Lars Larson Live Stream

First Baptist Church Leominster iconFirst Baptist Church Leominster

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That was of course
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Psalm Thuptisik. There are a number of psalms in the Trinity Hymnal. God delights in hearing
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His words sung to Him before the people. Just a reminder that if there is anyone here that is concerned about being baptized, every
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Christian ought to be baptized as a faith confessing Christ before the church, before the world.
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That's the first duty, the first responsibility of the Christian, to confess Christ in baptism.
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And so if that's an interest, desire, or you have a question about that, come see me and we'll get together and help you through it.
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Good to have Jason and Laura here, the Austin family. They arrived I think for the last time from Ohio.
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They're here and they're getting settled in their home up in Berry. And so we're pleased that his ministry among us has already begun and pray for the
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Lord's fruitfulness. All right, we're in the section of this prologue of John's Gospel.
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And this fourth section is verses 14 through 18. We began to address this section last
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Lord's Day, but we were only able to consider the first of these four verses in this last paragraph.
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And today, Lord willing, we'll complete our study of the prologue by considering verses 15 through 18.
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And the outline that we've used, you have in your notes, the prologue of the gospel, verses 1 through 18.
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We have an introduction of the word, verses 1 through 5. The witness of the word, and that was primarily
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John the Baptist's witness, verses 6 through 8. The manifestation of the word in verses 9 through 13.
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And then the uniqueness of the word is set forth in this last paragraph of the prologue.
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And so these four divisions of this outline correspond to what may be discerned as four paragraphs. The different English translations differ in their identification of paragraphs.
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I think this is the most suitable. And so with view to this paragraph, we want to read verse 14 also, again, which we covered in some detail last week.
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And so John 1, 14 through 18. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten of the
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Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of him and cried out, saying,
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This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me.
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And of his fullness, we have all received grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
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Father, he has declared him. And that concludes the prologue.
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Last Lord's Day, we examined verse 14, this by matter of review, in which we read that the word of God became incarnate.
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We show that John was setting forth the incarnation of the Lord Jesus as a greater and far more glorious disclosure of the glory of God than what
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Israel had experienced when the Shekinah glory of God led his people through the wilderness on their way to the promised land.
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John is setting forth that God is revealed most clearly and fully through Jesus Christ in any former disclosure of God to mankind.
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Jesus Christ is the full disclosure of God to this world. John set forth the
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Lord Jesus as both God and man, and we went into some detail about that. We gave further information regarding our
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Lord Jesus by stating and affirming that he is a single divine person with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.
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We show that the Lord Jesus himself said to believe in his deity is essential to salvation.
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Unless you believe Jesus is also God, you cannot have salvation through him. You're believing in another
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Jesus who's never existed. So John 8, 24 reads, therefore,
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Jesus said, therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins for if you do not believe that I am.
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And that's a that's a claim of deity, that expression in Greek ego and me. I am.
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You will die in your sins. And so when Jesus said, if you do not believe that I am, he would say that if you do not believe that he is
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God who showed himself to Moses in Israel, whose name is I am there at the burning bush.
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If you don't believe that Jesus is God, you cannot be saved. And so we asserted denominations and churches and preachers who deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
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That has been set forth very clearly in the word of God. They do not know God and they do not and will not have salvation as long as they persist in their very serious heresy.
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Jesus said you cannot be forgiven of your sin, saved from your sins unless you believe that I am God. But not only is it essential to believe in the deity of Jesus Christ in order to be saved, it's equally necessary, absolutely essential that you believe in his humanity.
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John the Apostle wrote, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.
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Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist.
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Which you've heard in the world. It was probably in the 90s AD when he wrote those words in the context of Asia Minor, which was a hotbed of Gnostic heresies.
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And there were those who claimed to be Christian. They believed Jesus was God. They did not believe he had become a man though assumed to human nature.
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Well now let's turn our attention to the second passage of this paragraph in which we read in verse 15, that John the
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Baptist bore witness of the pre -existence of the word which became flesh.
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John bore witness of him and cried out, I say, this he of whom I said, he who comes after me, heard before me, for he was before me.
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Now John the Baptist, of course, was a great man. The Lord Jesus said of him, verily
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I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist. John was a great man.
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But though John was the greatest of men, John the Baptist was a humble man who understood that Jesus far surpassed him in stature and importance.
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John would say he must increase, but I decrease. And we're going to see that in a couple of weeks at the end of John, or a number of weeks in John chapter 3.
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John's greatest desire in life was to point people to Jesus and to enable them to see and embrace him in his greatness.
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Here we read of John's own self -devaluation as he sought to exalt the Lord Jesus to whom he gave witness.
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John bore witness of him, cried out, say, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me.
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He was humbling himself and exalting Jesus. And that's what we ought to always be doing. Is that not right?
