Old/New Testament

Prologue

1 ^1-5 At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God, and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning. All creation took place through him, and none took place without him. In him appeared life and this life was the light of mankind. The light still shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out.

The gospel’s beginning on earth

^6-8 A man called John was sent by God as a witness to the light, so that any man who heard his testimony might believe in the light. This man was not himself the light: he was sent simply as a personal witness to that light.

^9-13 That was the true light which shines upon every man as he comes into the world. He came into the world—the world he had created—and the world failed to recognise him. He came into his own creation, and his own people would not accept him. Yet wherever men did accept him he gave them the power to become sons of God. These were the men who truly believed in him, and their birth depended not on the course of nature nor on any impulse or plan of man, but on God.

^14-18 So the word of God became a human being and lived among us. We saw his splendour (the splendour as of a father’s only son), full of grace and truth. And it was about him that John stood up and testified, exclaiming: “Here is the one I was speaking about when I said that although he would come after me he would always be in front of me; for he existed before I was born!” Indeed, every one of us has shared in his riches—there is a grace in our lives because of his grace. For while the Law was given by Moses, love and truth came through Jesus Christ. It is true that no one has ever seen God at any time. Yet the divine and only Son, who lives in the closest intimacy with the Father, has made him known.

John’s witness

^19-20 This then is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He admitted with complete candour, “I am not Christ.”

²¹ So they asked him, “Who are you then? Are you Elijah?” “No, I am not,” he replied. “Are you the Prophet?” “No,” he replied.

²² “Well, then,” they asked again, “who are you? We want to give an answer to the people who sent us. What would you call yourself?”

²³ “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

^24-25 Now some of the Pharisees had been sent to John, and they questioned him, “What is the reason, then, for your baptising people if you are not Christ and not Elijah and not the Prophet?”

^26-28 To which John returned, “I do baptise—with water. But somewhere among you stands a man you do not know. He comes after me, it is true, but I am not fit to undo his shoes!” (All this happened in the Bethany on the far side of the Jordan where the baptisms of John took place.)