Today in translating John 1:16, I was puzzling over the phrase, “grace for grace”. After some research, I felt like the best explanation comes from D.A. Carson’s commentary on John (Pillar). It bears quoting here:
John 1:16–17
Verse 14 described the glory of God manifest in the incarnate Word as full of grace and truth. Picking up on the term, John says that it is from this fulness that we have received grace after grace. Thus 'fulness' here bears no technical, gnostic sense.
The meaning of the last three words of v. 16, charin anti charitos, frequently rendered 'grace upon grace', principally turns on the force of the preposition anti. In addition to a number of highly improbable options, the most important interpretations are these:
(1) The word anti means 'corresponds to' (e.g. Bernard, 1. 29): the grace the Christian receives in some sense corresponds to the grace of Christ. This view does not adequately treat the way v. 17 is cast as the explanation of v. 16. Moreover, anti never unambiguously bears the meaning 'corresponds to', except in certain compounds (e.g. antitypos, lit. 'counterblow', a blow corresponding to another one, and hence 'antitype').
(2) The word anti means 'in return for': one grace is given in return for another. But the idea of grace being given 'in return for' something else, a kind of quid pro quo, is alien to the New Testament in general and to John in particular. Attempts to get around this point—such as Augustine's that the grace in which we live by faith is given in return for another, the grace of immortality (In Johan. Tract. iii. 8)—are alien to the context, and ignore the connection between v. 16 and v. 17.
(3) By far the most popular modern interpretation holds that anti means 'upon' or 'in addition to' (e.g.Schnackenburg, 1. 275–276; Bultmann, p. 78; Bruce, p. 43; M. J. Harris in NIDNTT 3. 1179–1180): hence the renderings 'grace upon grace' (NEB, RSV) and 'one blessing after another' (GNB, NIV). 'As the days come and go a new supply takes the place of the grace already bestowed as wave follows wave upon the shore' (Rob, p. 574; cf. Zerwick § 95). That is theologically true, of course, but it is very doubtful if that is John's point. The normal preposition for such meaning is epi, not anti. There is one parallel everyone cites (Philo, de Post. Caini 145), but on close inspection it proves unhelpful. Philo speaks of 'graces', not 'grace'; for him, there is not an accumulation of graces, one 'upon' another, but a substitution of graces, one kind replacing another. His point, quite unlike John's, is that God is wise in dispensing his 'graces' in small doses, so that people do not receive more than they can cope with; John is emphasizing the superabundance of God's grace. 26
(4) The most convincing view takes anti in one of its most common uses (and by far the most common in the LXX) to mean 'instead of': from Christ's fulness we have all received grace instead of grace.
But what does this mean? Some have argued that the grace received through Christ in the days of his flesh is replaced by the grace of the Holy Spirit after Christ's ascension, but this view is entirely alien to the context, and again ignores the tight link between v. 16 and v. 17. The latter follows hard on the 'grace instead of grace' (v. 16) with an explanatory 'For' or 'Because': For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. On the face of it, then, it appears that the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ is what replaces the law; the law itself is understood to be an earlier display of grace.
The chief objections against this understanding of the flow of the text deserve mention:
(1) The most common is that 'the point of the present passage is that grace did not come by Moses' (Barrett, p. 168), and therefore we cannot imagine John speaking of the grace of the gospel replacing the grace of law. Certainly in Paul grace and law are often contrasted, but that is not the only way in which their relationship may be conceived. Paul himself can call the law 'holy' and 'good' (Rom. 7:12, 16). Moreover, this objection presupposes that the two halves of v. 17 are set over against each other (e.g.Gnilka, p. 16; Haenchen, 1.120; Pancaro, p. 541); but there is nothing in the Greek text that requires antithesis. As some have noted (Lindars, p. 98; J. Jeremias, TDNT 4. 873), it makes just as much sense of the original to see a comparison: 'Just as the law was given through Moses, so grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.' The covenant of law, then, is seen as a gracious gift from God, now replaced by a further gracious gift, the 'grace and truth' embodied in Jesus Christ—here named for the first time as the human being who is nothing other than the Word-made-flesh.
