NOTES for Joh 1:1-18
What can we know about God? Can human words express what is beyond words and thought? What books and wise teachings can adequately describe the God whom no one has ever seen? The first and central message of the Gospel of John tells us of the Word through whom the Inexpressible One fully expressed Himself, for this Word shares God's very nature. This Word was not written in a book: He became flesh, a human being, one of us. Moses could only hear of the ineffability of the Name (in essence, God told him, “I am who I am; no name can express My essence”), whereas the author of the Gospel saw a Man who could say, “I and the Father are one,” and “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” God can now be not only heard through the word of the Law, which expresses God's will only in a limited way: the man who wrote the Gospel saw God, heard His own words, felt the warmth of His body and became His disciple. He writes to bear witness to what he saw, to how the Son revealed the One whom no one has ever seen.