John 1:17

John 1:17. Because the law was given through Moses: grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. It is very possible that this verse should be taken as directly parallel to John 1:11; hence the definite reference to the pre-Christian revelation here (see note on John 1:11). The thought of Christian experience again explains the connection of this verse with the preceding. The law is not undervalued. It was divine. It was a gift of God. It was a gift through the great Lawgiver of whom Israel was proud. But it was a fixed unalterable thing, with definite boundaries, not stretching out into the illimitable and eternal. It could not express unbounded grace and truth, unbounded love, because in its very nature law has limits which it cannot pass. Now, however, there has ‘come' (a far higher word than ‘was given') a fulness of grace and truth, within which we stand, and which we are to appropriate more and more, vast, illimitable, as is that God who is love. Hence, therefore, the experience of John 1:16 is possible. It will be noted that the two thoughts of this verse are placed side by side (see John 1:10), though in reality the first is subordinate to the second.

And now comes in the great Name as yet unnamed, but named now in all the universality of its application, the Name which embraces historical Christianity in its whole extent as the religion both of Jew and Gentile, the religion of man, the name which, in its one half (‘Jesus,' Joshua, Jehoshua, ‘Jehovah is Salvation') expresses the purpose of all God's dealings with man, and in its other half (‘Christ') the Divine consecration of the Redeemer to His work. The verbs of this verse are used with great propriety, ‘was given' of what was incidental in origin and temporary induration; ‘came'(literally, ‘became')of what, though revealed in time, was an eternal reality.

One reflection alone remains, and then the Prologue may close.