(2) Some have insisted that the Fourth Gospel is deeply opposed to the law, and could not possibly have seen it as a display of God's grace. This is largely based on two references to 'your Law' (8:17; 10:34), understood to be the Evangelist's way of distancing himself from the law. But that is a serious misreading of the evidence. In both instances the authority of the law is accepted, and serves as the justification of something Jesus himself was teaching. In both instances the words are ascribed to Jesus. In context, the crucial expressions mean something like this: Your own law, yours in the sense that you claim it for yourselves, yours despite the fact that you hide behind its authority and try to use it against me and my teaching, yours even though it turns out on inspection to support me. That scarcely hints at rejection of the law! Moreover, that Jesus is the true bread of life (ch. 6) does not mean that the original manna was not a gracious gift; that Jesus can be likened to the snake in the desert (3:14) presupposes that the original was itself a fine display of grace. For John, the Law and the prophets wrote about Jesus (1:45); the Jews are rebuked for not believing what Moses wrote, for if they had believed Moses they would have believed Christ (4:45–54; 7:19, 22–23). Barrett's (p. 168) dismissive comment, 'nor is the grace of God available in two grades', rather misses the point; even Paul can speak of God's grace being 'made perfect' (2 Cor. 12:9).
(3) Conversely, others argue that for John the law in some sense continues in force: the Scripture cannot be broken (10:34), and therefore it is unreasonable to think that John in 1:16–17 can view the grace of the gospel, the grace that has come in Jesus Christ, as replacing law. But again, close attention to the way the Fourth Gospel treats the Old Testament alleviates the difficulty. In the passages already mentioned, and in a large number of others, the Old Testament Scriptures are understood to point forward to Jesus, to anticipate him, and thus to prophesy of him. In that sense he fulfils them. If even the covenant of law is 'prophetic' in this sense (cf. Mt. 11:13), then when that to which it points has arrived, it is in some sense displaced. It may continue in force as a continual pointer to that which it predicted, but its valid authority lies primarily in that which it announced and which has now arrived. The law, i.e. the law-covenant, was given by grace, and anticipated the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ; now that he has come, that same prophetic law-covenant is necessarily superseded by that which it 'prophesied' would come. The thought is not dissimilar to Matthew 5:17–20 (cf. Carson, Matt, pp. 140–147). It is this prophecy/fulfilment motif that explains why the two displays of grace are not precisely identical. The flow of the passage and the burden of the book as a whole magnify the fresh 'grace' that has come in Jesus Christ. That grace is necessarily greater than the 'grace' of the law whose function, in John's view, was primarily to anticipate the coming of the Word. This interpretation is reinforced if we accept the parallelism between v. 17 and v. 18 (suggested by Ibuki, p. 205): v. 17b is to v. 17a what v. 18b is to v. 18a.
`In Judaism, the law became an end in itself, something that could be separated from Moses through whom it was given. The grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ can never be dissociated from Himself' (Tasker, pp. 44–45). That point may lie behind the choice of verbs: the law 'was given' (edothj), grace and truth 'came' (egeneto), 'as if, according to the orderly and due course of the divine plan, this was the natural issue of all that had gone before' (cf. Westcott, 1. 127; Hanson, p. 7). This cannot mean there is no contrast between law and Jesus Christ: that contrast is explicit, on the surface of the text. 27 But the law that was given through Moses, and the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ (v. 17), alike sprang from the fulness of the Word (v. 16), whether in his pre-existent oneness with the Father, or in his status as the Word-made-flesh. It is from that 'fulness' that we have received 'one grace replacing another'. It is in this sense that v. 16 is an explanation of v. 14 (it begins with hoti, 'for' or 'because'): we have seen his glory, John writes, because from the fulness of his grace and truth we have received grace that replaces the earlier grace—the grace of the incarnation, of the Word-made-flesh, of the glory of the Son 'tabernacling' with us, now replacing the grace of the antecedent but essentially promissory revelation. The 'we' who have received this new grace may have begun with John and the earliest eyewitnesses (cf. 1:14), but it now includes all who share the same faith (cf. 20:29).
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