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Lord forbid that we draw attention to ourselves. We ought to be deflecting any attention or recognition of ourselves to the
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Lord Jesus Christ. The verb tenses of verse 15 is significant.
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First, we read that John bore witness of him. Actually, the Greek verb bore witness is a present tense verb.
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Although in our English translation, it's translated as a past tense verb. He bore witness.
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Actually, if we were to take it literally, it should be translated John bears witness of him, present tense.
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Even though John and his ministry had apparently passed from the scene, John was still bearing witness of Jesus Christ when
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John wrote this gospel probably about 60 years, 50 or 60 years after John the
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Baptist had been beheaded by Herod. John's ministry and proclamation of Jesus Christ had an abiding, continuing influence.
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John was still bearing witness of Jesus Christ when the apostle John penned this gospel.
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The witness of John the Baptist to the Lord Jesus Christ continues today. John the Baptist still bears witness about the preexistence of Jesus as the incarnate son of God.
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It is said that John bears witness and that he was doing so for he had cried out. See that?
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John bore witness of him and cried out. Saying in this verb out is not a past verb specifically, but it's a perfect tense verb.
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And this has a special meaning in the Greek language. It says that John had cried out at some time in the past and that the impact of that cry continued to have an impact on those that heard him.
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He had cried out and the cry of John the Baptist in the ears of the people was still ringing, as it were.
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It resonated with them. It was a powerful witness. That crying out of John, although he had done it in the past, was still bearing witness of Jesus Christ when
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John wrote this gospel. John's proclamation of Christ left an abiding impact and realization of those who heard him and that this
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Jesus whom he declared was of profound significance. What John had cried out was true.
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The substance of what he proclaimed is permanently true. So we're not just reading history here of what happened 2 ,000 years ago.
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His witness is continuing to bear fruit today. He testified and the way he testified continues to testify to us of the pre -existence of Jesus Christ as God, the second person of the
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Holy Trinity. The word translated cried out is a rather unique word.
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It described the clarion call of a prophet. Prophets cried out, as it were. This, again, is a perfect tense verb.
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Crieth is a technical rabbinic term for the loud voice of a prophet who intends to be heard. Prophets cried out.
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John was a prophet. As one said of this verb, the Baptist is said to have cried out, which is not used for emotional or irrational cries, but with a special sense for inspired speech.
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As for the speech of Jesus, the cries of the Spirit, the cries of a prophet, he cried out.
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And so John's proclamation was loud, widely heard and pronounced. We read elsewhere that the multitude counted him as a prophet.
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They did so not because he performed miracles, for he did not. They believed John to be a prophet due to the content and the manner in which he was bearing witness of Jesus Christ.
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The prologue then gives us the content of the message of John the
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Baptist. And he cried out to the people. We read of John's message. This was he of whom
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I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me.
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Those are the words of John the Baptist. This is the first direct speech in the
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Gospel of John. John the Baptist is speaking. We haven't seen any direct speech yet until this verse.
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It is a word regarding the pre -existence and the preeminence of Jesus Christ. He is preferred before me, for he was before me,
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John declared. A significant shift is hinted at in the words of the
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Baptist. This was he of whom I said. Back in verse six, we read of the witness of the word.
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There was a man sent from God whose name was John, past tense.
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It spoke of John and the third person of having been sent by God. But here in verse 15, John is described as giving witness to the pre -existence of Jesus Christ.
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There's a shift there. The Holy Spirit moved John to express himself in these different tenses of verbs.
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As one wrote, the nuance signals a shift has taken place. The only perspective to be had is on this side of the incarnation.
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The Old Testament is crossed over into the new. The connection to the creative acts of Jesus, verses one through five, remember the word created all things, has given way to the creative acts of the word, verses nine through fourteen.
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All things were made by him. God has become the Father. And now, in other words, God is being revealed as or expressed or described as the
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Father. The voice of an Old Testament prophet, therefore, has become the voice of an apostle.
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The Baptist no longer looks for the coming one, but at him. This is subtle, but the prologue is progressive.
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The Gospel writer, how the word is coming into history, becoming more and more evident.
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Now he's right before us. John cried out, he who comes after me.
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John the Baptist, of course, had preceded Jesus by birth, having been born to Zechariah and Elizabeth, six months before Mary gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem.
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And John had begun his public ministry six months before the onset of the ministry of Jesus.
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Jesus came after John the Baptist, he who comes after me. Nevertheless, John declared, he who comes after me is preferred before me.
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In the ancient world, respect and honor would be given to those who are older, who are gone before.
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That idea in our culture is just about lost now. But this was very much the case in the ancient world,
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Near Eastern world. Convention would have brought privilege and status to John rather than Jesus, because John came first.
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And so this statement of John would have been heard as a significant but rather paradoxical claim.
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He came after you, John, but he's to be preferred before you. How is that possible?
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How could one who came after John, especially considering the greatness of John, be regarded as preferred above John?
