Gospel in Depth: John 1:1-18 (The Prologue)
From The Source
In The Gospel in Brief, Tolstoy begins his exploration of the Gospels with John’s prologue, and for good reason. These opening verses contain some of the deepest theological claims in all of Scripture: claims about God, creation, and a single human life. They are also among the most easily misunderstood: their language is compact, their concepts layered, and their simplicity deceptive.
Tolstoy’s own reading of the Gospels, however, diverged sharply from historic Christian teaching. Rejecting the miraculous and the divine, he reduced the text to a moral philosophy centered on human ethics rather than divine action. His interpretive move is visible in his translation: where John wrote λόγος, Tolstoy rendered “understanding.” For Tolstoy, “the Word was God” meant that divine reason is universally accessible; for John, it means that a particular man from Nazareth shares the Father’s uncreated nature. That is not a small difference. We will take John at his word: he is not offering ethical abstractions but making claims about reality itself.
In what follows, we will move slowly through John’s prologue, beginning with its opening line. To understand what John is doing, we will listen in more than one voice. His language draws simultaneously from Greek philosophy, Hebrew Scripture, and Aramaic synagogue tradition. Only by hearing all three together can we grasp the force of his claim: that the God who created all things has made Himself known in a human life.
A Note on Method
Greek and Hebrew terms are transliterated in italics and explained on first use. Citations appear as footnotes at the end for those who wish to follow up.
We’ll use few grammatical terms in our analysis:
Article: “the” in English; Greek uses ὁ, ἡ, or τό. A noun without an article is called anarthrous.
Predicate nominative: a noun that follows a linking verb and describes the subject (e.g., in “the Word was God,” God is the predicate nominative).
Tense: Greek tenses convey not just time but aspect. The present often indicates ongoing action (μαρτυρεῖ, “witnesses,” suggesting testimony that continues to speak). The perfect indicates completed action with continuing effects (κέκραγεν, “has cried out,” a past cry still echoing). The aorist indicates simple past action (ἐγένετο, “became” or “came to be”).
Participle: a verbal adjective (e.g., “the one who is,” “having seen”).
The Shape of the Prologue
Many scholars believe the prologue originated as an early Christian hymn, which John incorporated and adapted for his Gospel. The poetic structure, the elevated language, and the distinct vocabulary (words like logos and grace appear here but rarely elsewhere in John) support this view. The prose sections about John the Baptist (verses 6-8 and 15) may be the Evangelist’s insertions into an existing hymn, grounding the cosmic poetry in historical witness.
Whether or not this is correct, the prologue functions as an overture, introducing themes that the rest of the Gospel will develop: light and darkness, life and death, belief and rejection, witness and glory. Like a musical overture, it sounds the melodies before the drama unfolds.
What follows is a study, not a devotional reading. We will move verse by verse, sometimes word by word, pausing to examine Greek grammar, Jewish backgrounds, and patristic interpretation. This requires sustained attention. The prologue repays it.
Genesis Retold
The opening words, Ἐν ἀρχῇ (en arche), “In the beginning,” unmistakably echo Genesis 1:1: בְּרֵאשִׁית (bereshit), “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” John is not merely alluding to Genesis; he is retelling it. Where Genesis begins with God creating through speech (”And God said...”), John reveals that the speech was a person. Where Genesis moves from darkness to light, John announces that the light has come into the world. Where Genesis culminates in the creation of humanity in God’s image, John announces that God has taken on human flesh.
The parallels run deeper: creation through the Word (verse 3), light shining in darkness (verse 5), the world that came into being through Him (verse 10). John reveals the deeper truth of the old story. The God who spoke creation into existence has now spoken Himself into it.
The Church Fathers recognized this as more than literary echo. St. Irenaeus of Lyon called it recapitulation (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις, the “summing up” or “heading up” of all things in Christ): Christ takes up the whole human story and lives it rightly, undoing Adam’s failure, healing the breach. Where Adam was made from the earth and fell, the second Adam descends from heaven and stands. Where the first creation groaned under curse, the new creation begins in the womb of Mary. The prologue sets up the entire Gospel as a new Genesis: the Logos through whom creation came to be now enters the waters at the Jordan; the Word who called light out of darkness now says “I am the light of the world.” John invites us to read every subsequent chapter through this lens. What we are witnessing is not merely a life but a remaking, not merely teaching but re-creation.
John 1:1
Greek: Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
Word-for-word: In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.
English: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Logos (λόγος)
No word in John’s prologue carries more weight than logos. Translated simply as “Word” in English, this rendering conceals more than it reveals. As a Christological title, logos is concentrated in the prologue; elsewhere in John’s Gospel the word appears in its ordinary sense of “word” or “message.” To understand what John meant here, we must trace logos through three streams of thought: Greek philosophy, Hebrew Scripture, and Aramaic tradition.
The Greek Philosophical Tradition
For Greek-speaking readers of John’s day, logos carried centuries of philosophical weight.
Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BC) was the first to use logos as a technical philosophical term. For him, logos was the universal reason governing all things: the hidden pattern beneath apparent chaos, the unity holding together all opposites. “All things come to be according to this logos,” he wrote, “though men fail to comprehend it.”1 The logos was not merely human reasoning; it was the structure of reality itself.
Plato and Aristotle developed the term in different directions: for Plato, the rational principle by which the cosmos was ordered; for Aristotle, the essence or definition of a thing2.
The Stoics (3rd century BC onward) brought these threads together. For them, logos was the active, rational fire permeating the universe, both immanent in creation and the source of all order. They called it the logos spermatikos, the “seminal reason” containing the seeds of all things3. Every human possessed a fragment of this divine logos, which gave them the capacity for rational thought and connected them to the cosmic order.
Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC - 50 AD) stands at the convergence of these traditions. A Jewish philosopher steeped in Greek thought, Philo identified the logos with the creative power described in Hebrew Scripture. For Philo, the logos was an intermediary between the transcendent God and the material world. God was too holy to interact directly with creation, so the logos served as His agent. Philo called the logos the “firstborn son of God,” the “image of God,” and even a “second god.”4
The Hebrew Scriptures
But John was not merely a Greek philosopher. He was a Jew, and behind logos stands the Hebrew concept of dabar (דָּבָר): the Word of God.
In Hebrew thought, dabar is no mere sound or collection of letters. The word of God acts. It creates. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). God speaks, and reality obeys. The dabar of the Lord is the instrument of creation itself.
The dabar also reveals. “The word of the Lord came to me,” say the prophets again and again. God’s word is how He makes Himself known, how He communicates His will, how He enters into relationship with His people.
And the dabar accomplishes. As Isaiah writes: “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose” (Isaiah 55:11). The word of God is not passive. It is living, active, effective.
The Wisdom Tradition
Alongside dabar, Jewish readers would have heard another voice in John’s prologue: the figure of Wisdom (חָכְמָה, hokmah; in Greek, σοφία, sophia). In Proverbs 8, Wisdom speaks as a person present with God before creation, “daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always” (8:30). The Wisdom of Solomon calls her “a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God” (7:26).
