I was doing a study in the gospel of John a few months ago and found something that made me sit back and just think for a long while.
If you don’t know, John’s gospel is unique. When John wrote it he assumed you had already read at least Matthew and Mark because he intentionally skips several things they cover and just refers to people or events in passing as if you already know them or what happened. In fact, John’s biography of Jesus is so different, his gospel is often overlooked because you cannot cross reference or cross check some of the things he wrote about.
But, what really sets John’s narrative apart is that he makes it clear: Jesus was not just a savior, or messiah, or prophet, or king, or anointed one, or teacher, or rabbi … Jesus was God. The same message can be found in the other gospels, but John hammers it home time and again.
I am doing an in depth reading of John lately. There is a textual variant in John 1:18 that is fascinating.
Some translations use “huios” or υἱός in the Greek meaning “Son”. Other translations use “theos” or θεὸς in the Greek meaning “God”.
So the verse could be rendered as:
No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (NASB)
No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (NASB)
Or:
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (NKJV)
Or using both:
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (NIV)
I won’t go into which variant I think is correct. But I will say that both versions open a world of insight into the “being” of Jesus.