John 1:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The Evangelist says that in Him there is no borrowed gift. He is the very fountain, the very root of all good things, self-existent life, self-existent light, and self-perfect truth.

He does not keep the abundance of good things in Himself alone, but pours it out upon all others. And while pouring it out, He Himself remains always full in superabundance.

In enriching others, He is Himself diminished in nothing. Always pouring forth and communicating these good things to all, He remains in the same perfection.

What I have in myself, John says, is borrowed, since I received it from another. It is something small from the whole, like a poor drop before an ineffable abyss and a boundless sea.

Better yet, even this likeness cannot portray what we are striving to express. Remove a drop from the sea, and the sea is thereby diminished, even if the decrease is not noticed.

But this cannot be said of that Fountain. However much one draws from it, it is not diminished in the least.

Therefore we must pass to another comparison. It too will be weak and unable to explain what we seek, yet it will bring us closer than the first to the thought proposed.

Let us imagine a source of fire. From it one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, and still more lamps are kindled.

Does not the fire remain in one and the same fullness even after it has communicated its power to so many lamps? This is known to everyone.

If among divisible bodies, which are diminished by the removal of parts, there is something that is in no way diminished after communicating its powers to other bodies, how much more must this be so in an incorporeal and immortal power?

If what is received here, that is, in fire, is both essence and body, and is both divided and not divided, then this is far more certain when we speak of a power from an incorporeal essence.

For this reason John says, “and of His fullness we have all received,” and joins his own testimony to the testimony of the Baptist.

The words “and of His fullness we have all received” belong not to the Forerunner, but to Christ’s disciple. These words mean this.

Do not think that we testify merely from gratitude, as men who spent much time with Him and shared a table with Him.

Behold, John, a man who had not even seen Him before and had not lived with Him, but saw Him with others only when he baptized Him, cried out: “He was before me.” In saying this he said everything.

Meanwhile all of us, the Twelve, the three hundred, the five hundred, the three thousand, the five thousand, the tens of thousands of Jews, and the whole multitude of believers, then, now, and hereafter, have received of His fullness.

What did we receive? “Grace for grace.” What grace in place of what grace? The new in place of the old.

Just as there was righteousness and righteousness, for it is said, “as to righteousness under the Law, blameless” (Phil 3:6), and faith and faith, “from faith to faith” (Rom 1:17).

There was adoption and adoption, for it is said, “to whom belong the adoption” (Rom 9:4). There was glory and glory: “if what is passing away was glorious, much more what remains is glorious” (2 Cor 3:11).

There was law and law: “the law of the Spirit of life has set me free” (Rom 8:2). There was ministry and ministry: “if the ministry,” it is said in 2 Cor 3:7-8, and elsewhere, “who worship God in spirit” (Phil 3:3).

There was covenant and covenant: “I will make a new covenant, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers” (Jer 31:31).

There was sanctification and sanctification, baptism and baptism, sacrifice and sacrifice, temple and temple, circumcision and circumcision. So too there is grace and grace.

But here one thing consists of images, and the other of truth. Both bear only a common name; they do not have the same meaning.

In sketches and pictures, what is painted in black and white is called a man, just as much as one who has his natural color. Statues also, whether golden or clay, are equally called statues.

But the image is one thing, and the truth another. Therefore do not conclude from the likeness of names that the realities are identical, nor that they are entirely alien.

If it was an image, it was not foreign to the truth. But if it contained a shadow, it was inferior to the truth.

What difference is there among all the concepts just mentioned? Do you wish us to explain one or two of the concepts mentioned?

In this way the rest will become intelligible to you. We shall all see that some were lessons for children, while others were for mature and strong men.

Some were laid down only for men, while others were, as it were, for angels. With what shall we begin? Do you wish us to begin with adoption itself?

What, then, is the difference between Old Testament adoption and New Testament adoption? The former was honor in word, but the latter in reality.

Of the former it is said, “I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High” (Ps 81:6). Of the latter it is said, “They were born of God.”

How and in what way? “By the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” The former, even with the name of sons, had in themselves the spirit of bondage.

They were honored with this name while remaining slaves. We, having been made free, received this honor not in name only, but in reality.

Pointing to this, Paul said, “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, Abba, Father!” (Rom 8:15).

Because we are born from above and, so to speak, recreated, we are therefore called sons.

If anyone wished to know the form of sanctification in the Old Testament and the New Testament, he would again see much difference here.

The ancients were called by this name of saints when they did not serve idols, did not commit fornication, and did not commit adultery.

But we become saints not only by abstaining from those vices, but also by acquiring higher perfections. First we receive this gift from the very visitation of the Holy Spirit.

Then we receive it also through our own life, which is much higher than the Jewish life. And that these words are not self-praise, hear what was said to them.

