John 1: 16 February 4, 2021
15(John testified to him and cried out,
‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because
he was before me.” ’) 16From his fullness we have all
received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No
one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the
Father’s heart, who has made him known.
19 This
is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem
to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ 20He confessed and did not deny it,
but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ 21And they asked him,
‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He
answered, ‘No.’ 22Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us
have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ 23He
said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.
24 Now
they had been sent from the Pharisees. 25They asked him, ‘Why
then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the
prophet?’ 26John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among
you stands one whom you do not know, 27the one who is coming
after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ 28This
took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
We
will receive grace upon grace.
But first,
if you look at the structure of verses 15 and 16, it looks like they are trying
to tell us that John the baptizer is only being credited with the words in verse
15. Follow the quotation marks and he
does not appear to talk again until verse 20.
But that leaves us with an issue.
Was John the baptizer given the one line and then we switched back to
the narrator’s voice for verses 16-18?
That is how the punctuation is set up.
Why
is that so important? Well, for one
thing, if the whole section is written by John the baptizer, it is more
dialogue and information than he shares in any of the other gospels. It becomes like a criminal investigation. What did the John B. know and when did he
know it?
Does
John B. (John the baptizer) know that from “his” (Jesus) fullness, we have
received grace upon grace? What is
grace? In this case, it is not the
friend of Aunt Bethany who died years ago (obscure movie quote). We know already from John the Narrator (John
N.) that Jesus is the provider of truth and grace. But in this case, when Jesus is full, it is
from that state that we have received grace upon grace. But before we tackle the content, what about
the context? Who shared it? Because in verse 19, John N. tells us that
this is the testimony given by John B.
Was it just verse 15, or was it the whole paragraph?
Does
it really matter? Well, it got me. I think John B. should be credited with the
entire section, verses 15-18, because that is identified as his testimony. But the question of who said it is not nearly
so important as what was said.
In
the fullness of Jesus, we have received grace upon grace. What is the fullness of Jesus? I would suggest that it is Jesus in the
accomplishment of His mission upon the earth, looking forward to a time past
his life of instruction, his death of obedience, his resurrection of triumph,
and our celebration of his giving the believer the power to become a child of
God. So John N. (narrator) is looking
from the beginning of his gospel to the triumph of Jesus’ work at the end of
his gospel.
So what
about the voice of the nitpicker? This
is the voice that picks at things just because they can. How would John the baptizer know about the
fullness of Jesus’ ministry when John the baptizer would not live to see
it? Because John the baptizer is going
to be executed before the fullness of Jesus’ ministry comes to pass. How could John the baptizer possibly have
known all this stuff? And if it is not John
the baptizer speaking, John the Narrator has given us a very awkward
construction.
The
Voice of the Nitpicker in my mind has hijacked the real center of this verse,
the grace upon grace we have received from Jesus in the completion of His
mission, to who said what. Grace upon
grace. What does that mean? Grace 1: God came down and dwelt among us as
Jesus, not considering being God as something to be grasped. Grace 2: Jesus gave his life for us out of
love. Grace 3: Jesus rose again from the
dead and, in that resurrection, gave us all resurrection, resurrection unto
eternal life. Grace 4, or perhaps Grace
Zero: Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness. Yes, all those graces are spoilers as to what
is coming in the gospel.
The power
of the Nitpicker is as the voice that makes me pay close attention to the
text. The danger of the Nitpicker is
that close attention to the text can be on the minor bit which then rises up to
submerge consideration of the important bits.
These can make for fascinating technical arguments, but do little to
advance our understanding of the depths of God’s Word.
The
danger of the Nitpicker is particular acute when it seeks to retroactively
force the Bible into its own categories.
What does that mean? Well, the
Nitpicker wants a clear delineation of dialogue, because that is what the
Nitpicker expects in the books he reads today, both in fiction for clarity, and
in historic narratives for accuracy. To retroactively
superimpose these expectations on the gospel is then going to cheapen my experience
in God’s Word because it does not fit with my expectations. He…me…my, not a gender discussion. I am the Nitpicker.
It
becomes a presupposition that I will read into the gospel my expectations of
literary structure, instead of allowing the literary structure inform my
expectations.
The
literary structure of John’s Gospel is to point to Jesus and what Jesus
accomplishes (grace upon grace). It is
written from a time and point of view where the fullness of Jesus has been
accomplished. The Gospel is not a “whodunit”
where we follow the clues to find out. The
gospel is a “Jesusdunit” (pardon that really awkward phrase) and this truth of
our salvation is declared all along the way.
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