You can click HERE to read the passage.
There is much that is ponderable in this passage and worth commenting on. My attention was grabbed by two words that were repeated together in two verses:
Verse 14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Verse 17: For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Grace and truth. Jesus embodied both. He was grace incarnate. He was truth incarnate.
Grace – God had always been a God of grace, but His grace had become overshadowed because of the Jews emphasis on the Law. Again and again God had treated the Jewish people in ways that they did not deserve because of their disobedience and hard-heartedness. Over and over again He showed them grace. But the law had become their taskmaster and they did not readily recognize how full of grace God was. Enter Jesus! In Jesus, through the life He lived, His death on the cross, and the power displayed at His resurrection, God’s grace was manifest in an abundantly clear and amazing way.
Truth – Truth is the compliment to grace. God was gracious but He also demanded obedience to His Word. He was forgiving but He but He was not a cosmic pushover. Jesus incarnated truth. We will see in this gospel how Jesus never backed down from speaking truth. In fact, he angered people because He told the truth – to the point that people wanted to kill him. It was because Jesus told the truth and people did not like what they heard that He was crucified.
Typically, people are either grace people or truth people. Jesus was both. He “came from the Father full of grace and truth.”
Next Week’s Passage: John 1:19-34
(Please “Leave a Reply” below with your own observations and thoughts on this passage)
What could be more meaningful to me than when grace and penalty/justice/truth merged at the cross!
When he says in verse 14 “We have seen His glory”, is he referring to the Transfiguration?
Do we have reason to understand that jesus was ‘just across town” when John the Baptist was beheaded? I have heard that was the case.
Ken, I can tell that you are pondering. I think v.14 is somewhat of a summation statement that includes John’s remembrance of the transfiguration. Remember, John has had about 60 years to think about and reflect on his encounter with Jesus. No doubt he beheld His glory in lots of ways.
Using a 400-year-old version of the English language (KJ English) to reach hearers of the Word–especially x and Y generations is not something I am enthusiastic about. But, I make an exception for the word “Behold”. It seems more urgent than “look”, more compelling than “check it out”. I wonder if it is the same Greek word elsewhere in the NT as in John 1:29 and 1 John 3:1.