Let’s begin by reading John 1:15, “John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.”  These are the words of John the Baptist speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ.  John was the fore-runner of Christ, the one that introduced Christ to the world as the Messiah.  We read in Matthew 3:1-3, “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”  With John as the fore-runner, Christ naturally came after him.  Also, in the line of birth, we know that John was about six months older than Jesus.  Yet John says, “He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.”  Christ was preferred before John because He was before John.  This speaks to the fact of Christ being the eternal Son of God.  Consider the words of Christ Himself in John 8:58, “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”  In Revelation 1:7, Christ refers to Himself as “the first and the last.”  He is eternal!

Now let’s read verse 16 says, “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”  It may help us to look at the NASB translation for this verse.  It says, “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.”  Verse 15 is a parenthetical verse.  We have to go back to verse 14 to learn about this ‘fulness we have received.’  Verse 14 tells us that Christ was “full of grace and truth.”  It’s that ‘fulness’ that we have before us in this verse.  As believers on the Lord Jesus, we partake of that fullness of Christ for all our spiritual needs.  Amazing!  The Lord has enough grace and truth to meet all the needs of all believers in every place in every age.  In particular, we receive grace upon grace, one blessing upon another, immeasurable grace and love.  The Gospel of John was written around 90 A.D.  As the Lord led the apostle to write these words, I can imagine that he nodded in agreement to the truth he was writing.  He had experienced many years of this grace upon grace, this one blessing after another, this grace that had met all his needs.  James wrote of this in his epistle.  We read in James 4:6, “But he giveth more grace.”  The Lord Jesus told the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “…My grace is sufficient for thee.’

Before we end these thoughts, let’s also consider John 1:17, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”  Moses was the giver of the law.  The law told the TRUTH, but Christ was full of GRACE and TRUTH.  Truth exposes us to our sinful state and causes us to realize we need a savior.  Grace supplies that savior!  (205.4)