and how, because of Christ, God will not treat us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities. Instead he is willing to forgive us and to remove our sins from us as far as the east is from the west and to cover them over and to blot them out and to remember them no more. And we can know him as our Father who loves us and who cares for us and who will work all things together for our good. We can know God like this in this life.

And then, in the life to come, we’ll know him like never before when we see him as he is; and we’ll enjoy him for ever; and we’ll be perfectly happy and holy in his presence; and we’ll worship him without weariness.

Conclusion

And so, the opening to John’s gospel ends where it began. It began with the Word who was with God in the beginning and who has given us our life and who has given us the light of the knowledge of God. But because we’re sinners, we could not see the light of God and we did not know God. And so, when the time was right, the Son, who was with the Father in the beginning, came to us to give us the knowledge of God and the knowledge of his grace and truth and his salvation.

He came so that we can know God. And later on in the gospel, we’ll hear the Lord Jesus say that this is eternal life. What is eternal life? Eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. The Son came so that you can know God. And whoever knows him through Christ as our Father has eternal life.