John 1:17

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

Ver. 17. “ For the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. ”

John, who had reached the light of the new revelation through the preparatory system of the old, could not fail to point out in this Prologue, at least summarily, the relation between the two; and he does it naturally in this place, where the mention of the two divine gifts obtained through Jesus Christ summons him to a comparison with those which the ancient people of God had received, especially with the law. The for refers to the idea of grace, which has been so forcibly expressed in John 1:16: “grace upon grace; for the legal system has given place henceforth to that of free grace which is, at the same time, that of truth.” We meet again, in this verse, the parallel construction peculiar to the Hebrew; a Greek writer would not have failed to mark the antithesis between the two clauses of this verse by the particles μέν and δέ. The office of the law is to command and to demand; the peculiarity of grace, the essence of the Gospel, is to offer and to give.

The law connects salvation with a work which it exacts; Christ gives gratuitously a salvation which is to become the cause of works. Now this whole manifestation of grace fully reveals at last the true character of God, which remained veiled in the law, and consequently it reveals truth which is the perfect knowledge of God. Bengel explains the opposition between the law and the two following terms by this ingenious formula: lex iram parans et umbram habens; but perhaps this is the mark of Paul rather than of John. Weiss makes grace consist in the revelation of truth; that is to say, of God as love. Keil, in the opposite way, makes the truth of God consist in the revelation of His grace, which is more true. But John seems to me rather to place these two gifts in juxtaposition and to regard them as distinct from each other; grace is God possessed; truth is God known. These two gifts are joined together, but they are distinct. So John, after having developed the first in John 1:16, sets forth the second in John 1:18.

The term was given, ἐδόθη, recalls the positive and outward institution of the law, its official promulgation. The expression came, literally became, suits better the historical manifestation of grace and truth in the person and in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Moses may disappear; the law given by him remains. But take away Jesus Christ, and the grace and truth manifested in Him disappear. “John,” says Bengel on this point, “chose his expressions with the strictness of a philosopher.” Let us rather say, with the emphatic precision which is the characteristic of inspiration.

It is at this point of the Prologue that the apostle introduces, for the first time, the name so long expected, Jesus Christ. He descends gradually from the divine to the human: the Logos (John 1:1), the only-begotten Son (John 1:14), finally, Jesus Christ, in whom the heavenly world fully assumes for us life and reality. The apostle now passes to the second characteristic of the divine glory of Jesus Christ: truth, John 1:18.