John 1:7

[See also the "General Considerations on the Prologue" in the comments of John 1:18.]

Ver. 7. “ This one came as a witness, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. ”

The pronoun οὖτος, this one, sums up all the statements of the preceding verse, as οὗτος of John 1:2 summed up all those of John 1:1. The verb ἦλθε, came, indicates a more advanced step than the ἐγένετο, appeared, of John 1:6; the entrance of John upon his public activity. This character of witness has such importance, in the view of the evangelist, that he presents it, the first time, without an object: as a witness or (more literally), for testimony; the second time, with an indication of the object of the testimony. The first expression makes prominent the quality of witness in itself (in contrast to the superior dignity of the personage who is to follow). The second completes the idea of this testimony.

This idea of testimony is one of the fundamental notions of our Gospel. It is correlative to and inseparable from that of faith. Testimony is given only with a view to faith, and faith is impossible except by means of testimony. The only faith worthy of the name is that which fastens itself upon a divine testimony given either in act or in word. Testimony resembles the vigorous trunk of the oak; faith, the slender twig which embraces this trunk and makes it its support. But did the light need to be attested, pointed out? Does not the sun give its own proof of itself? Certainly, if the Word had appeared here below in the glory which belongs to Him (the form of God, Php 2:6), the sending of a witness would not have been necessary. But He was obliged to appear enveloped in a thick veil (the flesh, John 1:14); and, in the condition of blindness into which sin had plunged man (John 1:5, the darkness), he could not recognize Him except with the help of a testimony. The evangelist adds: That all might believe through him; evidently: Believe on Christ through John, and not on God through Christ, as Grotius and Ewald thought. The question in this verse is not of the office of Christ, but of that of John. When the critics of Baur's school charge our author with setting up, in agreement with the Gnostics, two kinds of men, of opposite origins and destinies, the psychical and the pneumatical, they seem to be forgetful of these words: “That all might believe through him.”

We find here a new indication of the part which the forerunner had played in the development of the writer's own faith. To the affirmation of the fact, John adds, as in John 1:3, a negative proposition, designed to exclude every opposite idea.