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And it was because John declared that in actuality he was before me. He's speaking about the pre -existence of Jesus Christ.
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He's God, the eternally begotten Son of God. Now, if we were to examine the record of the synoptic
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Gospels, which is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, those three are parallel, they're synoptic to one another, quite different from John's Gospel.
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But if we considered the witness of John the Baptist in the synoptic Gospels, and the message of John the
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Baptist that we have in John's Gospel, we'd find the substance, the content of that witness quite different.
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In the synoptic Gospels, we do not read of John's witness to the pre -incarnate Christ. That's unique to John's Gospel here in John 1.
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In the synoptics, John's message was primarily an announcement of the soon arrival of the kingdom of God and the need to repent of sins with view to the arrival of the king.
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And so we read in Matthew's Gospel, John the Baptist preaching, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
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In Mark 1, John's words, prepare you the way of the Lord, make his path straight. And then in Luke 3, we read of John's ministry, the fulfillment of Isaiah, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the
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Lord, the king is coming, the kingdom is going to be established. And so in the synoptics,
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Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we do not read of the content of John the Baptist preaching to be the eternal logos, the word, become incarnate.
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But we do read it here in John's Gospel. It's unique to John's Gospel. John gave forth a declaration of the pre -existent divine nature of Jesus Christ, the divine word that was
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God, verse 1. Jesus was to be preferred over John, for in actuality, Jesus had preceded
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John, and that from eternity. As one said, it follows, of course, that he,
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Jesus, outranks John the Baptist. Between the two, Christ and the Baptist, there is a difference, as between the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal, the original light of the sun and the reflected light of the moon.
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And this is exactly what the Baptist himself had confessed, as verse 15 indicates.
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John the Baptist testified of the eternal son of God, who assumed a human nature, becoming the
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God -man. Another wrote, according to the witness of John, he who follows me has surprised me, because he was prior to me.
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This statement playfully moves from the historical chronology and implied rank that Jesus first follows
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John, to the surprising greatness of Jesus rooted in his cosmological chronology and implied rank that Jesus was actually prior to John.
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That is, the Baptist is stating unequivocally that the successor is greater than the forerunner.
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And that would have been paradoxical. That would have caught people's attention. The Baptist moves the comparison beyond his own historical ministry and harkens back to the word who was in the beginning.
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John the Baptist testified of the pre -existence of the son of God. And so the
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Lord Jesus had followed John, and yet was always before John. Of course, when John was saying that Jesus was before him, it was not simply that Jesus was of a higher rank than John, but that Jesus was even before the creation.
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The scriptures make it very clear who Jesus is. And it's set forth in John's Gospel and elsewhere.
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This is essential. If you're going to have salvation through Jesus Christ, you've got to understand and believe who he is.
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Now let's look at verse 16. Here we read that believers receive his fullness. After having described the witness of John the
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Baptist, the apostle John declared, and of his fullness we have all received grace for grace.
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This is not a statement of John the Baptist. Verse 15 was. This is a statement of the apostle
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John, the Gospel writer. This verse, verse 16, is really an outworking of verse 14.
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Again, which reads, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the
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Father, full of grace and truth. We dealt with that two weeks ago. And now here in verse 16,
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John wrote, And of his fullness we have all received. Here the we is all true believers.
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Not talking about all humanity. All true believers have received his fullness. And so receiving
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Jesus Christ is to receive the fullness of grace and truth in Jesus Christ. This is what it is to be a
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Christian. To have received the fullness of God's blessing in Jesus Christ. This is true of the so -called greatest of Christians, but it's also true of the so -called least of those who know
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Jesus Christ. As one very aptly stated, Matthew Henry. I love him. 18th century
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Puritan. All true believers receive from Christ fullness. The best and greatest saints cannot live without him.
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And the meanest, and what he means by meanest is the simplest, and weakest may live by him.
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This excludes proud boasting that we have nothing, but we have received it. And silences perplexing fears that we want nothing.
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That is, we lack nothing, but we may receive it. Every one of us who are in Christ have received his fullness.
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I wish some of our charismatic friends would take to heart this. That there's not some second blessing that you got to have in order to really be right with God.
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Really have the power of God. Really be blessed of God. No. The Bible says that in Christ you have his fullness.
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You have everything that you need in Jesus Christ to live a godly, holy life in relationship with God.
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We are to boast in the Lord Jesus for all that we have from God and before God. So Paul wrote, For you see your calling brethren that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.
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But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.
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God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty. He's describing you and me and the base things of the world and the things which are despised.
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God has chosen the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are that no flesh should glory in his presence.
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But of him, Jesus Christ, you are of God. You're in Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
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That as it's written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. We boast in the
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Lord, not in ourselves in any way whatsoever. You know, the true Christian who's thinking rightly is a humble man, humble woman who sees everything has been given freely to God's mercy and grace in Jesus Christ.
