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"He saw his glory" Whose glory? John 12:37-45 does NOT claim that "Jesus is Yahweh"

 John 12:37-45 “Deity of Christ” believers have claimed that Isaiah saw Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, in Isaiah’s vision of God in Isaiah 6. “Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12:41). But his in John 12:41 does not refer to Yahweh’s glory, but to the Messiah’s glory. John does not quote or refer to Isaiah 6:1, where Isaiah saw Yahweh in a vision. Instead, John quotes Isaiah 6:10 and 53:1, which relate to the people’s rejection of the message of Yahweh’s Sent Servant. What was true in Isaiah’s day was also true in Jesus’ and John’s day. That is, people rejected the message delivered by Yahweh’s sent messenger.   John 12:41 quotes Isaiah 6:10 and 53:1 (again, not Isaiah 6:1) with reference to the reaction of some people to the miracles that Jesus performed. Even with all the miracles, “they did not believe in him” (John 12:37). This is what Isaiah “saw” in his prophecies: the rejection of God’s message spoken by God’s servant-m...

Dwelt in Us, or Dwelt Among Us? John 1:14 (part 2)

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of a unique son with a father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). In a previous podcast we noted that “the Word became flesh” can be interpreted as a metaphorical declaration. Based on Old Testament parallels and Jesus’s “flesh” being the topic again in John 6, “the Word became flesh” means that the man Christ Jesus, the Word, became God’s provision for restoration and eternal life.   In another previous podcast/article called, “The Word BECAME Flesh? Why John 1:14 does NOT say God became man" I gave reasons why John 1:14 does not say God became man. Now, in this podcast I want to focus on a few additional interpretive issues of specific words in John 1:14 that mainstream Christians interpret as evidence that God became man.   The Meaning of "Dwelt" (ἐσκήνωσεν)   The first issue concerns the verb translated "dwelt" (ἐσκήνωσεν, eskḗnōsen ), the aorist activ...

What about John 1? (What John 1:1-4 Means)

  The first verses of John’s Gospel introduce the Gospel of John. I know, crazy, right!   This article interprets the first four verses of the Gospel of John as part of an introduction to the Gospel of John, not as an introduction to or summary of Genesis creation. John 1:1a John’s Gospel starts out “In the beginning” (1:1a), John’s beginning is a parallel to Genesis 1:1, but is not a direct reference to or a commentary on the Genesis creation. John’s Gospel introduces a new “beginning” in the life and ministry (that is, the gospel) of the human person Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of John elsewhere used “the beginning” to refer to the beginning of Jesus Gospel, e.g., Jesus says in John 15:27, “and you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning” (cf. 8:25, 16:4). [1]   “In the beginning was the Word” The human person Jesus is metaphorically called the Word because through Jesus God spoke and worked to bring about the ongoing new creati...