Sirach 24 is especially striking. Wisdom says, “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High” (24:3). She then recounts how she sought a dwelling place among the nations, until the Creator commanded her: “Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance” (24:8). The Greek verb is κατασκήνωσον, from the same root as ἐσκήνωσεν in John 1:14. Wisdom tabernacled in Israel; the Logos tabernacles among us. The verbal parallel is too close to be accidental.
The parallels extend further. Wisdom dwelt “in high places,” her “throne was in a pillar of cloud” (24:4), evoking the Shekinah glory that led Israel through the wilderness. She “sought a resting place” and asked “in whose territory shall I abide?” (24:7) until the Creator assigned her to Israel. And after describing her tabernacling in Zion, Sirach delivers the identification: “All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law that Moses commanded us” (24:23). Wisdom, who came forth from God’s mouth and tabernacled in Israel, is the Torah.
John knows this tradition. And he is making a claim: what Sirach said of Wisdom and Torah, John says of a person. The Law came through Moses (verse 17), but the Wisdom that tabernacled in Israel has now tabernacled as a human being. The Logos does not replace the Torah; He is what the Torah was always pointing to. Sirach’s Wisdom found her dwelling in the Temple; John’s Logos pitches His tent in flesh.
The Aramaic Memra
There is yet another layer. By the time of Jesus, most Jews spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. In the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures (called the Targums), translators faced a problem: how to speak of God’s actions in the world without implying that the transcendent, holy God was too directly involved with material creation.
Their solution was the Memra (מֵימְרָא): the “Word.” Where the Hebrew text said “God spoke” or “God appeared,” the Targums often substituted “the Memra of the Lord.” The Memra creates. The Memra saves. The Memra dwells with Israel. In many contexts Memra functions as a tactful avoidance for God’s action, though at times it carries an almost personalized weight.
John’s Radical Claim
John knew all of this. His Greek-speaking audience would hear echoes of the Stoics. His Jewish readers would recognize the dabar of creation and prophecy. Those familiar with synagogue teaching would catch the resonance with the Memra.
But John goes further: he says the Logos became flesh.
For the Stoics, logos remained a cosmic principle. For Philo, an intermediary. In the Targums, a respectful indirectness. John announces that this Logos pitched His tent among us (the literal meaning of “dwelt” in verse 14) and became a human being.
This is the scandal at the heart of John’s prologue. The Word is not a principle or a force or a divine attribute. The Word is a person: Jesus of Nazareth.
A Note on the Grammar
The third clause of verse 1 requires attention: καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, “and the Word was God.” In Greek, the word θεός (”God”) appears here without the definite article (ὁ). Some have argued that this means the Logos was merely “a god,” a divine being of lesser status than the Father.
This reading misunderstands Greek syntax. When a predicate nominative (here, θεός) precedes the verb, it typically drops the article to distinguish it from the subject (here, ὁ λόγος). The grammarian E.C. Colwell demonstrated this pattern in 1933: definite predicate nouns that precede the verb are usually without an article5. The absence of the article does not make θεός indefinite (”a god”); it simply marks θεός as the predicate rather than the subject.
If John had written ὁ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (”the God was the Word”), he would have identified the Logos entirely with the Father, collapsing any distinction between them. If he had written ὁ λόγος ἦν θεῖος (”the Word was divine”), he would have reduced the Logos to a quality or attribute. Instead, he wrote θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος: the Word was God in nature, sharing fully in the divine essence, while remaining personally distinct from the Father. Many interpreters see the force as qualitative: what God was, the Word was.
The grammar thus preserves what later theology would articulate as the doctrine of the Trinity: the Son is fully God, yet He is not the Father.
John 1:2
Greek: οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.
Word-for-word: This one was in beginning with God.
English: “He was in the beginning with God.”
This verse repeats what John has already told us: the Logos was “in the beginning” and “with God.” But the repetition is deliberate.
Note the shift in language. In verse 1, John spoke of “the Logos” (ὁ λόγος). Here he uses “He” (οὗτος, literally “this one”). The Logos is not an abstract principle. He is a person, and John now speaks of Him personally.
This repetition follows a pattern familiar from Hebrew poetry: say something, then say it again with slight variation to drive the point home. Consider Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” The second line restates the first with different words, reinforcing and deepening the meaning. John wants there to be no mistake. The Word did not come into being at some point. The Word did not emerge from God at a later time. Before anything was made, the Word already was, and the Word was already with God.
The Greek phrase πρὸς τὸν θεόν (”with God”) deserves attention. The preposition πρός with the accusative suggests not merely being alongside, but being oriented toward, facing, in active relationship with. The Logos was not simply in God’s presence; the Logos was turned toward God, in eternal communion with the Father.
This verse contains the seed of Trinitarian theology. John does not give us a doctrine of the Trinity, but he gives us its grammar. The Logos is with God: a distinct person, not merely an attribute or mode of the Father. Yet John has already told us the Logos was God: sharing fully in the divine nature. Here is the mystery the Church would later articulate as the doctrine of the Trinity. The Father and the Son are not the same person (the Logos is with God, implying distinction), yet they are one God (the Logos was God, implying unity of essence). The eternal, face-to-face communion described by πρός points to what later theologians (the Cappadocians, and especially John of Damascus) would call perichoresis: the mutual indwelling and interpenetration of the divine persons6. Before creation, before time, the Father and the Son existed in loving relationship.
Consider what this means for who God is in Himself. Before creation, before anything exists to receive divine love, the Father and the Son are turned toward one another in eternal communion. This is not a relationship God enters into; it is what God is. The prologue tells us that when we peer behind creation, we find not emptiness or lonely sovereignty but love already in motion.
This is the deep grammar of Christian theology, and it distinguishes the God of Scripture from every philosophical monad. Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover thinks only of himself, the solitary perfection of self-contemplation. Plotinus’s One is beyond relationship, beyond even being. But the God John describes is, in His innermost being, already a communion of persons. Relationship is not added to God when He creates; relationship is what God eternally is. The Father has always been pouring Himself out toward the Son; the Son has always been returning that love to the Father; and the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father (and for my Catholic brothers and sisters, from the Father and the Son), is the bond of this eternal communion.
This means that love is not merely something God does. Love is what God is. “God is love,” John will later write (1 John 4:8), and the prologue shows us why this can be said. A solitary God might be powerful, might be wise, might even be benevolent toward creatures He later decides to make. But He could not be love, because love requires another. The Trinity reveals that the “other” is eternally within God Himself. Before the world was, there was already the giving and receiving, the knowing and being known, the delight of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father.
John 1:3
Greek: πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν.
Word-for-word: All things through Him came to be, and without Him came to be not even one thing that has come to be.
English: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.”
