world, as the living power of its existence, and that a choir of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, should along with them immediately confess that out of the fulness of this one man they have received grace for grace?” —Ver. 17. ὅτι ὁ νόμος . : . ἐγένετο. What is the connection? His state- ment that the Incarnate Logos was the inexhaustible supply of grace might seem to disparage Moses and the previous manifestations of God. He therefore explains. And he seems to have in view the same distinction between the old and the new that is so frequently emerging in the Pauline writings. Through Moses, here taken as representing the pre- Christian dispensation, was given the law, which made great demands but gave nothing, which was a true revela- tion of God’s will, and so far was good, but brought men no ability to become liker God. But through Jesus Christ (here for the first time named in the Gospel, because we are now fully on the ground of history) came grace and truth. In contrast to the inexorable demands of a law that brought no spiritual life, Jesus Christ brought ‘‘ grace,” the un- earned favour of God. The Law said: Do this and live; Christ says: God gives you life, accept it. ‘‘ Truth” also was brought by Christ.—adyj@era here means ‘‘reality”’ as opposed to the symbolism of the Law (cf. iv. 23). In the Law was a shadow of good things to come: in Christ we have the good things themselves. Several good critics
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KATA ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ a
¢ Deut. xiii κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς, ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο. 19. Kal αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ. µαρτυρία τοῦ Ιωάννου, ὅτε ἀπέστειλαν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἐξ Ἱεροσολύμων
ἱερεῖς καὶ Λευΐτας, ἵνα ἐρωτήσωσιν αὐτὸν, “Ed τίς et;”
20. Kat
ὡμολόγησε, καὶ οὐκ ἠρνήσατο' Kai ὡμολόγησεν, “' Ὅτι οὐκ εἰμὶ
find a contrast between ἐδόθη and ἐγένετο; the law being “given” for a special purpose, “grace and truth” “coming” in the natural course and as the issue of all that had gone before.— Ver. 18. Qedv ovSels ἑώρακεν . ἐξηγήσατο. This statement, ‘God no one has ever seen,” is probably suggested by the words διὰ ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. The reality and the grace of God we have seen through Jesus Christ, but why not directly? Because God, the Divine essence, the Godhead, no one has ever seen. No man has had immediate know- ledge of God: if we have knowledge of God it is through Christ.
A further description is given of the Only Begotten intended to disclose His qualification for revealing the Father in the words 6 ὢν eis τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός. Meyer supposes that John is now expressing himself from his own present standing point, and is conceiving of Christ as in His state of exaltation, as having returned to the bosom of the Father. But in this case the description would not be relevant. John adds this designation to ground the revealing work which Christ accomplished while on earth (ἐξηγήσατο, aorist, referring to that work), to prove His qualification for it. It must therefore include His con- dition previous to incarnation. 6 ὢν is therefore a timeless present and els is used, asin Mk. xiii. 16, Acts ΥΠ. 40, etc., for ἐν. els τὸν κόλπον, whether taken from friends reclining at a feast or from a father’s embrace, denotes perfect in- timacy. Thus qualified, ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγή- σατο΄« He” emphatic, He thus equipped, ‘‘has interpreted’? what? See viil. 32; or simply, as implied in the preceding negative clause, ‘‘God”. The Scholiast on Soph., Ajax, 320, says, ἐξήγησις ἐπὶ θείων, ἑρμηνεία ἐπὶ τῶν τυχόντων, Wet- stein.
Ver. 19. With this verse begins the Gospel proper or historical narrative of the manifestation of the glory of the Incarnate Logos.
Vv. 19-42. The witness of Fohn and its result.—Vv. 19-28. The witness of John to the deputation from Jerusalem, entitled αὕτη ἐστὶν . . . Λενείτας. The witness or testimony of John is placed first, not only because it was that which