Significant Insights on “Grace” in the Gospel of John

Grace of GodGraceJohn 1:16Pastor's Corner

Feb 19

Pastor Brad Abley: Biblical Educator

Pastor’s Corner Teaching on Grace

For you and me, Jesus is everything we need — and He’s all we need. The Apostle Paul recognized this, writing in Colossians 2:1-9. What Paul teaches there reveals to us just how we can live in the Lord’s fullness and walk in and receive His multiplied grace — His fresh, new grace for us every day!

“For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (John 1:16)

I find two significant insights on “grace” in John’s gospel (above, John 1:16), worth sharing with others: “Grace upon grace” (v.16) means grace, from start to finish; it is a quality of blessing from God that enables us to know Him and to live the Christian life in the center of His will.
Robert Mounce explains so well that they received one blessing after another. Not only had they received grace when they came to him in faith, but their experience of the goodness of God was one of continuous blessedness…(there are) progressive blessings that come in the Christian life.
Each experience of the grace of God is replaced by the next, like the manna that came fresh every morning. John’s point is that at the heart of new life in Christ is a constant supply of grace. It is interesting that John uses the term “grace” only here in the prologue (vv.14, 16-17) and no place else (John, 60).

This contrasts with the Apostle Paul’s use of this word more than 100 times in his 13 epistles. We could almost argue that John’s paucity of references to grace heightens the value of this concept, yet the same can be true of Paul’s extensive emphasis on grace.

The literal Greek in v.16 reads “grace for grace.” Beasley-Murray explains that the Greek word translated “for” (anti), appears to indicate that fresh grace replaces grace received, and will do so perpetually; the salvation brought by the Word thus is defined in terms of inexhaustible grace, a significant feature in view of the absence of further mention of grace in the Gospel (Beasley-Murray, John, 15).

The “fullness” (v.16) John writes of is for all who are in Christ, as John later shows in 20:29: “Blessed are those who have believed and not seen.”
F.F. Bruce rightly declares, “This plentitude of divine glory and goodness which resides in Christ (cf. Col. 1:19; 2:9) is an ocean from which all his people may draw without ever diminishing its content” (Bruce, The Gospel of John, 43).
Bruce then beautifully adds, “What the followers of Christ draw from the ocean of divine fullness is grace upon grace — one wave of grace being constantly replaced by a fresh one.” Ibid.
For you and me, Jesus is everything we need — and He’s all we need. The Apostle Paul recognized this, writing in Colossians 2:1-9. What Paul teaches there reveals to us just how we can live in the Lord’s fullness and walk in and receive His multiplied grace — His fresh, new grace for every day.