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Calvin wrote this, wrote a commentary in his commentary on John's gospel.
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True, indeed, the fountain of life, righteousness, virtue and wisdom is with God. But to us, it is a hidden and inaccessible fountain.
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Abundance of those things is exhibited to us in Christ that we may be permitted to have recourse to him.
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For he is ready to flow to us, provided that we open up a channel of faith. He declares in general that out of Christ we ought not to seek anything good, though the sentence consists of several clauses.
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First, he shows that we are all utterly destitute and empty of spiritual blessings. For the abundance which exists in Christ is intended to supply our deficiency, to relieve our poverty, to satisfy our hunger and thirst.
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And secondly, he warns us that as soon as we have departed from Christ, it is ill vain for us to seek a single drop of happiness, because God has determined that whatever is good shall reside in him alone.
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Accordingly, we shall find angels and men to be dry, heaven to be empty, the earth to be unproductive, and in short all things to be of no value, if we wish to be partakers of the gifts of God in any other way than through Christ.
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And thirdly, he assures us that we shall have no reason to fear the want or the need of anything, provided that we draw from the fullness of Christ, which is in every respect so complete, that we shall experience it to be a truly inexhaustible fountain.
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And John classes himself with the rest, not for the sake of modesty, but to make it more evident that no man, whatever, is accepted.
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We have all received of his fullness. Do we see that?
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Do we truly grasp the significance of that? Does it make a difference in how we think about ourselves every day before him?
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We have been given his fullness. Everything we are and have is bound up in Jesus Christ.
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Each of us who have truly received Christ have received the fullness which is in Jesus Christ, which will endure on eternity.
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Those who have not received Christ have nothing that will endure. They are empty, though they may think that it is full.
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J. C. Ryle also spoke of this fullness. There is an infinite fullness in Jesus Christ.
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As Paul says, it please the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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There is laid up in him, as in a treasury, a boundless supply of all that any sinner can need, either in time or eternity.
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The Spirit of life is his special gift to the Church, and conveys from him, as from a great root, sap and vigor to all the believing branches.
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He is rich in mercy, grace, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Out of Christ's fullness, all believers in every age of the world have been supplied.
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They did not clearly understand the fountain from which their supplies flowed in the Old Testament times.
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The Old Testament saints only saw Christ afar off, and not face to face. But from Abel downwards, all saved souls have received all they have had from Jesus Christ alone.
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Every saint in glory will at last acknowledge that he is Christ's detour for all he is.
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This will prove to have been all in all. And we should comprehend that, appreciate that.
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It's our responsibility as a church, it's my responsibility as a preacher, as a pastor, to help us to see this, if at all possible.
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It is transforming. You and I don't need more rules, more steps.
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The fact is, probably most of us know what we ought to be doing. We need life, and that life is in Christ, his fullness.
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And we need the blessed Holy Spirit to enable us to walk in fellowship with Christ, and that life in Christ will be channeled to us and through us through faith in him.
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Now, verse 16 contains a phrase that is difficult to understand rightly. We're going to be here a little bit.
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Again, John wrote of his fullness, we have all received, and from grace for grace.
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What in the world does that mean? I thought I knew what it was meaning until two days ago.
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And then I came to see I didn't understand it rightly. There are a number of proposals, and they're rehearsed to us through J .C.
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Ryle, his 19th century commentator on the Gospel of John. These are his comments on grace for grace.
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This expression is very peculiar and has caused much difference of opinion among commentators. Now, this was at the end of the 19th century, you know, the 1800s.
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First, some think it means the new grace of the gospel in place of or instead of the old grace of the law.
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And then he lists a number of commentators. I'm not going to entertain you trying to pronounce these. We'll just pass by that.
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But I included the names to show you that significant persons in history have each held to these views.
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And there's sincere difference of opinion. And so the new grace, grace for grace, is grace of the gospel replacing the grace of the law.
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Second, some think that it means grace on account of God's grace or favor, and especially his favor toward his son.
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He gives us grace because of the grace that's in his son. Grace for grace. Third, some think it means grace on account of or in return for the grace of faith in us.
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Grace for grace. In other words, grace is given to you when you exhibit faith. They take the first grace as a synonym for faith.
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Augustine held that view, one of the big boys. Four, some think it means grace answering to or proportion to the grace that is in Christ.
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In other words, the grace that is in Christ is freely bestowed upon us. Grace for grace. Fifth, some think it means grace for the propagation of grace.
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This one man, he was a good commentator, but he thought it was like an evangelistic kind of idea.
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Or lastly, and this is by far the most popular view, and this is the view that is conveyed in most of our newer
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English translations, not just newer, but the King James as well, New King James. Some think it means accumulated grace, abundant grace, grace upon grace, grace for grace, grace piled up on one another as it were.
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Again, I included all these names of commentators to show that many good men have sincere differences of opinion on how to interpret some difficult texts.
