Joh 1:18, 5:26 | JFB | STEP | 18. No man —"No one," in the widest sense. hath seen God —by immediate gaze, or direct intuition. in the bosom of the Father —A remarkable expression, used only here, presupposing the Son's conscious existence distinct from the Father, and expressing His immediate and most endeared access to, and absolute acquaintance with, Him. he —emphatic; As if he should say, "He and He only hath declared Him," because He only can. . THE BAPTIST'S TESTIMONY TO CHRIST.

John 1:18

18. No man—"No one," in the widest sense.

hath seen God—by immediate gaze, or direct intuition.

in the bosom of the Father—A remarkable expression, used only here, presupposing the Son's conscious existence distinct from the Father, and expressing His immediate and most endeared access to, and absolute acquaintance with, Him.

he—emphatic; As if he should say, "He and He only hath declared Him," because He only can.

Joh 1:19-36. THE BAPTIST'S TESTIMONY TO CHRIST.

John 5:26

26. given to the Son, &c.—Does this refer to the essential life of the Son before all time (Joh 1:4) (as most of the Fathers, and OLSHAUSEN, STIER, ALFORD, &c., among the moderns), or to the purpose of God that this essential life should reside in the Person of the Incarnate Son, and be manifested thus to the world? [CALVIN, LUCKE, LUTHARDT, &c.] The question is as difficult as the subject is high. But as all that Christ says of His essential relation to the Father is intended to explain and exalt His mediatorial functions, so the one seems in our Lord's own mind and language mainly the starting-point of the other.