“Do not practice sorcery; do not purify your children, for you are a holy people” (Deut 18:10, 13). Thus, for them, holiness consisted in withdrawal from pagan customs.

For us it is not so, but it is said, “that she may be holy both in body and in spirit” (1 Cor 7:34).

“Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb 12:14). And, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1).

The word “holy” does not express one and the same thought for all to whom it is applied. God too is called holy, but not as we are.

See what the prophet says when he heard the voice proceeding from the seraphim: “Woe is me! I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people also of unclean lips” (Is 6:5).

Yet the prophet was holy and pure. But if we judge our holiness by the standard above, we are found unclean.

Angels and archangels are holy. Seraphim and cherubim are also holy. Yet again there is a difference in holiness between us and the powers above.

I could trace all the other concepts as well, but I see that the discourse is becoming too long. Therefore, leaving further inquiry aside, we entrust you to reason through the remaining matters yourselves.

At home you can compare them, understand the difference between them, and trace all the rest in the same way. “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser” (Prov 9:9).

Thus you will complete what we have begun. But we must return to the former order of the discourse.

Having said, “and of His fullness we have all received,” the Evangelist adds, “grace for grace.” By this he shows that the Jews too are saved by grace.

“Not because of your increase,” God says, “but because of your fathers, I chose you.” If they were chosen by God not for their merits, it is plain that they received this honor by grace.

We too are all saved by grace, but not as they were, not in the same degree, but in a far greater and higher one.

Thus our grace is not such as theirs. We have been granted not only forgiveness of sins, which we share with them, for “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23).

We have also received justification, sanctification, adoption, and the grace of the Spirit, incomparably more luminous and abundant. Through this grace we have been made beloved of God, not as slaves, but as sons and friends.

Therefore it is said, “grace for grace.” The economy under the Law was also a work of grace, as was our very coming into being from non-being.

We did not receive this recompense for any preceding merits. How could that be, when we did not exist at all? Rather, it was so because God always precedes us with His benefactions.

Not only our coming into being from non-being, but also our immediate instruction after coming into being in what we must do and what we must not do, is a work of the greatest grace.

So too is the placing of this law in our very nature, and the implanting in us of the incorruptible tribunal of conscience. All this is a work of the greatest grace and ineffable love for mankind.

It is also a work of grace that, after this law had been damaged, He renewed it through the written Law.

Those who transgressed the commandment once given should have been subjected to punishments and torments. But this was not done. Instead, correction came again, and forgiveness was granted, not by right, but by mercy and grace.

That this was by mercy and grace, hear David say: “The Lord works righteousness and judgment for all who are wronged. He made known His ways to Moses, His deeds to the sons of Israel” (Ps 102:6-7).

And elsewhere: “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He instructs sinners in the way” (Ps 24:8).

But beyond this we shall also receive grace upon grace, when eternal life is given to us. Of this the Apostle says, "The grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Yet just before he had said, "The wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23).

That wage is deserved, since eternal death is rendered for service to the devil as something owed. Here he could rightly have said, "The reward of righteousness is eternal life." Yet he preferred to say, "The grace of God is eternal life," so that we might understand from this that God brings us into eternal life not by our merits, but by His mercy.

Of this mercy the man of God says to his soul in the Psalm: "He crowns you with mercy and compassion" (Ps 102:4). Is not a crown given for good works? Yet these good works themselves are wrought in good men by Him of whom it is said, "For God works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure" (Phil 2:13).

Therefore the Psalm says, "He crowns you with mercy and compassion," because by His mercy we do the good works for which a crown is rendered to us. Nor should anyone think that he abolishes free choice when he says, "For God works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure."

If that were so, he would not have said just before, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12). When he commands them to work, he addresses their free choice. Yet he says, "with fear and trembling," lest they become exalted as though by their own works, by attributing to themselves the good they do.

Thus the Apostle is, as it were, holding a conversation. When he is asked, "Why did you say, 'with fear and trembling'?" he gives the reason for those words, saying, "For God works in you both to will and to do." For if you fear and tremble, you will not be exalted as though by your good works, since God works them in you.

What, then, does this mean: grace upon grace? By faith we obtain God. We were not worthy that our sins should be forgiven. Since we receive such a gift from Him while unworthy, this gift is called grace.

Having obtained this grace of faith, you will be justified by faith. "The righteous shall live by faith" (Rom 1:17). Living by faith, you will obtain God. You will receive the reward of immortality and eternal life.

And this too is grace. For by what merit will you receive eternal life? In exchange for grace. If faith is grace, and eternal life is, as it were, the reward for faith, God seems to give eternal life as something owed. Owed to whom? To the faithful man, because he has merited it by faith. Yet because faith itself is grace, eternal life is grace upon grace.

