His own image, He would restore him to that image. Because (god made man, He loves him, educates him, bears with him
carries on the race on the line of His infinite patience, is bur dened with its perverseness and blindness, and expresses and effectuates all this in the incarnation and redemptive work of Jesus Christ. God is under the stress of the parental instinct (humanly speaking) to redeem man.
3. All things (wdvra). Regarded severally. The reference is to the infinite deta of creation, rather than to creation as a whole, which is expressed by 1a advta, the all (Col. i. 16). For this reason John avoids the word «dcpos, the world, which denotes the world as a great system. Hence Bengel, quoted by Meyer, is wrong in referring to céop@ (the world) of ver. 10 as a parallel.
Were made (éyévero). Lit., came into being, or became. Ex- pressing the passage from nothingness into being, and the un- folding of a divine order. Compare. vv. 14, 17. Three words are used in the New Testament to express the act of creation : «rife, to create (Apoe. iv. 11.; x. 6; Col. i. 16); moveiv, to make (Apoc. xiv. 7; Mark x. 6), both of which refer to the Creator; and ylyveorIat, to become, which refers to that which is created. In Mark x. 6, both words occur. “ From the begin- ning of the creation («ticews) God made” (émoimoev). So in Eph. ii. 10: “We are His workmanship (aoinua), created («tic Sévres) in Christ Jesus.” Here the distinction is between the absolute being expressed by Hv (see on ver. 1), and the com- ing into being of creation (éyévero). The same contrast oc- curs in vv. 6, 9: “A man sent from God came into being” (éyévero) ; “the true Light was” (7).
“The main conception of creation which is present in the writings of St. John is expressed by the first notice which he makes of it: All things came into being through the Word. This statement sets aside the notions of eternal matter and of inherent evil in matter. ‘There was when’ the world ‘ was not’ (John xvii. 5, 24); and, by implication, all things as made were good. The agency of the Word, ‘who was God,’ again excludes
PROLOGUE. Ot
both the idea of a Creator essentially inferior to God, and the idea of an abstract Monotheism in which there is no living re- lation between the creature and the Creator ; for as all things come into being ‘ through ’ the Word, so they are supported ‘in’ Him (John i. 3; compare Col. i. 16 sq.; Heb. i. 3). And yet more, the use of the term éyévero, came into being, as distin- guished from éxricIn, were created, suggests the thought that creation is to be regarded (according to our apprehension) as a manifestation of a divine law of love. Thus creation (ald things came into being through Him) answers to the Incarna- tion (the Word became flesh). All the unfolding and infolding of finite being to the last issue lies in the fulfilment of His will who is love” (Westcott, on 1 John ii. 17).
By Him (8 adrod). Lit., through him. The preposition dud is generally used to denote the working of God through some secondary agency, as dia tod mpodytou, through the prophet (Matt. i. 22, on which see note).* It is the preposition by which the relation of Christ to creation is usually expressed (see 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16; Heb. i. 2), though it is oc- casionally used of the Father (Heb. ii. 10; Rom. xi. 36, and Gal. i. 1, where it is used of both). Hence, as Godet remarks, it “does not lower the Word to the rank of a simple instru- ment,” but merely implies a different relation to creation on the part of the Father and the Son.