In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Everything came into being through him, and not one thing came into being without him. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and that life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God. His name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the light, so that everyone might believe through him. 8 He was not the light; he came to testify about the light.
9 The true light, which gives light to every person, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him — to those who believe in his name — he gave the right to become children of God,[1] 13 children born not of blood, nor of a body’s desire, nor of a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory — glory like that of the one and only Son from the Father — full of grace and truth.[2] 15 (John testified about him and cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke of when I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus, the Anointed One. 18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only God, who is at the Father’s side — he has made him known.[3]
19 Now this is John’s testimony, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”[4] 20 He confessed and did not deny it — he confessed, “I am not the Anointed One.”
21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
And he answered, “No.”[5]
22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 He said, “I am the voice of one shouting in the desert: ‘Make the Lord’s road straight,’ just as the prophet Isaiah said.”[6]
24 (Now those who had been sent were from the Pharisees.) 25 And they questioned him and said, “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Anointed One, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 John answered them, “I baptize with water. But among you stands one you do not know — 27 the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
28 These things happened in Bethany, across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.[7]
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look — the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him. But I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.”
32 And John testified, “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I did not know him. But the one who sent me to baptize with water — he said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain — this is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen it, and I have testified that this is the Chosen One of God.”
35 The next day John was standing there again with two of his disciples. 36 He looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Look — the Lamb of God!”
37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you looking for?”
They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?”[8]
39 He said to them, “Come and see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon.
40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John said and followed Jesus. 41 The first thing he did was find his own brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (which translated means the Anointed One). 42 He brought him to Jesus.
Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).
43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 (Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.)
45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and the prophets also wrote about — Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Look — a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”
48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?”
Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
50 Jesus answered him, “Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I tell you: you will see heaven opened and the angels of God going up and coming down upon the Son of Man.”[9]
Notes
Note 1. The Greek verb is pisteuō, and its noun is pistis, “faith.” In English “believe” can suggest merely agreeing that something is true; the Greek verb also covers trusting and relying on someone. The verb appears 98 times in John’s Gospel — more than in any other book of the New Testament — and we render it “believe” every time. ↩
Note 2. The Greek verb behind “lived among us,” eskēnōsen, literally means “pitched a tent” or “tabernacled.” It echoes the tent of meeting in Exodus, where God’s glory settled among the Israelites. ↩
Note 3. Here the two oldest streams of manuscripts part ways. The earliest copies read monogenēs theos, “the only God” or “the unique one, himself God” — the reading this edition follows. Later manuscripts, the ones behind the King James, read monogenēs huios, “the only Son.” A single word differs in the Greek. ↩
Note 4. The Greek is hoi Ioudaioi. It is one word — the same word behind both English “Jew” and “Judean” — and it does not separate the two senses. In John it most often names the Jerusalem establishment set against Jesus: the priests, the temple authorities, the men with power to expel someone from the synagogue. It does not mean the Jewish people as a whole, and it cannot: Jesus is a Jew, his mother is a Jew, every disciple in this book is a Jew, and John has the woman at the well call Jesus a Jew to his face (4:9). What is being described is an argument inside Judaism, not one between Judaism and something else. Later readers who took these words as a charge against a whole people were misreading them, with terrible consequences. We have not softened the wording to prevent that; we have translated what the Greek says and set the record here. ↩
Note 5. “The Prophet” was a specific figure many Jews were expecting, based on Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 18:15-18: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me.” ↩
Note 6. The line is Isaiah 40:3, where a voice calls to prepare a highway for the LORD — that is, for God himself — coming to his people. ↩
Note 7. This is not the Bethany near Jerusalem where Lazarus, Mary, and Martha lived; it lay on the east bank of the Jordan, some distance away. The two were confused even in antiquity — the third-century scholar Origen, unable to locate an eastern Bethany, proposed reading “Bethabara” instead. ↩
Note 8. The text glosses “Rabbi” as “Teacher,” but in this period the word was a term of respect for a learned master rather than the formal, ordained office it became in later Judaism. Calling Jesus “Rabbi” marks him as a recognized teacher without implying any official credential. ↩
Note 9. The image is Jacob’s dream at Bethel in Genesis 28:12, where angels ascended and descended on a ladder set between heaven and earth. Here the traffic moves “upon the Son of Man.” ↩