The Word became flesh — John 1:1-14

The Greek  term  translated “word” was also used by many philosophers to mean  “reason,” the  force  which structured the universe; Philo combined this  image  with  Jewish  conceptions of the  “word.” The Old Testament had personified Wisdom (Prov 8), and ancient Judaism eventually identified personified  Wisdom,  the Word and the Law (the Torah).

By  calling  Jesus  “the Word,”  John calls him the embodiment of all God’s revelation in the Scriptures and thus declares that only those who accept Jesus  honor the  law  fully  (1:17) . Jewish people considered Wisdom/Word  divine yet distinct from God the Father, so it was the  closest  available term John had to describe Jesus.

1:1-2.   Beginning like Genesis 1:1, John alludes to the Old Testament and Jewish picture of God creating through his preexistent wisdom or word.  According to standard Jewish doctrine in his day, this wisdom existed  before the rest of creation but was itself created. By declaring that  the Word “was”  in the  beginning and  especially by calling the  Word  “God” (v. 1;  also the most likely reading of  1:18),  John goes beyond  the common Jewish conception to imply that  Jesus is not created.

1:3.  Developing Old Testament ideas (e.g., Ps 33:6; Prov 8:30), Jewish teachers  emphasized that  God  had  created all things   through his Wisdom/Word/Law and sustained them because the righteous practiced the law.  (Some even  pointed out that Genesis 1 declared “And  God said” ten times when  he was creating, and  this  meant that God created all things with his Ten Commandments. )  Ancient  Jewish  teachers would  have agreed  with verse 3.

1:4.    Developing Old Testament prom ises  of  long  life  in  the  land  if Israel obeyed  God  (e.g., Ex 20:12; Deut  5:16; 8:1; 11:9), Jewish  teachers emphasized that the reward for obeying God’s word was eternal life. John declares that this life had always been available through God’s word, which is the same word that he identifies with Jesus. Jewish teachers  called many things “light” (e.g., the   righteous,  the   patriarchs,  Israel, God), but this term  was most commonly applied to God’s  law (a figure also in the Old Testament, e.g., Ps 119:105).

1:5.  That   darkness  did  not  “apprehend” the light may be a play on words (it  could  mean  “understand” [NIV] or “overcome” [NRSV]). Similarly,  in the Dead Sea Scrolls,  the forces of light and darkness were engaged  in mortal combat, but light  was predestined to triumph.

1:6-8.    “Witness” was especially a legal concept in the Greco-Roman world and in Jewish circles. Isaiah used it in relation to the end time, when the people God delivered would testify to the nations about  him  before  his tribunal (43:10; 44:8). This image recurs throughout this Gospel.

1:9-10.   Jewish  tradition declared  that God  had offered  the law to all seventy nations at  Mount Sinai  but  lamented that   they  had  all chosen  to  reject  his word; only Israel had accepted it. In the same  way, the world of John’s  day has failed  to recognize God’s  Word among  them.

1:11.    Here  John  breaks  with the image in Jewish  tradition, according to which Israel  alone of all nations had received the law. Jewish people expected  that  the  faithful  of Israel  would likewise accept the revelation when God gave forth the law again in  the end time (Is 2:3; Jer 31:31-34). (In most Jewish  tradition,  the law would, if changed at all,  be more stringent in the world to come.)

1:12-13.   The emphasis  is thus not on ethnic  descent  (v. 11)  but  on spiritual rebirth;  see comment  on 3:3, 5 for details on how ancient  Judaism  would hear the language of rebirth.

1:14.   Neither Greek philosophers nor Jewish teachers could conceive of the Word becoming flesh. Since the time of Plato, Greek philosophers  had emphasized that the ideal was what was invisible and eternal;  most Jews so  heavily emphasized  that  a human  being could not become a god that  they never considered that God might become human. When God  revealed his glory to Moses in Exodus 33-34, his glory was “abounding in covenant  love and covenant    faithfulness”  (Ex  34:6),  which could also be translated “full of grace and truth.”

Like  Moses of old  (see 2 Cor  3:6-18), the disciples saw God’s glory, now revealed in Jesus. As the Gospel unfolds, Jesus’ glory is revealed in his signs (e.g., Jn 2:11) but especially in the cross, his ultimate act of love (12:23-33). The Jewish people were expecting God to reveal his glory in something  like a cosmic spectacle of fireworks; but for the first coming, Jesus reveals the same side of God’s character that was emphasized to Moses: his covenant love.

“Dwelt” (KJV, NASB) here is literally “tabernacled,” which  means  that  as God tabernacled  with his people in the wilderness,   so  had  the  Word   taber­nacled among his people in Jesus.

(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)