Therefore it is said next: "And from His fullness we have all received." What have you received? "And grace for grace." For so the Gospel words read, when checked against the Greek copies.

It does not say, "And from His fullness we have all received grace for grace." Rather it says, "And from His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace." That is, we received in such a way that we should understand His will, that from His fullness we should receive something hidden, and in addition grace for grace.

For from His fullness we first received grace, and again we received grace: grace for grace.

What grace did we first receive? Faith. By abiding in faith, we abide in grace. By what did we merit this? Did we receive it for some preceding merits of our own? Let no one deceive himself. Let each turn to his conscience, look into the hidden places of his thoughts, and consider the course of his deeds.

Let him not think what he is, if now he is anything. Let him see what he was, so that he might become something. Let him understand that he merited nothing except punishment.

If you were worthy of punishment, and if He came not to punish transgressions but to forgive sins, then grace was given to you not as a reward earned.

Why is grace called grace, gratia? Because it is given freely, gratis. You did not purchase what you received by former merits.

Thus the sinner received that first grace, so that his transgressions were forgiven. What did he merit? Let him appeal to justice, and he will receive punishment in answer. Let him appeal to mercy, and he will receive grace.

Yet God had promised this through the prophets. When He came to give what He had promised, He gave not only grace, but also truth. How was truth conveyed? By the fulfillment of what had been promised.

What, then, is grace for grace? Through faith we are made worthy of God. Since we were not worthy that our sins should be forgiven, and since we received so great a gift while unworthy, this gift is called grace.

What does "grace" mean? A free gift. What does "free gift" mean? Something given that does not require repayment. If it were owed, payment would be rendered for it, and it would not be bestowed grace.

If it were truly owed, you would be good. But if, as indeed is true, you were wicked and believed in Him who justifies the ungodly (cf. Rom 4:5), what does "He justifies the ungodly" mean? It means that He turns the ungodly into the pious. Then judge what should have been reckoned to you according to the law, and what you have found by grace.

Having found this grace of faith, you became righteous by faith. For "the righteous lives by faith" (cf. Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17). Living in faith, you will be made worthy of God. When you are made worthy of God, you will receive immortality and eternal life as your reward.

This too is grace. For by what merit do you receive eternal life? For grace. If faith is grace, and eternal life is, as it were, payment for faith, then God seems to render eternal life as something owed. To whom is it owed? To the believer, because he has merited it by his faith.

But because faith itself is grace, eternal life too is grace for grace.

Hear the Apostle Paul, who acknowledged grace and then longed for repayment. What is Paul's confession of grace? "I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man, but I obtained mercy" (cf. 1 Tim 1:13). He said that he was unworthy of what he received. He received it not for his merits, but by the mercy of God.

Hear him when he was already demanding repayment, though he had first received undeserved grace. "For I am already being offered," he says, "and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness" (2 Tim 4:6-8).

He is already asking repayment. He is already demanding what is owed. Indeed, look at the words that follow: "the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day" (2 Tim 4:8).

To receive grace first, he needed a merciful Father. To receive the reward for grace, he needed a righteous Judge. Will He who did not condemn the ungodly judge the believer? Yet if you look carefully, He first gave the faith by which you became worthy of Him.

You did not become worthy of Him by your works, so that He should owe you something. Therefore, when He later gives the reward of immortality, He crowns His own gifts, not your merits.

Therefore, brethren, from His fullness we have all received. From the fullness of His mercy, from the abundance of His goodness, we have received. What have we received? The forgiveness of sins, that we might be justified by faith.

And what have we received besides? "And grace for grace." That is, for that grace in which we live by faith, we shall receive another. What else can it be but another grace?

If I were to say, "because it was fitting and owed," I would be reckoning something to myself, as though someone were indebted to me. But God crowns in us the gifts of His mercy, provided only that we remain firmly in that grace which we received first.

The grace of the Old Covenant is only initial instruction, while the grace of the New is completion. The former befits infants, the latter perfect men. Or rather, the former befits perfect men, and the latter even angels. Then he indicates the difference between the Covenants from the difference between their founders.

We received the gift of understanding the divine Scriptures: "Then He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures" (Lk 24:45). We received the supernatural gift of communion in the Body and Blood of the Only-begotten Son of God Himself. "Take, eat; this is My Body. Drink of it, all of you; this is My Blood" (Mt 26:26-28). But we have also received "grace for grace," that is, instead of the grace that we lost through ancestral sin, we received the grace of the Savior that adopts us. The meaning of these words is this: we received the evangelical grace, greater instead of lesser, rich instead of poor. Now the Evangelist gives the reason why evangelical grace immeasurably surpasses the grace that came from the Law.

