THE PROLOGUE
OUTLINE
57
IN
figure of His body. Here it is the tabernacle. All that the tabernacle
typified, with its mercy-seat, ark, light, shewbread, altar of incense,
laver, brazen altar, and veil, was at length seen in reality in the `Word
made flesh'. The words `grace and truth' in verse 17 really signify
`true grace', i.e., that which was real and antitypical in contrast with
the shadows of the law. This, however, we must deal with more fully
when we come to the verses concerned.
The Authorized Version places in parenthesis the words `And we
beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father'. In
the original, the reader is at once struck by the sudden vagueness of the
words here, which read literally, `Glory as of an only begotten from a
father'. This is noted in the Revised Version margin, and in such
revised translations as those of Rotherham, Darby, and Cunningham.
The apostle's intention seems to be: We beheld His glory, a glory such
as one would associate with one who was only begotten of a father.
The word `father', while ultimately referring to God Himself, is used
here in a general sense. The glory that was beheld by the wondering
disciples was not the `glory' which the Saviour `had' with the Father
`before the world was' (17:5), for that glory, which is yet to be
unveiled and manifested (17:24) was tempered and veiled while the
Saviour lived here and bore the likeness of sinful flesh. The `glory'
referred to by the apostle here in 1:14 is rather the kind of glory that is
compatible with the status of being an only begotten one of a father.
He Who is Himself God, and Who had made the world, humbled
Himself, and spoke of Himself as `the Sent One'. He acknowledged
that `My Father is greater than I', and that as `the Son' He has received
power and authority from the Father. None of these acknowledgments,
of course, in any way touch His Deity; they merely speak of the
humble place that He was pleased to take when He was `made flesh'.
We have no wish to take any part in the controversy concerning the
Lord's Sonship that is wrecking one evangelical witness. The very
terms used in this controversy are themselves unscriptural. Nowhere
does Scripture say: `In the beginning was the Son'. Only when the
Word was made flesh, does His sonship appear. Such phrases,
therefore, as the `Eternal Generations of the Son' we cannot regard as
being scripturally sound.
The words `the only begotten', wherever they are used apart from
Christ, always refer to a son or a daughter who has been begotten by a
father. The words are used of Isaac (Heb. 11:17) of the only son of the