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And after citing the above, Ryle then wrote that his own view was number six above, grace upon grace, grace upon grace.
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And he wrote, on the whole, I am inclined to think that the sixth and the last is the correct view. Ultimately, however, we would argue, rather than the weight of the name of a commentator being preferred, we should make determinations on the evidence of the text itself.
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Which is the correct view? Well, I have become quite persuaded as number one above.
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And that would have been my least preferred when I started out. Grace for grace speaks of the new grace of the gospel in place of or instead of the old grace of the law.
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There are good reasons for this opinion. First, the meaning largely hinges on the Greek preposition, which is translated in our
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New King James as for, grace for grace. The English Standard Version, which probably many of us have, translates the phrase grace upon grace.
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There you have the idea of grace piled upon grace. Grace comes, you know, just repeatedly, ever flowing.
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The Greek word, I don't know why it's not conveyed through my printer, the Greek word anti, I put it in English transliteration there, the same preface in the front of Antichrist, by the way, anti, is used only once in John's gospel, this preposition, and it's only used here in all of John's gospel.
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The most common meaning of this Greek word is instead of or in place of, not for, not grace for grace, but grace instead of grace or grace in the place of grace.
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In fact, the translation of this Greek word, anti, or as upon or addition has no parallel in all
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Greek literature. And so those people that argue it's grace for grace, grace piled upon grace, they are translating that word in a way nowhere else found in Greek literature.
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That ought to be a warning signal. What John was conveying was that we all receive grace instead of grace or in the place of grace.
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He was saying that in place of the grace of God that was in his law, that had been given through Moses, God has given all true
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Christians the grace that is in Jesus Christ. He's given us grace instead of grace.
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And I would argue that verse 17 confirms that this is the meaning of verse 16. Very clearly, if you look at the text, the context, verse 17 is the explanation or the commentary on verse 16.
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So we'll read the two verses together. And of his fullness, we have all received grace and grace for grace for, see the conjunction, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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Now, if you're like me and, you know, we all had a kind of a dispensational background and whatnot, we tend to view the law of God only in negative terms because it condemns, it cannot sanctify it.
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So we look at it in negative terms, but that is not entirely correct.
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Certainly the law is incapable of sanctifying us or saving us. Certainly it can only condemn us, but that's not to deny that God gave his law as a bestowal and act of grace.
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Now, having made a choice, we'll explain this a little more later. And when we get to verse 17, having made a choice between the opinions of the meaning of verse 16, we're not saying that the views of the others are not biblical.
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They are. We're just saying that they shouldn't be built upon this verse. And I again read
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Matthew Henry, and he seemed to draw on all these meanings for the grace that we've received in Christ, but he cited other verses to substantiate the statements.
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And so we're not saying when we prefer one meaning over the other, that the others are illegitimate and not biblical.
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They are biblical. They're just substantiated elsewhere, not in this verse. And Matthew Henry cites some of these.
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First, the freeness of this grace. It is grace for grace's sake, so groteous, or so said groteous.
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We receive grace not for our sakes, be it known to us, but even so, Father, because it seemed good in thy sight.
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It is a gift according to grace. It is grace to us for the sake of grace to Jesus Christ.
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God was well pleased in him and is therefore well pleased with us in him. And that's a truism.
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But that's not being taught in verse 16. Second, the fullness of this grace.
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Grace for grace is abundance of grace. Grace upon grace. One grace heaped upon another as skin for skin, as skin after skin, even all that a man has.
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It is a blessing poured out that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Plenteous redemption.
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One grace. A pledge of more grace. Joseph, he will add, it's such a fullness as it's called the fullness of God, which is filled with.
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We are not straightened in the grace of Christ that is limited if we be not straightened in our own bosoms.
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Thirdly, the serviceableness of grace. Grace for grace is grace for the promoting and advancing of grace.
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Grace to be exercised by ourselves. Gracious habits or gracious acts. Grace to be ministered to others.
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Gracious vouch statements for gracious performances. Grace is a talent to be traded with.
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The apostles received grace that they might communicate it. Grace. Four, the substitution of New Testament grace in the room instead of Old Testament grace.
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This is the one that we have zeroed in on as a meaning of verse 16. So Beza, he was the one who followed after Calvin in Geneva.
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And this sense is confirmed by what follows. Verse 17, exactly what we were saying. For the
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Old Testament had grace in type. The New Testament has grace in truth. There was a grace under the
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Old Testament. The gospel was preached then, Galatians 3 .8, but that grace is superseded.
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And we have gospel grace instead of it. A glory which excelleth. Discoveries of grace are now more clear.
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Distributions of grace far more plentiful. This is grace instead of grace. And that's the meaning of verse 16 once again.
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Fifth, it speaks of the augmentation and continuance of grace. Grace for grace is one grace to improve, confirm, and perfect another grace.
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We are changed into the divine image from glory to glory. From one degree of glorious grace to another.