John now states the Logos’s role in creation. Two phrases make the same point from opposite directions: all things (πάντα) came into being through Him, and not one thing (οὐδὲ ἕν) came into being apart from Him. The repetition is emphatic. Nothing that exists was made without the Logos.
The preposition “through” (διά with the genitive) is significant. The Father creates through the Son. This does not diminish the Son’s agency but describes the shape of divine action: the Father as source, the Son as the one through whom the Father acts. The New Testament repeatedly speaks this way (1 Corinthians 8:6; Hebrews 1:2; Colossians 1:16). John states what the apostolic witness consistently affirms.
Notice the verb. In verses 1-2, John used ἦν (was), the imperfect of “to be,” indicating continuous existence without beginning. Here he switches to ἐγένετο (came into being), the aorist of γίνομαι.
The Logos was; creation came into being.
The distinction is deliberate. The Logos does not belong to the category of things that were made. He is eternal; they are not.
This verse also echoes Genesis 1, where God speaks and creation obeys. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). The dabar of the Lord is the instrument of creation. John identifies the Logos with this creative word: the same power that called the universe into existence is a person, and that person is the one John will soon identify as Jesus Christ.
The theological implication is direct: the Logos is not a creature. He is on the Creator’s side of the line between God and everything else. Whatever was made, was made through Him. He Himself was not made.
This is the ground on which the fourth-century debates were fought. Arius of Alexandria taught that the Logos was the first and highest creature, made by God before all else, through whom everything else was then made. “There was when He was not,” the Arians said. But Athanasius and the Nicene Fathers saw that John’s grammar excluded this: if all things that came to be (ἐγένετο) came to be through the Logos, then the Logos did not come to be. He was (ἦν). The Nicene ὁμοούσιος (”of one substance with the Father”), a term not without its own complicated pre-history, was the response, insisting that the Son shares the Father’s uncreated nature. The grammatical precision of John 1:1-3 is not modern pedantry; it is what the Church bled over.
But a question presses: why create at all? If God is complete in the eternal exchange of Father, Son, and Spirit, if the divine life lacks nothing, why make anything?
The tradition’s answer: creation is overflow, not need. God creates not to acquire something He lacks but to give from the abundance He already possesses. The world exists because divine love is diffusive, because goodness by its nature shares itself. The Neoplatonists spoke of the One overflowing into the Many; the Fathers baptized this insight, grounding it not in impersonal emergence but in personal generosity. Pseudo-Dionysius wrote that “the Good, by its very existence, sends forth upon all things the rays of its goodness.”7 Creation is not a remedy for divine loneliness or a project to complete an unfinished God. It is sheer gift.
This means the world is grace before grace has a name. Before there is a covenant, before there is a chosen people, before there is a manger or a cross, there is already grace: the grace of existence itself, the gift of being rather than nothing. The Logos through whom all things were made is already acting in love. The Incarnation, when it comes, will not introduce love into a loveless system; it will intensify and complete what was present from the first verse of Genesis. Creation and redemption are not two separate acts but one continuous movement of divine self-giving.
John 1:4
Greek: ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
Word-for-word: In Him life was, and the life was the light of-the men.
English: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
John now moves from creation to what the Logos means for humanity. The Logos is not only the agent through whom all things were made; He is the source of life itself.
The Greek word here is ζωή (zoe), not βίος (bios). In Greek, bios refers to biological existence, the span of a life, its livelihood. Zoe runs deeper: it is life in its fullest sense, vital power, the animating force. Throughout John’s Gospel, zoe carries the weight of divine, eternal life. When Jesus says “I came that they may have life (zoe) and have it abundantly” (John 10:10), He does not mean merely continued existence. He means participation in the life of God.
John then links life to light: “the life was the light of men.” These two terms, life and light, form a pair that runs through the entire Gospel. Jesus will later declare “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12) and “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The prologue introduces what the rest of the Gospel will unfold.
What does it mean to say that life is light? Light in Scripture is consistently associated with revelation, knowledge, and the presence of God. In Genesis 1, light is the first thing God creates, the first word spoken into the darkness. The Psalmist writes, “In your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9). To have the life of the Logos is to be illuminated, to see reality as it truly is, to know God.
The phrase “of men” (τῶν ἀνθρώπων) indicates that this light is for humanity. The Logos did not remain a hidden principle or a distant cosmic force. The life that is in Him shines outward, toward us.
John 1:5
Greek: καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
Word-for-word: And the light in the darkness shines, and the darkness did not seize it.
English: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
The light now meets opposition. John introduces darkness (σκοτία), and with it, the first hint of conflict in the prologue.
Notice the tense of the verb φαίνει (shines): it is present, not past. The light shines, continuously, persistently. The Logos, the life, the light: He continues to shine.
The verb κατέλαβεν (katelaben) at the end of the verse carries a double meaning that translators must choose between, though John likely intended both. The word can mean “to overcome” or “to overpower,” as in a battle. It can also mean “to comprehend” or “to grasp,” as in understanding. The darkness did not overcome the light; it also did not understand it.
Both meanings belong together. The darkness represents active opposition: sin, evil, the rejection of God. It is both unable to extinguish the light and unable to comprehend what it is dealing with. The light persists, and the darkness cannot make sense of why.
This imagery has deep roots in the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesied: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isaiah 9:2). The Psalmist declares: “For it is You who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness” (Psalm 18:28). And Daniel speaks of God: “He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him” (Daniel 2:22).
Jewish readers of John’s time would also be familiar with the conflict between light and darkness in apocalyptic literature. The Qumran texts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, though not canonical Scripture, reflect how widespread this imagery was in Second Temple Judaism8.
But what is darkness? The question is not merely poetic. Ancient philosophy had developed a way of thinking about evil and negation that would prove decisive for Christian theology. The Augustinian tradition, drawing on these Neoplatonic insights, answers: darkness is not a rival substance but privation, the absence of light. Evil has no being of its own; it is the corruption of good, the refusal of what is. Darkness is what happens when light is rejected or blocked; it has no independent existence apart from the light it negates. This is why hell, in the Christian tradition, is understood not as a realm ruled by some rival god but as separation from God, the source of all life and goodness. To be in darkness is to be away from the light; to be in hell is to be away from God. The horror is not the presence of something but the absence of everything that matters.
This matters because it means the conflict of verse 5 is not between two equal powers. This is not Zoroastrian dualism, where light and darkness wage an evenly matched war. The light shines, and the darkness has no resources to extinguish it because darkness has no resources at all. It can only refuse. It can only fail to comprehend. The verb οὐ κατέλαβεν carries a note of futility: the darkness tried and could not. Non-being cannot defeat being; the shadow cannot swallow its source.
Genesis 1 depicts God creating light in the midst of primordial darkness. John echoes this: the light shines in the darkness, not after the darkness has been removed. The battle is ongoing, but its outcome is never in doubt. The darkness is real, the opposition is fierce, but the victory is not uncertain. It is already secured in the nature of what light and darkness are.
