And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt. — The reality of the moral power and change wrought in those that believed recalls and is itself evidence of the reality of that in which they believed. Man came to be a son of God, because the Son of God became man. They were not, as the Docetæ of that time said, believers in an appearance. “The Word was made flesh.” The term “flesh” expresses human nature as opposed to the divine, and material nature as opposed to the spiritual, and is for this reason used rather than “body,” for there may be a purely spiritual body (see Note on 1 Corinthians 15:40-44); and rather than “man,” which is used in John 5:27; John 8:40, for of man the spiritual is the highest part. It is not the approach of the divine and human nature in the region of the spiritual which is common to both that strikes the writer with wonder, but that men should have power to become sons of God, and that the Word, of whose glory he has spoken in the earlier verses, should become flesh. (Comp. Philippians 2:6-8; 2 Corinthians 8:9, Notes.)
Dwelt among us. — The Greek word means “tabernacled.” “sojourned” among us. It was, probably, suggested by the similarity of sound with “Shekhînah,” a term frequently applied in the Targums or Chaldee Paraphrases, though the substantive nowhere occurs in the Old Testament itself, to the visible symbol of the divine Presence which appeared in the Tabernacle and the Temple. The Targums, moreover, frequently identify the Shekhînah with the “Memra” or Word. (Comp. Excursus A.) The thought, then, of this Presence brings back to the writer’s mind the days and weeks and months they had spent with the Word who had pitched His tent among them. He had been among the first to follow Him, and of the last with Him. He had been of those who had seen the glory of the Transfiguration, who had entered with their Master into the chamber of death, who had been with Him in the garden of Gethsemane. His eye, more than that of any other, had pierced the veil and gazed upon the Presence within. And now the old man, looking forward to the unveiled Presence of the future, loves to think and tell of the past, that the Presence may be to others all it had been to him. He is conscious that the statement of this verse needs evidence of no common order; but this is present in the words and lives of men whose whole moral being declared it true, and the test is within the power of all. (Comp. especially 1 John 1)
The glory. — Comp. John 2:11; John 11:4. There is probably a special reference here to the Transfiguration. (See Note on Matthew 17:2, and comp. the testimony of another eye-witness in 2 Peter 1:17.)
As of the only begotten. — Better, as of an only begotten — i.e., glory such as is the attribute of an only begotten Son. The term as applied to the person of our Lord, is found only in St. John, John 1:18; John 3:16; John 3:18; 1 John 4:9. It is used four times elsewhere in the New Testament, and always of the only child. (Luke 7:12; Luke 8:42; Luke 9:38; Hebrews 11:17.) The close connection here with the word Father, and the contrast with the sonship by moral generation in John 1:12, fixes the sense as the eternal generation of the Word, “the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds.”
Of the Father. — The English does not fully express the meaning. It would be better to read, from with the Father. (Comp. John 6:46; John 7:29; John 16:27.) The thought is of the glory witnessed on earth of the only begotten Son who had come from God.
Full of grace and truth. — These words do not refer to the “Father,” or to “the glory,” but to “the Word.” The structure of the English sentence is ambiguous, but the meaning of the Greek words is quite clear. They represent a Hebrew formula, expressing a divine attribute, and the passage which is almost certainly present to the thought here is the revelation of the divine nature to Moses (Exodus 34:6. Comp. 2 Samuel 2:6; Psalms 25:10; Psalms 57:10; Psalms 89:15). These witnesses, too, had seen God, not indeed in the mountain only, but as dwelling among them. Every word a ray of truth, and every act a beam of love, they thought of that life “as one with the divine Essence; of that glory” as of the only begotten of the Father. (Comp. John 1:17.)