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When God gives grace, he said, take this in part for he who promised it will perform it.
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Those that have true grace have that for more grace. And sixth, it speaks of the agreeableness and conformity of grace in the saints.
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To the grace that is in Jesus Christ. So said Mr. Clark. I assume that's
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Adam Clark. Grace for grace is grace in us answering to grace in him. As the impression upon the wax answers the seal line for line.
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The grace we receive from Christ changes us into the same image. The image of the sun. The image of the heavenly.
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And so all of these statements about the grace of God are true statements. Biblical statements. But again we would argue just that one is the focus and emphasis of John 1 .16.
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Now let's look in more detail at verse 17. Moses and Jesus Christ compared.
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Here we read the declaration of the gospel writer. For the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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Although John has been writing of the son of God from the very first verse throughout this prologue. Here in verse 17,
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Jesus Christ is first mentioned here by name. First time in the gospel.
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Here we are in verse 17. Jesus Christ is identified by name. Although we've been talking about him since verse 1.
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John speaks about a finality and a fullness of the revelation of God. And the blessing of God to us through Jesus Christ.
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As we wrote earlier, verse 17 explains the meaning of verse 16. The first word of verse 17 is for.
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It is a conjunction that conveys the idea of providing explanation. It's an explanatory conjunction.
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An explanatory for. He makes a statement in verse 16 and then he gives the reason for it.
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Or the explanation of it in verse 17. Again, we'll read the two verses in context.
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And of his fullness we have all received grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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And so verse 16 tells us in Jesus Christ we, Christians, have received his fullness.
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That we received the grace of God that came through Jesus Christ. That replaced the grace that was given by God through Moses.
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And again, I put in italics those verbs. They're very precise.
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As one wrote, the progression of the prologue is moved from a God who is given to his people to a
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God who has come to his people. Clever. And the whole prologue is drawing us closer, closer to Christ.
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Now some object to this understanding of these verses. The most common objection asserts that there's nothing about the law of Moses that could be characterized as the grace of God.
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And therefore how could grace replace grace if the law is not gracious? But this is to misunderstand the biblical presentation of the law of Moses.
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It's true the Apostle Paul contrasts law and grace quite sharply in his epistles. He makes it very clear the law is not a faith.
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That the law brings wrath. That the law cannot produce true righteousness in sinners.
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And that all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. And we tend to focus on that, don't we?
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But to argue, therefore, that God did not give his law to his people in grace does not follow. For the
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Holy Scripture set forth the grace of God in having given his law to Israel. God promised that blessing would come to those who keep the law.
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We read of this many places but an extended passage in Deuteronomy 28. I don't think we'll read that because of the time.
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But basically God promises you keep these laws that I gave through Moses and I'm going to bless you.
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Now these are physical blessings of health and wealth and prosperity and security and fruitfulness in the land.
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But blessing upon blessing upon blessing. The law, therefore, was an instrument of grace.
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And the people kept it. Of course, they failed to do so. Moses, when rehearsing the law before Israel, expressed the great privilege and blessing that was theirs.
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For God had given them his law. Moses said, for what great nation is there that has
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God so near to it? As the Lord our God is to us. For whatever reason we may call upon him. And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments.
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As are all in this law which I've set before you this day. Doesn't sound like a curse to me.
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Sounds like the blessing of God, potentially. It was given by God in a gracious way.
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And so even when we look to the Apostle Paul's writings, we may see that he also spoke very highly of the law in some respects.
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Paul never denigrated the law. But rather he rebuked and corrected lawbreakers.
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That was the problem. Paul highly regarded the law. He asserted in places that it was a gracious God who had given his law to his people.
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And so Paul came to the defense of the law. Romans 7. Therefore the law is holy. And the commandment holy, just, and good.
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We should never develop a negative view of the law of God. The Bible never does.
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Except when people try and use the law as a way of salvation or a way of becoming holy.
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That's foolishness. God never gave it for that purpose, by the way. He declared in Romans 7 verse 16.
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If then I do what I will not to do, I agree that the law is good. The law in that sense is of grace.
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Paul also declared that the law was spiritual in nature. Back when
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I was a young Christian and taught wrongly, I used to think that the law of God was not spiritual.
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We're under grace. That's real spiritual. The law wasn't spiritual, but carnal. Paul says just the opposite in Romans.
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He says that the law is spiritual. Problem is, we're carnal. I had it completely reversed.
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We know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, so I'll understand. Just to illustrate this, how it just doesn't seem to fit the grace of law,
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I was reminded. In fact, I pulled the book off my shelf last night. I had some extra time, started reading it again.
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I was surprised and rejected initially the title of this book when I came across it 25, 30 years ago.
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It's entitled The Grace of Law by Ernest Kevin. He wrote this as a dissertation,
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I think, to Oxford and Cambridge back in the 60s. A wonderful book, but the title just kind of slapped me in the face.