John 1:6-8
Greek (v. 6): Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος ἀπεσταλμένος παρὰ θεοῦ, ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ἰωάννης.
Word-for-word: There came a man sent from God, name to him John.
English: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
Greek (v. 7): οὗτος ἦλθεν εἰς μαρτυρίαν, ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός, ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσιν δι’ αὐτοῦ.
Word-for-word: This one came for witness, that he might witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him.
English: “He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.”
Greek (v. 8): οὐκ ἦν ἐκεῖνος τὸ φῶς, ἀλλ’ ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός.
Word-for-word: Not was that-one the light, but that he-might-witness concerning the light.
English: “He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.”
The prologue shifts. After five verses of cosmic theology, a man appears: John the Baptist. (The author, traditionally identified as the Apostle John, never names himself; when “John” appears in this Gospel, it refers to the Baptist.)
Notice the verb in verse 6: ἐγένετο (egeneto), “there came” or “came into being.” This is the same verb used in verse 3 for creation. The Logos was (ἦν); John the Baptist came into being (ἐγένετο). The contrast is deliberate. The Logos is eternal; John is a creature, a man with a beginning. Yet this man was ἀπεσταλμένος (apestalmenos), “sent,” sharing its root with ἀπόστολος (apostolos). His authority derives not from himself but from the One who sent him.
His purpose is stated in verse 7: μαρτυρία (martyria), witness. The word, from which we get “martyr,” originally meant one who testifies to what he has seen. John the Baptist would become both kinds of witness: one who testified, and one who died for his testimony. He came “that all might believe through him” (ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσιν δι’ αὐτοῦ). The scope is universal, and the mechanism is testimony. He is an instrument, pointing beyond himself.
Verse 8 clarifies: he was not the light. The denial is emphatic, using the distancing pronoun ἐκεῖνος (ekeinos), “that one.” Why does the Evangelist press this point? John the Baptist was a towering figure. Some wondered if he might be the Messiah (Luke 3:15). Decades later, disciples of the Baptist who had not yet heard of Jesus could still be found (Acts 19:1-7). The Gospel, likely written in Ephesus where such disciples were present, takes care to establish the proper order: the Baptist was great, but he was not the light. He was a lamp, perhaps (John 5:35), but not the source.
The theme of witness runs through the entire Fourth Gospel. The Baptist witnesses. The Father witnesses. The works of Jesus witness. The Scriptures witness. The Spirit witnesses. The disciples witness. To encounter this Gospel is to be confronted with testimony and asked: will you believe?
John 1:9
Greek: Ἦν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν, ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον, ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον.
Word-for-word: The true light was [the one] enlightening every person, coming into the world.
English: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
The Evangelist returns to the light itself. This is τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν, “the true light.” The Greek word ἀληθινός (alethinos) means genuine, real, authentic: the original of which all others are copies. There are many lights in the world: the prophets, the Law, John the Baptist himself. But this is the true light, the source from which all other lights derive whatever brightness they possess.
This light φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον, “enlightens every person.” The scope is universal. The light does not shine only for Israel, only for the righteous, only for the wise. It shines on every human being.
This verse has generated significant debate. Does it teach a general revelation available to all, prior to and apart from the Gospel? Some traditions have read it this way: the Quakers found here the “inner light” present in every soul; certain Catholic readings see the natural knowledge of God. Others insist the verse describes what the Logos does when He comes, not some prior illumination. The tension is real: if the light enlightens everyone, why does the darkness not comprehend (verse 5)? Why does the world not know Him (verse 10)? John does not resolve this fully here. The light shines universally; the reception is not universal. Both claims stand, and the mystery between them is the space in which the drama of belief and unbelief unfolds.
The phrase ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον, “coming into the world,” marks a turning point. The eternal Logos, who was in the beginning with God, is now approaching the world. The Incarnation is near.
A grammatical note: the participle ἐρχόμενον could modify either “light” or “every person.” If it modifies “every person,” the verse would read: “the true light enlightens every person coming into the world,” a statement about universal human illumination at birth. If it modifies “light,” the emphasis falls on the Incarnation: the true light “was coming into the world.” Most modern translations prefer the latter, and the flow of the prologue supports it: verse 9 announces the light’s approach, verse 10 describes His arrival, verse 14 states His becoming flesh.
The word κόσμος (kosmos) appears here for the first time in the prologue. In John’s Gospel, this word carries multiple meanings. It can mean the created order, the world God made. It can mean humanity, the people of the world. And it can mean the world system set in opposition to God, the realm of darkness that refuses the light. All three meanings will come into play as the prologue continues. For now, the emphasis is simple: the true light was coming into the world. He was not distant. He was entering.
John 1:10
Greek: ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν, καὶ ὁ κόσμος δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔγνω.
Word-for-word: In the world He was, and the world through Him came to be, and the world did not know Him.
English: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.”
The word κόσμος appears three times in this single verse, each time with increasing weight.
First: “He was in the world.” The Logos was present in His own creation. He was not absent, not distant, not hidden behind veils. He was here.
Second: “The world was made through Him.” This echoes verse 3. The world owes its existence to the very One standing within it. He is not a visitor; He is the source.
Third: “The world did not know Him.” Here the tragedy begins. The Greek word ἔγνω (egno), from γινώσκω (ginosko), means more than intellectual awareness. It means to recognize, to acknowledge, to know personally: knowing the Creator as Creator. The world failed to recognize its own source. The One through whom all things came into being walked among His own handiwork, and His handiwork treated Him as a stranger.
The Logos does not rescue creation from a distance. He enters it. The One through whom the κόσμος came to be stands within the κόσμος, and the κόσμος does not know Him. The darkness of verse 5 now becomes personal.
John 1:11
Greek: εἰς τὰ ἴδια ἦλθεν, καὶ οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐ παρέλαβον.
Word-for-word: To His own He came, and His own people did not receive Him.
English: “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.”
The tragedy deepens. Verse 10 spoke of the world’s failure to recognize its Creator. Now John narrows the focus: the Logos came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
The Greek contains a subtle but significant shift. The first “His own” is τὰ ἴδια (ta idia), neuter plural: His own things, His own place, His own home. The second “His own” is οἱ ἴδιοι (hoi idioi), masculine plural: His own people. He came to His homeland, and His own people rejected Him.
The reference is to Israel. God had chosen Israel as His special possession, His inheritance among the nations. “You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 7:6). The Law was given to Israel. The prophets were sent to Israel. The promises were made to Israel. When the Logos came, He came first to Israel.
And yet, in the decisive public sense, His own did not receive Him.
This was not without precedent. The history of Israel is a history of rejected messengers. Moses was rejected by his own people in the wilderness. The prophets were ignored, persecuted, killed. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” Jesus would later cry (Matthew 23:37). Isaiah’s Suffering Servant was “despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:3). The pattern is consistent: God sends, Israel refuses. Yet God keeps sending. He sent the Law through Moses. He sent warnings through the prophets. He sent the voice of John the Baptist. And finally, He sent His own Son. Jesus Himself told this story in the parable of the tenants: the owner of the vineyard sent servant after servant, and each was beaten or killed. “He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him’” (Mark 12:6-7).
