John 1:18 - Exposition

No one hath ever yet seen God. Many visions, theophanies, appearances, angelic splendours, in the desert, on the mountain, in the temple, by the river of Chebar, had been granted to the prophets of the Lord; but they have all fallen short of the direct intuition of God as God. Abraham, Israel, Moses, Manoah, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, saw visions, local manifestations, anticipations of the Incarnation; but the apostle here takes the Lord's own word for it ( John 5:37 ), and he elsewhere repeats it ( 1 John 4:12 ). These were but forerunners of the ultimate manifestation of the Logos. "The Glory of the Lord," "the Angel of the Lord," "the Word of the Lord," were not so revealed to patriarchs that they saw God as God. They saw him in the form of light, or of spiritual agency, or of human ministries; but in the deepest sense we must still wait for the purity of heart which will reveal to our weakened faculties the beatific vision. The only begotten Son— or, (God only begotten £ )— who is in (or, on ) the bosom of the Father, he interpreted (him); became the satisfying Exposition, the Declarer, drawing forth from the depths of God all that it is possible that we shall see, know, or realize. This lofty assertion is augmented by the sublime intensification of the earlier phrase, "with God ( πρὸς τὸν θεόν )," by ( εἰς τὸν κόλπον ) , "in or on the bosom of the Father;" i.e. in most intimate and loving fellowship with the Father as the only begotten. The relations of fatherhood and sonship within the substance of the Godhead give new life, warmth, realization, to the vaster, colder, more metaphysical, metaphenomenal relations of θεός and λογός (cf. here Proverbs 8:30 ). Bengel here says, "In lumbis esse dicuntur qui nascentur homines, in sinu sunt qui nati sunt. In sinu Patris erat Filius, quia nunquam non-natus." In view of the contention of Meyer that the language here refers to no age long, eternal indwelling of the Logos with, or of the Son (God only begotten) on the bosom of, the Father, but to the exaltation of the Christ after his ascension, we can only refer to the present tense ( ὁ ὢν ), which from the standpoint of the prologue does not transfer itself to the historical standpoint of the writer at the end of the first century. Lange thinks that the whole of this wonderful utterance is attributed by the evangelist to the Baptist; but the standing of the Baptist, lofty as it is in John's Gospel, after the Baptist came into brief fellowship with the One who was before him, certainly falls short of this insight into his eternal Being. John the beloved disciple could thus speak of the revelation and interpretation of God which was made in the life, words, and death of the Only Begotten, from whose fulness he had received "grace for grace;" but in this verse he is speaking of the timeless condition, the eternal fellowship, of the Only Begotten with the Father, as justifying the fulness of the revelation made in his incarnation.

The prologue forms a key to the entire Gospel. It may have been written after the record of the central principles involved in the life work of Jesus had been completed. Every statement in it may be seen to be derived from the recorded words or acts of the Lord, the revelation of the Father in time, the unveiling of the eternal heart of him who made all things, and by one competent to speak of both eternities. The writer of the prologue speaks of himself as one of a group or society who had had ocular evidence of the perfection and glory of the manifestation. This fellowship of men had found themselves children of God, and in the possession of a life, a light, and a hope which were derived entirely from Jesus Christ, who is undoubtedly in a unique sense declared (though not formally defined) to be "the Word made flesh." In the subsequent narrative we find a graduated series of instructions on the powers of Christ and the opposition of the world to his self-manifestation. Thus ( John 1:1-51 .) the testimony of the Baptist (made after his contact with Christ) to the Person and work of the Lord attributes to him, on prophetic authority, most stupendous functions—those of baptizing with the Holy Spirit, and taking away the sin of the world. He does himself reveal the way to the Father. He is hailed as the "Christ," the "King of Israel," and as the link between heaven and earth, between the invisible and visible, the Divine and the human ( John 1:51 ). In John 2:1-25 , with all its other suggestiveness, Christ displays his creative power, and (cf. John 6:1-71 .) his relation to the world of things, as well as his organic relation to the old covenant. In John 2:1-25 his "body" is the "temple" of God, where his Father dwelt, thus justifying the ἐσκήνωσεν of verse. 14. The pre-existence of Christ as a self-conscious personality in the very substance of Deity is asserted by himself in John 6:62 ; John 8:58 ; John 17:5 , John 17:24 . The fact that he is the Source of all life ( John 1:3 ), is involved in the teaching of the Gospel from end to end. Eternal life is ministered through him, to believers ( John 3:16 , etc., 36). He claims to have life in himself ( John 5:26 ). He is the "Bread of life" for starving humanity ( John 6:35 , John 6:48 ). The words that he speaks are spirit and life ( John 6:63 ). In John 8:12 the φῶς τῆς ζωῆς links the idea of life and light as they are shown to cohere in the prologue. In John 14:6 he declares himself to be "the Truth and the Life," thus sustaining the great generalization. By raising Lazarus he is portrayed as the Restorer of forfeited life, as well as the original Giver of life to men ( John 11:25 ). The ninth chapter records the symbolic event by which he proved himself to be the Sun of the spiritual universe, "the Light of the world" (cf. John 1:4 with John 8:12 ; cf. John 12:36 , John 12:46 ). The whole history of the conflict with the people whom he came to save, with "his own," with the world power, and the death doom, is the material which is generalized in the solemn statements of John 1:5-10 .

The prologue says nothing in express words of Christ's supernatural conception, of his death, or of his resurrection and eternal glory; yet these objective facts are woven through, and involved in, the entire context, for the incarnation of the Eternal Word is the historic basis of the apostle's experience of such a life as that which he proceeds to sketch. The absolute antagonism of the darkness to the light, and the rejection of the light and life by the world, never had such exposition as that which the repudiation and crucifixion of the Son of God gave to them; while the eternal nature of the central life and being of him who, when incarnate, was thus resisted by unbelief renders the resurrection and ultimate and eternal glory a necessity of thought even to these who have not yet seen, but yet have believed.