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The Grace of Law? How can that be? But when I began to read this book, again,
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I thought I had a good understanding of the nature and role of the law set forth in the scriptures, but he took me to school on it.
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I'm not saying I agree with every word stated, but it's an excellent book, and it's still available.
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One of the chapters in Kevin's book is entitled The Place of the Law in the Purpose of God. The opening words of this chapter read this way.
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The object of this chapter is to exhibit the ways in which the Puritans understood the Mosaic Law and its place in God's purpose of grace for mankind.
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The law as a manifestation of God's grace. He wrote, a quote from the
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Puritans, The mystery of the gospel cannot be thoroughly apprehended by us without some good understanding of the economy of the law, yea, and also the state of things before the law.
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Again, Kevin's words. First, the twofold use of the word law sometimes is that which is solely perceptive, or preceptive, that would be a command, and sometimes as a covenant, the law as a covenant, is distinguished.
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And then an examination is made of the Puritan view of the relation of the law to the different forms and administrations of the covenant of grace, showing that the law itself is an instrument of grace.
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Then it is necessary to inquire into Paul's deprecatory language, in other words, his speaking ill of the law, and the appearance of opposition of the law and the gospel.
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In other words, the law and gospel are contrasted. He says in this chapter we're going to have to address that issue too.
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It's a complex matter. Paul also wrote of the glory of God revealed in the law.
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When he wrote 2 Corinthians chapter 3, he compared the ministry of Moses and the new covenant ministry that he was exhibiting, preaching the gospel.
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And he described the glory of the Mosaic law. He described the surpassing glory of the gospel.
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In fact, he likened the glory of Moses and the old covenant to the glory of the moon.
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It was glorious. It was gracious. But then he speaks of the glory of the gospel.
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It was as the sun rising and shining, and therefore the reflective glory of the moon waned as the new covenant ministry.
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And therefore Paul says we're not like Moses who tried to hide the glory fading from his face, but we with open minds and voices without any shame whatsoever, declare the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
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But again, the writer of the fourth gospel, although describing both the law and the revelation of God in Jesus Christ to be manifestation of God's grace, grace instead of grace, clearly sets forth a contrast between them.
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The latter manifestation of God's grace in Jesus Christ replaced the former manifestation of God's grace in the law.
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Grace instead of grace. And again, the end of verse 16 states that God gave grace instead of, or in the place of, the grace he had given in his law through Moses.
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The grace of God in Jesus Christ is vastly greater than the grace of the law that God had given through Moses.
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There are those who argue against this understanding. They say, for John, the law continues in force.
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The scriptures cannot be broken, they would argue, and therefore it's unreasonable to think that in John 1, 16, 17, that you can view the grace of the gospel, the grace that's come in Jesus Christ, as replacing the law.
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D. A. Carson, who's a wonderful Reformed Baptist commentator, many respects, he wrote, but again, close attention to the way the fourth gospel treats the
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Old Testament alleviates the difficulty. In the passages already mentioned and in a large number of others, the
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Old Testament scriptures are understood to point forward to Jesus, to anticipate him, and thus to prophesy of him.
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In that sense, he fulfills them. If even the covenant of law is prophetic in this sense, then when that to which it points arrived, it is in some sense displaced.
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Amen. It may continue in force as a continual pointer to that which it predicted, but its valid authority lies primarily in what it announced, in what has now arrived.
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The law, in other words, the law covenant was given by grace and anticipated the incarnate word,
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Jesus Christ, but now that he has come, that same prophetic law covenant is necessarily superseded by that which it prophesied would come.
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The thought is not dissimilar to Matthew 5. It is this prophecy fulfillment motif that explains why the two displays of grace are not precisely identical.
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The flow of the passage and the burden of the book as a whole magnify the fresh grace that's come in Jesus Christ.
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That grace is necessarily greater than the grace of the law, whose function in John's view was primarily to anticipate the coming of the
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Lord. I think that's a very clear explanation of the meaning of verse 16.
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You know, John's been writing about the law, about John's witness, and now he's declaring that, you know, yes, the law came through Moses, but grace and truth has come through Jesus Christ.
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And so we've received his fullness, grace instead of grace.
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The last verse, and I know we're getting late here, so we have to kind of move on pretty quickly here.
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We have in verse 18, the son declared the father. We read in verse 18, no one has seen
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God at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father, he has declared him.
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And with this verse, you have the conclusion of the prologue. No one has seen
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God at any time. No human being has ever seen God in his full essential glory.
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There are reasons for this. One is that God is invisible. You cannot see him. God is spirit.
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Paul wrote, to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor, glory forever and ever.
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You cannot see God. He's invisible. God is spirit. He does not have a body.
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Does not have parts. And so when the disciples questioned the resurrection of Jesus, are you really
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Jesus? Jesus said, touch me. A spirit does not have body and bones, as you see
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I have. It was Jesus' human body resurrected from the dead, glorified, but it was his human body.