The verb παρέλαβον (parelabon), from παραλαμβάνω, means to receive, to accept, to take to oneself. It implies welcome, hospitality, embrace. The Logos came home, and home did not take Him in. The rejection is personal, not merely intellectual. This is not a failure of understanding, as in verse 10, but a refusal of welcome.
There is deep grief here. The Father sent the Son to His own covenant people, the people prepared for centuries to receive Him. The Law pointed to Him. The prophets spoke of Him. The sacrifices foreshadowed Him. Every Passover lamb, every Day of Atonement, every promise of a coming King: all of it was preparation for this moment. And when the moment came, they did not want Him.
John will develop this theme throughout his Gospel. Jesus comes to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem does not want Him. He comes to the Temple, and the religious leaders plot against Him. He offers Himself to the nation, and the nation cries out for His crucifixion. The prologue anticipates all of this in a single, devastating sentence.
John 1:12
Greek: ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ.
Word-for-word: As many as received Him, to them He gave authority to become children of God, to those believing in His name.
English: “But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
The tone shifts. After the darkness of verses 10-11, light breaks through. Not everyone rejected Him. Some received Him, and to these He gave something extraordinary.
The word δέ (de), “but,” marks the turn. His own did not receive Him, but some did. The phrase ὅσοι ἔλαβον (hosoi elabon), “as many as received,” opens the door beyond Israel. This is no longer about one nation. Whoever receives Him, from any nation, any background, any past, enters into this promise. Yet the first to receive Him were also Jews: the apostles, the women at the tomb, the early Jerusalem church. The divide between reception and rejection runs through Israel, not around it.
To receive Him is to believe in His name. The two phrases are parallel: “to all who received Him” is explained by “who believed in His name.” In Hebrew thought, the name is not merely a label. The name represents the person: their character, their identity, their authority. To believe in the name of Jesus is to trust in who He is, to place one’s confidence in His person and work.
To those who receive and believe, He gives ἐξουσίαν (exousian): authority, right, power. This is not mere permission, as though God reluctantly allows us into His family. It is empowerment, the granting of a real and legitimate standing. The believer has the right to become a child of God because God Himself has given that right.
The word for children here is τέκνα (tekna), not υἱοί (huioi). Both can be translated “children” or “sons,” but they carry different emphases. Huioi stresses legal standing and inheritance rights. Tekna stresses origin, birth, intimate relationship. John chooses the word that emphasizes being born of God, belonging to God’s own family by origin and nature. This prepares for verse 13, which will speak explicitly of divine birth.
The infinitive γενέσθαι (genesthai), “to become,” indicates transformation. Those who receive Christ do not merely receive a new status; they become something they were not before. They are not children of God by nature, as the Logos is the eternal Son. They become children by grace, through receiving the One who has the authority to make them so.
Here is the Gospel in miniature: receive Christ, believe in His name, and become a child of God. The rejection of verses 10-11 is real, but it is not the final word. A new family is being gathered, drawn not from one nation but from all who will receive Him.
Notice what is not said. John does not say that those who kept the Law became children of God, or those who performed sufficient works, or those who were born into the right family. The entry point is receiving and believing. This is grace: God gives, we receive. As St. Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
This does not make works irrelevant. Living faith bears fruit (James 2:26). But the order matters: we do not work our way into God’s family and then receive Christ as a reward. We receive Christ by faith, and from that reception flows a transformed life. Works are fruit, not root.
John 1:13
Greek: οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ’ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν.
Word-for-word: who not from bloods nor from will of flesh nor from will of man but from God were born.
English: “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
John now explains how one becomes a child of God. It is not by natural means. Three negatives pile up before the positive arrives.
First: not ἐξ αἱμάτων (ex haimaton), “from bloods.” The plural is unusual. It likely refers to bloodline, ancestry, the mingling of parental blood that produces a child. Being born into the right family does not make one a child of God. Jewish ancestry, though precious, is not sufficient. As John the Baptist warned, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).
Second: not ἐκ θελήματος σαρκός (ek thelematos sarkos), “from the will of the flesh.” This refers to natural human desire, the biological impulse that leads to procreation. The new birth does not arise from human instinct or bodily drives.
Third: not ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρός (ek thelematos andros), “from the will of a man.” The word ἀνήρ (aner) means specifically a male, often a husband. This may refer to the husband’s initiative in procreation, or more broadly to any human decision or plan. Either way, the point is clear: no human will can produce this birth.
Then the positive: ἀλλ’ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν, “but from God they were born.” The verb ἐγεννήθησαν (egennethesan) is passive. God is the actor. These children did not birth themselves; they were born. And the source of their birth is God Himself.
This is the new birth, the regeneration that Jesus will later explain to Nicodemus: “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Nicodemus, thinking in natural terms, asks how a man can enter his mother’s womb a second time. Jesus answers that he must be “born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). The prologue anticipates this teaching. To become a child of God is to undergo a birth as real as physical birth, but with a different origin entirely.
The contrast with natural birth is total. Blood, flesh, human will: none of these produce children of God. Only God can. This is why receiving Christ is not a human achievement but a divine gift. We do not generate our own spiritual life; we receive it from the One who alone can give it.
A textual note: some early Latin manuscripts and Church Fathers (Irenaeus, Tertullian) read a singular verb here: “who was born” (ὃς ἐγεννήθη) rather than “who were born” (οἳ ἐγεννήθησαν). This singular reading would refer to Christ’s virgin birth rather than to believers’ spiritual birth. Most scholars consider this a secondary reading, an early theological interpretation rather than the original text, though some (notably Bart Ehrman) have argued the singular was original and was later changed to avoid adoptionist implications. The plural is strongly supported by the Greek manuscript tradition and fits the context: verse 12 speaks of those who received Christ becoming children of God, and verse 13 explains how that birth occurs.
Yet the textual variant points to a real connection. Believers are born of God (verse 13); the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. Our divine birth is derivative; His is original. What verse 14 will now announce is the ground that makes verse 13 possible: the eternal Son enters human nature so that humans might enter the life of God.
John 1:14
Greek: Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.
Word-for-word: And the Word flesh became and tabernacled among us, and we beheld the glory of Him, glory as of an only-begotten from Father, full of grace and truth.
English: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
This is the climax of the prologue. Everything has led here.
Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο: “And the Word became flesh.” The eternal Logos, who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God, through whom all things came to be: He became σάρξ (sarx), flesh.
The word σάρξ is deliberately physical. It does not mean merely “human” in some abstract sense. It means flesh: the soft, vulnerable, mortal stuff of which bodies are made. The Logos did not merely appear in human form, like an angel taking on a temporary disguise. He became what we are. He took on human nature in its fullness, with all its weakness and limitation. He hungered. He thirsted. He wept. He bled. He died.
