John 1:14- And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:16 - For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace.
John 1:18 - No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
Background:
John 1:14 refers to Jesus Christ, the Word, as the "only begotten of the Father," and verse 18 refers to Him as the "only begotten Son." The Greek word that is translated only begotten is the also used in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Only begotten is probably not the best translation of this Greek word, because the use of the word begotten sounds like the Bible is teaching that the Son of God had a beginning. We know that's not true-- the eternal Son of God always existed! The truth of His eternal Sonship is clearly taught in John 1:1-2: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God."
What it gets down to is this: the Greek word translated only begotten doesn’t really meanbegotten! A better translation would leave out the misleading word begotten. The Greek term actually has to do with the uniqueness of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Thus a better translation would be "the One and Only Son."
The Lord Jesus Christ is the One and Only Son of God. By very nature He is God. He possesses every attribute of God. These ideas are all involved in the term only begotten. There is no idea in this term of a "beginning."
When John wrote his Gospel in about 85AD, the seeds of an early Christian heresy known as Gnosticism had already been planted. One of the false teachings of this early heresy was that the man Jesus was not fully God. The gnostics believed that there was no way that God, who is pure Spirit and inherently good, would allow Himself to take on a material body, because (in their view) matter was inherently evil. Thus the gnostics taught that Jesus was only a man upon whom the "Christ-spirit" came at his baptism and left at his death. Therefore, said the gnostics, the man Jesus was not God. There are many modern-day gnostics in the cults all around us today. The seeds of Gnosticism are clearly refuted in John 1:14-18.
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