John 1 - NKJV Woman's Study Bible

1:1–2 Jesus Christ has always existed and will exist eternally. He is the living Word. Jesus and God the Father, along with the Holy Spirit, have always had an intimate relationship as the triune God. Jesus is God who took on a human body and nature in order to redeem mankind (see chart, The Definitive Christological Passages).

1:4 Gnosticism, a dualistic heresy that reached its full strength in the second and third centuries AD, regarded the spiritual as being inherently good and the earthly (that is, the created world) as inherently evil. Asceticism is another response to this concept that the created order is inherently evil. John may have emphasized Christ’s humanity in his Gospel in order to combat the beginnings of the philosophical-spiritual ideology called Gnosticism. Gnostics believed that the spirit world contained many different levels of knowledge and that everyone must ascend through them to achieve gnōsis (Gk.), a secret inner knowledge resulting in salvation and available only to those who had their consciousness raised to such a level.

Gnostics argued that through Christ they had experienced a spiritual resurrection and had arrived at knowledge (Gk., gnōsis). Therefore, since the sins of the body were totally unconnected with the spiritual life, they were free on a spiritual plane to worship God through Christ Jesus and on a physical plane to do as they pleased. Paul strongly taught against this viewpoint as did the early church fathers (2Co 7:1; Eph 4:17–24). First Timothy 1:3–7 and Jude 3–19 may also refer to teachers of incipient (or developing) Gnosticism.

Since Gnostics believed the flesh is always evil, they taught that a sinless Christ could not have become truly human. Gnostics were divided over the incarnation. The Docetic Gnostics claimed that Christ’s human body was only an illusion, while Cerinthian Gnostics taught that God’s divine spirit filled the human Jesus at his baptism but fled before his death. Like all other tenets of Gnostic belief, Scripture refutes both of these positions (Col 1:15–18; Heb 2:14; 1Jn 4:2–6; see 1Co 1, Heresies; Gal 4, Christology; Eph 2, Salvation).

1:14 Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God and Second person of the Trinity, “became flesh.” To his divine nature he added a perfect human nature. As Paul later explained, this involved his having “taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Php 2:7). As the incarnate God, his wholly divine and perfectly human natures are forever united—without change, mixture or separation—in one person (Jn 10:30; Col 2:9; 1Jn 1:1–5). “Made his dwelling” (Gk., skēnoō, sharing its root with skēnē, lit. “tent”) refers to the fact that God dwelt temporarily among his people as the perfect God-Man, Jesus Christ, just as God manifested his presence to his people in the tabernacle in the wilderness (Ex 24:16; 40:35; see chart, The Plan of the Tabernacle).

1:23 John the Baptist was thought by some to be the prophet Isaiah (see Isa 40:3), while others believed he was Elijah. The Jews believed that Elijah would appear on earth before the Messiah would come, and John resembled Elijah. He dressed like a prophet; he was rugged; he lived in the wilderness; and, like Elijah, he was a prophet. Jesus praised John as a great prophet and he was popular among the Jews of his day. His ministry began near the Jordan River around AD 26. He was sent as a “voice” to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah.

1:29 John called Jesus the Lamb of God. In this title, John pictured the Passover lamb slain at the time of deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery (see Ex 12:12–13). To the Jews, the slaughtered lamb represented meekness, innocence, sacrifice, redemption and the substitutionary forgiveness of sins (see chart, The Plan of the Tabernacle).

1:38 Rabbi (lit. “great one,” “master,” or “teacher”) was a title of respect used by students of their wise teachers. The title later became especially identified with the teachers of the Law of Moses.

1:46 Jesus gave prominence to Nazareth, a city not mentioned in the OT. Located between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea, Nazareth was Jesus’ hometown, where he grew from boyhood to manhood. With Nathanael’s question, John revealed Nazareth’s poor reputation. The people of Nazareth would later reject Jesus (see Mk 6:4, note).