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A spirit does not have flesh and bones. God does not have a body that can be seen. In fact, there are warnings in scripture against those who would attempt to see even a manifestation of God.
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That's why God, when he came down on Mount Sinai, covered the mountain with a cloud so the people couldn't see him.
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They wouldn't survive. And seeing a total disclosure of the glory of God, the presence of God.
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God himself told Moses, you cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live. However, what about all the instances in the
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Bible when it says that people saw God? Moses, it is said, in a number of places, he looked at God, talked with God face to face.
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The Hebrew word for face is actually a plural word. The Hebrew word is panet, that's singular.
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And when it's in the plural form, panim, it means you're looking right at a person, you see both sides of his face, it's a plural face.
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And so the word for presence in Hebrew is this panim. And the
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Bible says that Moses looked at God face to face, panim, in his presence. We read of Jacob wrestling
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God face to face. We read of Isaiah seeing God sitting on his throne in Isaiah 6.
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And we read of John who saw God the Father sitting on his throne in Revelation 4. How can you have all these instances where people saw
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God, and yet we read in John, no man has seen
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God. And again, the conclusion we have to draw is that no one has seen
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God in a full disclosed manner or measure. He's an infinite
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God, and we're finite. We wouldn't even be able to survive if there was a full disclosure.
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And so we would argue, of course, that all those manifestations of God to people were
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God revealing himself in a very, very limited way, in a measure, to reveal himself to people in a manner that they could comprehend, in a manner that they could survive.
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Because no man has seen God in his full essence. It's not possible.
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However, John declares, you see God in Jesus Christ. As he's declared him, the only begotten
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Son who is in the bosom of the Father. That speaks about being in the sight of the Father. They are one and the same God, one
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God. He has declared him. He has declared God.
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By the way, when it says of Jesus Christ that he was in the bosom of the Father, it means that even when
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Jesus Christ was walking around here on earth doing his ministry, fully God and fully man, his deity was not localized in his human body.
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He was with the Father, even when he was incarnated here on earth.
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In his human nature and human body, he was finite, limited. But in his divine nature, he's eternal and infinite and everywhere.
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He was with the Father, in the bosom of the Father, even when he was ministering on earth. But the people didn't see that glory.
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It was hidden from them. Peter, James, and John got somewhat of a glimpse of it on the Mount of Transfiguration.
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But then he told them, don't tell anybody about it until after I'm raised. But the point of John here in John 1 is that he has declared him,
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Jesus Christ. He concludes his prologue declaring that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the
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Word that was with God in the beginning, the Word who was God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared the true
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God of the world. The world can only know the true God through the revelation of God through his
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Son, Jesus Christ. We, without embarrassment or shame, claim biblical
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Christianity is the only true religion that exists in the world. All other religions are false religions.
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No one can know the true God except through Jesus Christ, who himself is God, who assumed a human nature, became one of us and one with us, the
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God -man. And in Christ we have God revealed to us. Christ is the only begotten
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Son in the bosom of the Father. He is the one who is most intimately united from all eternity to God the
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Father. He is equal to him in all things. He, during the time of his earthly ministry here, fully showed to man all that man can bear to know concerning his
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Father. He, Jesus, has revealed his Father's wisdom, holiness, compassion, power, hatred of sin, love of sinners in the fullest possible way.
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He has brought into clear light the great mystery how God the Father can be just and yet justify the ungodly.
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The knowledge of the Father, which a man derived from the teaching of Moses, is as different from that derived from the teaching of Christ as twilight is different from noonday.
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And so the bottom line again is, in Jesus Christ we have received his fullness. May the blessed
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Holy Spirit enable us to get a comprehension and a measure of the fullness we already have and enjoy in Jesus Christ.
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It is transformative. Paul argued in 2 Corinthians 3 .18, you look to Jesus Christ and it's like looking into a mirror.
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You don't see your reflection, you see Jesus Christ. And to the degree you see his glory, that is his authority, who he truly is and his person and all that's in him, you'll be transformed into his likeness even by the
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Spirit of God. Christianity is at heart a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
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And the Holy Spirit transforms people, not through the letter of the law, as important as the law is, but through a realization and intimacy and a knowledge of Jesus Christ, the
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Son of God. And that's what is set forth for us in the Gospel of John. May the
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Lord be gracious to us and reveal the glory of Christ to us fully to the degree we're capable.
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Amen. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray,
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Lord, that you would help us to proclaim him and exalt him. We pray, Father, that the blessed
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Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds, our souls to the glory that is in Jesus Christ.
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Help us, our God, to get a better understanding and glimpse of the fullness that we have in him.
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And help us, Lord, to go forth from this place testifying of him. And being as John, who faithfully bore witness of Jesus, help us, our
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Lord, faithfully, continually bear witness to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, in whose name we pray.