With reference to mankind He is, before His Incarnation, the “Light that lighteth every man.”  After and through His Incarnation He is to man all in all.  He is even in death the object of their Faith.  He is the Mediator through whose very person God sends the Spirit.  He is the Life, the Light, the Living Water, the Spiritual Food.

Justin Martyr repeatedly reproduces in various forms of expression the truth that Christ is the eternal “Word made flesh” and revealed as the “Only-begotten Son of God,” thus:—­

    “The first power after God the Father and Lord of all is the Word,
    Who is also the Son, and of Him we will, in what follows, relate how
    He took flesh and became man.” (Apol.  I. Ch.  XXXII.)

Again:—­

“I have already proved that He was the only-begotten of the Father of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner [Greek:  idios], Word and Power by Him, and having afterwards become man through the Virgin.” (Dial. ch. cv.)

Now, we have in these two passages four or five characteristic expressions of St. John relating to our Lord, not to be found in any other Scripture writer.  I say “in any other,” for I believe that not only the Epistles of St. John, but also the Apocalypse, notwithstanding certain differences in style, are to be ascribed to St. John.

We have the term “Word” united with “the Son,” and with “Only begotten,” and said to be “properly (proprie; [Greek:  idios]) begotten;” a reminiscence of John v. 18, the only place in the New Testament where the adjective [Greek:  idios] or its adverb [Greek:  idios] is applied to the relations of the Father and the Son, and we have this Word becoming flesh and man.

Now Justin, in one of the places, writes to convince an heathen emperor; and, in the other, an unbelieving Jew; and so in each case he reproduces the sense of John i. 1 and 14, and not the exact words.  It would have been an absurdity for him to have quoted St. John exactly, for, in such a case, he must have retained the words “we beheld his glory, the glory as,” which would have simply detracted from the force of the passage, being unintelligible without some explanation.

Again, we have in the Dialogue (ch. lxi.) the words “The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things.”  Now here there seems to be a reproduction of the old and very probably original reading of John i. 18, [48:1] “The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father.”  Certainly this reading of John i. 18 is the only place where the idea of being begotten is associated with the term “God.”

We next have to notice that Justin repeatedly uses the words “God” and “Lord” in collocation as applied to Jesus Christ; not “the Lord God,” the usual Old Testament collocation, but God and Lord, thus: 

    “For Christ is King and Priest and God and Lord,” &c. (Dial. ch.
    xxxiv.)