To them belonged passing glory; to us belongs glory that abides forever (2 Cor 3:10-11). In a word, this indicates the abundance and superiority of the grace of Christ, which the Old Covenant could not supply (cf. Rom 5:2 and following; Eph 5:29). Charis, grace, is everything given by God freely, according to His will and mercy, without merits on man's part. It is everything necessary for his salvation, and in general all the divine powers "that pertain to life and piety" (2 Pet 1:3), which are given to the Christian in the Mysteries.

In this fullness of the Godhead in Christ Jesus is indicated the most abundant and inexhaustible source of grace, which all believers may draw from Him. "We all" means those who believe in the name of the Lord Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God (Jn 1:12). John the Baptist concluded the series of Old Covenant prophets and righteous men, all of whom received gifts of the Spirit, or grace, according to faith in Christ and from His fullness (Heb 11). The Baptist, ending the Old Covenant, also began the New. Thus his prophetic gaze, if we consider these words with Blessed Theophylact to be the Baptist's, embraces the fullness of grace poured from Christ's fullness upon all New Covenant believers. In the consciousness of the unchangeable truth of this, he unites Old Covenant and New Covenant believers into one society. As representative of both, he contemplates the outpouring of these gifts of grace as already accomplished: "we have received." "Grace for grace" means twofold grace, or in general a multitude and abundance of grace in its most varied manifestations and forms. All believers, Old Covenant and New Covenant, received from Christ's fullness: God's propitiation for sins (1 Jn 2:2), reconciliation with God through the justification of all by His blood (Rom 5:10; Eph 1:7), and the sending down of the Holy Spirit with His manifold spiritual gifts (Jn 7:37-38; Jn 14:16). They received adoption to God and every kind of spiritual blessing. "He has the gifts not by participation, but is Himself the source and giver of gifts. He is self-life, self-light, and self-truth. He does not keep the wealth of good things within Himself, but pours it out upon all. Pouring it upon all, He Himself remains full and is in no way diminished by communicating it to others. He always pours forth and communicates good things to all, Himself always remaining in the same fullness. Let us imagine a river of fire from which thousands and millions of lamps are lit. Is it not true that the fire remains in the same fullness even after it has communicated its burning to countless lamps? This is clear to everyone. If even among divisible bodies one can find a body that is in no way diminished by communicating its essence to others, such undiminished fullness is far more possible for another power, bodiless and utterly simple" (Chrysostom).

"His fullness," in keeping with the general meaning of pleroma, which signifies fullness and abundance (Ps 23:1; Eph 3:19), indicates in Christ the whole compass of divine perfections needed to accomplish the salvation of the human race (Col 2:9; Eph 1:23; 4:10). It also indicates the abundance of gracious gifts merited by Christ for guilty humanity (Rom 8:32). The words "grace for grace," charin anti charitos, signify an abundance of grace. Thus in Job 2:4, "skin for skin" means every skin, or, as is immediately explained, all one's possessions. In Christ Jesus we have received every grace: the grace of Baptism, the grace of strengthening, the grace of the forgiveness of sins, and the grace of communion in His flesh. Innumerable are the gifts of the Holy Spirit poured out upon the Church of Christ.

And in Ephesians 1 he says of the Church that she "is His body," the body of the Son of God, "the fullness of Him Who fills all in all." From studying all these and other places of Holy Scripture, we see that the Christian world exists by grace. Grace is given to believers through the mediation of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The source of grace is the Lord, from Whom "we have all received, and grace for grace." Grace took the place of the Law: mercy instead of judgment, freedom in Christ instead of bonds, and infinite love instead of recompense. This is the thought expressed in verse 17, which sets the Law of Moses beside the grace proceeding from the Lord Jesus. The first covenant of mercy was concluded by God with Abraham, who is the father of all who believe (Gen 15; 17:7; Rom 4:11; Gal 3:7). But after Abraham, the people who came from his loins and from the first patriarchs did not inherit Abraham's burning faith and love for God. Then the Law was given to this people through God's servant Moses, and God concluded with the people a covenant of fulfillment of the Law. Yet this Law "was only a tutor unto Christ" (Gal 3:24), until the time of grace came. "The same God Who gave the Law also gave grace. But He sent the Law through the mediation of His servant. Grace He brought Himself, clothing Himself in flesh" (Augustine). The Law was given as a temporary institution. But grace and truth were always, eternally, from the creation of the world. Grace and truth came into the world through Jesus Christ, Who came in the flesh and poured out upon us God's gifts, grace and truth, making us partakers of the eternal life of the Godhead. When God came to earth, then only were peace on earth and goodwill among men established (Lk 2:14). It should be noted that here, in verse 17, the name sacred to us, Jesus Christ, appears for the first time in John's Gospel. It is repeated in the same form in Jn 17:3 and Jn 20:31.