The fullness matters. Apollinaris of Laodicea, in the fourth century, tried to protect Christ’s divinity by denying His full humanity: the Logos, he argued, replaced the human rational soul in Christ. But the Church rejected this. Gregory Nazianzen’s axiom became definitive: “What is not assumed is not healed.”9 If Christ did not take on a human mind, human minds are not saved. If He did not take on human will, human wills remain broken. The Incarnation must be complete or it accomplishes nothing. σάρξ means all of it.
This would have been offensive to both Greek and Jewish ears. For the Greeks, the divine was by definition unchanging, impassible, untouched by matter. The idea that the Logos, the rational principle of the cosmos, would become flesh was absurd. For Jews, the transcendence of God was a foundational conviction. God dwells in unapproachable light. No one can see God and live. And yet John announces that this God has taken on flesh and moved into the neighborhood.
The verb ἐσκήνωσεν (eskenosen) means “dwelt,” but more literally “pitched His tent” or “tabernacled.” The connection to the Old Testament is unmistakable. In the wilderness, God dwelt among His people in the Tabernacle (σκηνή, skene), the tent of meeting where His presence was manifest. The glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:34). Now John announces that the Logos has tabernacled among us. The Word is the new Tabernacle, the place where God’s presence dwells in the midst of His people.
And what did those who encountered Him see? Δόξαν, glory. “We beheld His glory,” John writes. The verb ἐθεασάμεθα (etheasametha) means to gaze upon, to observe with attention. This is eyewitness language. John is not reporting secondhand information. He saw.
The glory he saw was δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, “glory as of an only-begotten from the Father.” The word μονογενής (monogenes) has been variously translated “only-begotten,” “one and only,” or “unique.” The debate centers on etymology: does the word derive from γεννάω (gennao, “to beget”), or from γένος (genos, “kind”)? Modern lexicography favors the latter, yielding “one of a kind” or “unique.”10 The Nicene Creed’s “begotten, not made” reflects an earlier understanding, but the theological point remains stable in either case: the Son’s relationship to the Father is unlike any other. He is not one son among many. He is the Father’s only Son, uniquely beloved, uniquely close. The glory that shone through the flesh of Jesus was the very glory of God, the glory proper to the eternal Son.
The verse ends with πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας, “full of grace and truth.” This phrase echoes the Hebrew of Exodus 34:6, where the Lord passes before Moses and proclaims Himself as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת, hesed ve’emet). Grace and truth, love and faithfulness: these are the attributes of the God of Israel. John is saying that what Moses glimpsed on Sinai has now been fully revealed in Jesus. The Word made flesh is the visible embodiment of the invisible God’s character.
Excursus: The Theology of the Incarnation
The Cost of Becoming Flesh
Let us not pass too quickly over what it meant for the eternal Logos to become σάρξ. There is something here that approaches what St. Paul calls κένωσις (kenosis), self-emptying: “though He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6-7).
The One who was face-to-face with the Father from eternity, enters the far country of human existence. He does not cease to be God; the tradition has always insisted on this. But He assumes limitation, mortality, the whole weight of creatureliness. The One who upholds all things by the word of His power learns to walk. The One who knows all things asks questions. The One who is life itself dies.
The tradition speaks of this with trembling. What did it mean for infinite consciousness to be housed in a finite brain? For the One who existed before time to experience duration, to wait, to not-yet-know-what-comes-next? We cannot fully answer these questions, but the prologue insists we ask them. The Word became flesh. The eternal entered time. The Creator became creature. The descent is real, and it cost something.
The Exchange: Theosis
But the Incarnation is not merely revelation, not merely rescue. It is the mechanism by which humanity is drawn into the life of God.
The Church Fathers saw in the prologue a great exchange. The Word became flesh (verse 14) so that those born of flesh might become children of God (verses 12-13). The logic runs in both directions: the Logos descends into our nature so that we might ascend into His. St. Athanasius put it memorably: “He became human that we might become divine.”11 St. Irenaeus: “He became what we are so that we might become what He is.”12
This is theosis, deification, the Orthodox East’s great theme (though not absent from the West: Aquinas speaks of our becoming “partakers of the divine nature,” and the Western catechetical tradition quotes Athanasius approvingly13): not that we become God by nature (that would be pantheism), but that we become partakers of the divine nature by grace (2 Peter 1:4). The Son who is Son by nature makes us sons and daughters by adoption. The Logos who is Life (verse 4) shares that life with those who receive Him.
The prologue is not just telling us who Jesus is. It is telling us what His coming makes possible for us. The arc runs from eternal Logos (verse 1) to incarnate Son (verse 14) to adopted children (verses 12-13), and we are caught up in its trajectory. The Word did not become flesh merely to display God’s character or to teach us moral truths. He became flesh so that flesh might be sanctified, so that human nature might be united to divine nature in His own person, and so that we who share His humanity might come to share His divinity.
The Sanctification of Matter
If the Word became flesh, then matter can bear divinity. This is the theological foundation for everything that follows in Christian practice.
The Incarnation declares that spirit and matter are not enemies, that the material world is not a prison from which the soul must escape. God can be encountered in bread and wine, in water and oil, in wood and paint. The iconoclast controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries were fought on this ground. St. John of Damascus defended the veneration of icons by pointing to the Incarnation: because God took flesh, flesh can depict God14. The material world, far from being an obstacle to the divine, has become its vehicle.
This is why the Orthodox and Catholic traditions insist on sacraments, on the real presence, on the holiness of physical things. It is why we kiss icons and bless water and anoint with oil. Verse 14 underwrites the entire material spirituality of Christianity. The gnostic temptation, always present, is to spiritualize everything, to treat the body as husk and the soul as kernel. But “the Word became flesh” is the permanent rebuke to every such dualism.
The Scandal of Particularity
The Logos through whom all things were made becomes one man in one place at one time. The universal enters through the utterly specific.
This is the great stumbling block: not divinity in general but divinity in Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean peasant born under Augustus, executed under Pontius Pilate. The One through whom the galaxies exist had a mother. The Wisdom that ordered the cosmos learned to speak Aramaic. The prologue holds together the cosmic and the particular without flinching.
Many find this offensive. Surely the Absolute, if it exists, must be accessible everywhere, through any path, in any name? But the prologue says otherwise. The light that enlightens every person (verse 9) is not a vague spiritual luminosity but a specific man who could be touched and heard and seen. “We beheld His glory.” Not “we intuited a transcendent principle” but “we saw Him.” The particular is not a limitation on the universal but its only genuine mode of entry into history.
Later Christological language tried to safeguard this mystery. Following St. Cyril of Alexandria, the Armenian and Oriental Orthodox confess that after the Incarnation Christ is one, fully divine and fully human, without confusion or separation. The Chalcedonian tradition expresses this with “two natures in one person,” while the Miaphysite tradition prefers Cyril’s “one incarnate nature of God the Word” (mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene) as a way of insisting on the unity of the person. In either idiom, John’s claim stands: the Maker became what He made, and became it in this particular man, at this particular time, in this particular place.
