Joh 1:1-14.
THE
WORD
MADE
FLESH.
1. In the beginning--of all time and created existence, for this
Word gave it being
(Joh 1:3, 10);
therefore, "before the world was"
(Joh 17:5, 24);
or, from all eternity.
was the Word--He who is to God what man's word is to himself,
the manifestation or expression of himself to those without him.
(See on
Joh 1:18).
On the origin of this most lofty and now for ever consecrated
title of Christ, this is not the place to speak. It occurs only in the
writings of this seraphic apostle.
was with God--having a conscious personal existence
distinct from God (as one is from the person he is "with"), but
inseparable from Him and associated with Him
(Joh 1:18;
Joh 17:5;
1Jo 1:2),
where "THE FATHER" is used in
the same sense as "GOD" here.
was God--in substance and essence GOD;
or was possessed of essential
or proper divinity. Thus, each of these brief but pregnant statements is
the complement of the other, correcting any misapprehensions which the
others might occasion. Was the Word eternal? It was not the
eternity of "the Father," but of a conscious personal existence
distinct from Him and associated with Him. Was the Word thus "with
God?" It was not the distinctness and the fellowship of
another being, as if there were more Gods than one, but of One
who was Himself God--in such sense that the absolute unity of
the God head, the great principle of all religion, is only transferred
from the region of shadowy abstraction to the region of essential life
and love. But why all this definition? Not to give us any
abstract information about certain mysterious distinctions in the
Godhead, but solely to let the reader know who it was that in the
fulness of time "was made flesh." After each verse, then, the reader
must say, "It was He who is thus, and thus, and thus described, who was
made flesh."
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