Excerpts From Comments On John 1

Uplook – December 2019 — Grace & Truth Magazine

Excerpts From Comments On John 1

John’s gospel is really the manifestation, or outward presentation, of God to men here in the person of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit with the declaration of Christ’s coming again. Christ came to the world, and the world knew Him not, and He came to His own and His own received Him not. He has come from the Father into the world. Consequently, we see sovereign grace, which leads anybody to receive Christ or own Him at all. They are born of God, not of the will of man.

The gospel itself begins before Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn. 1:1 KJV) – a very distinct statement of the eternity of Christ. There is the being of the Word; He is the Word, the Logos, the expression of God’s mind, for “Word” is both. Christ is the expression and the Logos too because He is God. When the expression only is meant, it is rhema, not logos. But 3 takes up what the mind is as having a thought, or it expresses the mind. All the wisdom of God is in Christ; He is it, and He is the expression of it. Wisdom always had man in its thoughts; “the Life was the Light of men” (v.4), and therefore He became Man.

Then the judgment of the world and of His own: “the light shineth in darkness” (v.5). This is impossible in nature, for if the light there shone in darkness, there would be no darkness for it to shine in. The judgment of the world is the consequence, for “the darkness comprehended it not” (v.5). “The light shineth in darkness”; he does not say “shone,” as if it only happened in the past.

We then find another truth of immense importance: “There was a man sent from God” (v.6). God took pains with men to bring them to understand or perceive this Light. He sent this messenger to draw people’s attention; “the same came for a witness to bear witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe” (v.7). All to no purpose it might be, but still there was the painstaking of God. “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light” (v.8). Here we get this name of Light (we have nothing of love yet), the purest thing we have any idea of, and which reveals everything else. It is Light that makes all things seen; but it is a thing, too, which is perfect purity. That is the true Light which, on coming into the world, lights every man (v.9). God in His counsels had to speak to men, and Light comes into the world. “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not” (v.10). Man had not the sense to see that the person (Christ) who made him was in the world and was its light. There was the judgment of everything: the world and its pitch darkness, for “there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3:11).

Yet, we get grace working: “but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become [children] of God” (Jn. 1:12). It is not merely that they got light and blessing, but He gave them a place, “children of God,” “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God” (v.13).

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (v.14). It was a real thing, not like God visiting Abraham; but He “dwelt among us ... (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth ... and of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (vv.14,16). This speaks of His incarnate character and our connection with it. We beheld His glory, not of the Son as such, but as of an only-begotten with a Father. He had all the title of that excellency and value in everything. All that was to the Father was with Him. It is His personal glory made visible in flesh. We get the witness of John the Baptist (v.15): “He was before me.”

The difference between only-begotten (monogenees) and first-born (prototokos) is that the first is His relationship to God eternally, the second is His relationship to other things. Thus, “I will make Him My firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth” (Ps. 89:27). This is not what He is essentially. He was Light – the revealer of the Father. “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9).

“The light shineth in darkness” is real, and it is by incarnation. John did not take it up in an historical way; only the fact of Light and Life. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth,” – he does not say were given, but “came by Jesus Christ” (1:17) – were in His person.

By John N. Darby, adapted from “Collected Writings,” Volume 25