John 1:15
Greek: Ἰωάννης μαρτυρεῖ περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ κέκραγεν λέγων· οὗτος ἦν ὃν εἶπον· ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν, ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν.
Word-for-word: John witnesses concerning Him and has cried out saying: This was [He] whom I said: The one after me coming before me has become, because first of me He was.
English: “John bore witness about Him, and cried out, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.”’”
John the Baptist reappears. The Evangelist interrupts the flow of the prologue to return to the witness introduced in verses 6-8. The testimony of the Baptist is too important to leave aside.
The verb μαρτυρεῖ (martyrei) is present tense: John “witnesses,” not merely “witnessed.” His testimony continues to speak. And the verb κέκραγεν (kekragen), “has cried out,” is perfect tense, indicating an action in the past with ongoing effects. The Baptist’s cry still echoes.
The content of his testimony is a paradox: “He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.”
In chronological terms, Jesus came after John. John was born first. John began his ministry first. Jesus came to John’s baptism as one coming after. And yet, John declares, this One who comes after ranks before him. The Greek ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν (emprosthen mou gegonen) means “has become before me” in the sense of taking precedence, holding a higher position.
Why? Ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν: “because He was before me.” Here is the explanation. Jesus ranks before John not because of superior virtue or greater crowds, but because He existed before John. The One born after John in time was before John in eternity. John the Baptist was a man with a beginning; the Logos was in the beginning.
This testimony from John the Baptist confirms what the prologue has been saying from the start. The One who became flesh is the eternal Word. His priority is intrinsic. He does not become great; He is great, and always was.
The humility of the Baptist is striking. He was a figure of immense stature in Israel, the greatest of the prophets according to Jesus Himself (Matthew 11:11). Yet his message was always the same: there is One greater coming. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
John 1:16
Greek: ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν καὶ χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος.
Word-for-word: Because out of the fullness of Him we all received, and grace upon grace.
English: “For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”
The Evangelist now speaks for all believers. The word ἡμεῖς πάντες (hemeis pantes), “we all,” is emphatic. This is not the experience of a select few. Everyone who has received Christ has received from His fullness.
The word πλήρωμα (pleroma), “fullness,” connects back to verse 14: the Word made flesh was πλήρης, “full,” of grace and truth15. His fullness is not abstract. It overflows. We receive from it.
The phrase χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος (charin anti charitos) has been translated in different ways. The preposition ἀντί (anti) can mean “in place of” or “in exchange for,” leading some to translate “grace in place of grace”: one wave of grace replacing the previous, each new gift arriving as the last is received. Others take it as “grace upon grace”: grace added to grace, accumulating, compounding.
Either reading points to the same reality: the grace of Christ is inexhaustible. It does not run dry. There is always more. As we receive, more is given. The Christian life is not a single moment of receiving followed by self-sufficiency. It is continuous dependence on the One whose fullness never diminishes.
This is why Jesus will later say, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The life we live as children of God is sustained moment by moment by grace flowing from the incarnate Word. We do not store up enough grace to manage on our own. We return again and again to the source.
John 1:17
Greek: ὅτι ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη, ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο.
Word-for-word: Because the law through Moses was given, the grace and the truth through Jesus Christ came.
English: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
Here, for the first time in the Gospel, the name appears: Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, Jesus Christ. The prologue has been speaking of the Logos, the Word, the light, the life. Now John names Him. The cosmic figure of verses 1-5 and the incarnate presence of verse 14 is Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah.
The verse draws a contrast, but interpreters have often misread its nature. John is not setting Moses against Christ as enemies, nor the Law against grace as opposites. The structure is comparative, not adversarial.
Notice the verbs. The Law ἐδόθη (edothe), “was given,” a passive verb indicating that Moses received something and passed it on. Moses was an intermediary. He did not originate the Law; he delivered it. Grace and truth, however, ἐγένετο (egeneto), “came” or “came to be.” This is the same verb used for the Incarnation in verse 14: the Word “became” flesh. Grace and truth did not merely arrive through Christ as through a messenger. They came into being in Him. He is their embodiment, not merely their courier.
The Law was a gift. The Torah was God’s instruction to Israel, a mark of His covenant love. “He declares His word to Jacob, His statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation” (Psalm 147:19-20). Israel did not earn it; God gave it.
But the Law, for all its goodness, was preparatory. St. Paul calls it a παιδαγωγός (paidagogos), a tutor leading to Christ (Galatians 3:24). The Law revealed God’s character and exposed human inability to meet His standard. It pointed forward to something more.
That “more” is χάρις καὶ ἀλήθεια, grace and truth. The phrase echoes Exodus 34:6, where the Lord proclaims Himself as חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת (hesed ve’emet), “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” John already used this phrase in verse 14. Now he repeats it to drive home the point: what was proclaimed at Sinai has been embodied in Jesus. Moses heard God’s character described. In Christ, that character is visible.
The contrast, then, is not between bad and good, but between partial and complete, between promise and fulfillment. The Law was true, but it was not the full truth. It was gracious, but not the fullness of grace. Jesus does not abolish Moses; He fulfills him. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” Jesus will later say. “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).
For the Armenian liturgical tradition, this fulfillment is celebrated every time the Gospel is processed through the nave. The deacon carries the Gospel book, the written Word, but the words within point to the living Word. The Law written on tablets of stone finds its completion in the Word made flesh.
John 1:18
Greek: θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε· μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.
Word-for-word: God no one has seen ever; the only-begotten God, the one being in the bosom of the Father, that one has made known.
English: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known.”
The prologue ends where it began: with God. But now we know something we could not have known in verse 1. The God whom no one has ever seen has been made known.
The opening statement is absolute: θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε, “God no one has ever seen.” The verb ἑώρακεν (heoraken) is perfect tense, indicating a settled state. No human being, at any point in history, has seen God directly. This echoes Exodus 33:20, where the Lord tells Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” Even Moses, who spoke with God “face to face” (Exodus 33:11), was permitted only to see God’s back as His glory passed by (Exodus 33:23). The prophets saw visions; they did not see the divine essence.
The invisibility of God is not a defect to be overcome but a truth about His nature. God is spirit (John 4:24). He dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16). Finite creatures cannot contain or comprehend the infinite. This is not bad news; it is simply the reality of the difference between Creator and creation.
And yet, John has just told us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and “we beheld His glory” (verse 14). How can both be true? No one has seen God, yet those who encountered Jesus saw the glory of God?
The answer lies in the second half of the verse. The μονογενὴς θεός (monogenes theos), “the only-begotten God,” has made Him known.
A textual note: some ancient manuscripts read μονογενὴς υἱός (monogenes huios), “the only-begotten Son,” rather than μονογενὴς θεός, “the only-begotten God.” The earliest and most reliable manuscripts support θεός, and this is the reading followed by most modern critical editions. The theological weight is the same in either case: the One who reveals the Father is Himself divine.
If we accept the μονογενὴς θεός reading, the prologue forms an inclusio: it opens with θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (”the Word was God”) and closes with μονογενὴς θεός (”the only-begotten God has made Him known”). The divine identity announced at the beginning is reaffirmed at the end, now with the added note that this God has been revealed. The structure is deliberate: we begin in eternity with the Word who is God; we end with the God who has made Himself known in time.
The phrase ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός, “who is in the bosom of the Father,” describes the Son’s relationship to the Father in terms of intimate closeness. The “bosom” (κόλπος, kolpos) is the chest, the place of embrace. At a meal, the place of honor was to recline at the host’s bosom (see John 13:23, where the beloved disciple reclines at Jesus’ bosom). The Son is not distant from the Father. He is eternally close, in the most intimate possible communion.
Notice the present participle: ὁ ὤν, “the one who is.” Not “the one who was” in the Father’s bosom before the Incarnation, as though He left that place to come to earth. He is in the Father’s bosom, even now, even as flesh, even as the one speaking to us through John’s Gospel. The Incarnation did not sever the Son from the Father. The eternal communion continues.
The final word is ἐξηγήσατο (exegesato), from which we get “exegesis.” It means to lead out, to unfold, to interpret, to make known. The Son is the exegete of the Father. He does not merely tell us about God; He interprets God to us. He makes the invisible visible, the unknowable knowable, the unapproachable approachable.
This is the answer to the human predicament. We cannot ascend to see God. We cannot by our own effort penetrate the unapproachable light. But God has descended. The Word has become flesh. The One who eternally dwells in the Father’s bosom has come to us and has made the Father known. To see Jesus is to see what the Father is like (John 14:9).
The prologue thus ends with a statement of epistemology: how do we know God? Not by speculation, not by mystical ascent, not by philosophical reasoning alone. We know God because the Son has revealed Him.
But this raises a further question: why is testimony the mode of Christian knowing rather than direct vision? Why must we believe the witness of others rather than see for ourselves?
The answer is embedded in the verse itself. No one has seen God; the Son, who is in the Father’s bosom, has made Him known. We know God not by ascending to see Him ourselves but by receiving the testimony of the One who has seen, who is eternally in the place of seeing. And we receive that testimony through the witnesses who encountered Him in the flesh: John the Baptist (”he came as a witness,” verse 7), the Evangelist (”we beheld His glory,” verse 14), the apostolic community that passed down what they saw and heard.
This is not a defect in Christian epistemology. It is its structure. “Faith comes from hearing,” Paul writes (Romans 10:17). We were not there when the Word became flesh, but we have received the testimony of those who were. We have not seen the risen Lord with our own eyes, but Thomas did, and he told others, and they told others, and the chain of witness reaches to us. This is how the knowledge of God travels through history: not by each generation achieving its own vision of the divine, but by each generation receiving and passing on what was revealed once for all in Jesus Christ.
All Christian theology is, in this sense, a response to the exegesis performed by Jesus Christ, received through the testimony of those who beheld it.
Conclusion
John’s prologue is complete. In eighteen verses, the Evangelist has taken us from eternity to history, from the Word with God to the Word made flesh, from cosmic creation to personal revelation. The Logos who was in the beginning, through whom all things were made, has entered His own creation, been rejected by His own people, and yet made children of God out of all who receive Him. The One whom no one has ever seen has made God known.
The rest of the Gospel will unfold what the prologue has compressed. The signs Jesus performs, the discourses He delivers, the conflicts He endures, the death He dies, the resurrection that vindicates Him: all of it is the exegesis of the Father by the Son. To read John’s Gospel is to watch the Logos at work, revealing the invisible God in visible flesh. The prologue is not merely an introduction; it is a lens. Every subsequent chapter should be read in its light.
The prologue also poses a question. John has presented testimony: the witness of the Baptist, the witness of the Evangelist himself (”we beheld His glory”), the witness of Scripture. Testimony demands a verdict. Will we receive Him, or will we join the world that did not know Him and the people who did not receive Him? The prologue offers no neutral ground. The light shines. The darkness opposes. And each reader must decide where to stand.
We began with Tolstoy, who translated λόγος as “understanding” and read the prologue as a statement about universal reason. But John is not offering a philosophy of life. The Logos he proclaims is not Heraclitus’s cosmic principle, nor Philo’s intermediary, nor the Targums’ tactful avoidance. It is a person: the eternal Son who was πρὸς τὸν θεόν before the world was made, who entered that world as a Galilean peasant, and who makes the invisible Father known to all who receive Him. The scandal is not that divinity exists, but that it has a name, a face, a mother, a death. The grammar of John 1:1 is the grammar of Trinitarian faith. The flesh of John 1:14 is the ground of all Christian hope. And the darkness, for all its opposition, has not overcome it.
Heraclitus, Fragment B1 (Diels-Kranz). The fragments are preserved in later authors; this one appears in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos VII.132.
Plato, Timaeus 29a-30c; Aristotle, Topics 102a3 and Posterior Analytics 73a34-5. Aristotle uses logos throughout his corpus for "account" or "definition"; these passages make the connection explicit.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers VII.136. The term logos spermatikos is not obvious in some English editions; for discussion, see A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), vol. 1, §46.
Philo of Alexandria, De Confusione Linguarum 146-147.
E.C. Colwell, “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature 52 (1933): 12-21.
On perichoresis (Latin circumincessio), see John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa I.8. The term describes the mutual indwelling of the divine persons, each wholly in the others without confusion.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Names IV.1.
The War Scroll (1QM I.1-17) and the Community Rule (1QS III.13-IV.26) speak of “sons of light” and “sons of darkness” locked in cosmic struggle.
Gregory Nazianzen, Epistle 101.
BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. μονογενής. The scholarly consensus, following Dale Moody’s 1953 article in Journal of Biblical Literature, derives the word from γένος (”kind”), not γεννάω (”beget”). The Nicene “begotten, not made” reflects patristic etymology, not modern lexicography, though the theological claim about the Son’s unique relationship to the Father remains sound on other grounds.
Athanasius, De Incarnatione 54.
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses V, preface. The sentiment is unquestionably Irenaean; exact wording varies by translation. See Roberts-Rambaut (ANF) for the standard English rendering.
Catechism of the Catholic Church §460.
John of Damascus, On the Divine Images I. The argument from the Incarnation to the legitimacy of icons runs throughout the first treatise.
The term pleroma would later be appropriated by Gnostic systems to describe the divine fullness from which aeons emanate. John’s usage, like Paul’s in Colossians 1:19 and 2:9 (”in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily”), is anti-Gnostic: the fullness is not a realm above the material world but is embodied in the flesh of Jesus.