John 1:4 is the fourth verse in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.
Content
In the original Greek according to Westcott-Hort this verse is: Ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων, En autō zōē ēn, kai hē zōē ēn to phōs tōn anthrōpōn.
In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads: In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
The New International Version translates the passage as: In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
Analysis
According to Witham "In him:" i.e. in this word, was life because he gives life to everything, or of the spiritual life, that is, lights of graces, which he gives to Christians.
There appears to be an allusion in this verse to Psalm 46, “With Thee is the Well of Life, and in Thy light shall we see life.”
Commentary from the Church Fathers
Bede: "The Evangelist having said that every creature was made by the Word, lest perchance any one might think that His will was changeable, as though He willed on a sudden to make a creature, which from eternity he had not made; he took care to show that, though a creature was made in time, in the Wisdom of the Creator it had been from eternity arranged what and when He should create."
Augustine: "The passage can be read thus: What was made in Him was life1. Therefore the whole universe is life: for what was there not made in Him? He is the Wisdom of God, as is said, In Wisdom hast Thou made them all. All things therefore are made in Him, even as they are by Him. But, if whatever was made in Him is life, the earth is life, a stone is life. We must not interpret it so unsoundly, lest the sect of the Manicheans creep in upon us, and say, that a stone has life, and that a wall has life; for they do insanely assert so, and when reprehended or refuted, appeal as though to Scripture, and ask, why was it said, That which was made in Him was life? Read the passage then thus: make the stop after What was made, and then proceed, In Him was life. The earth was made; but, the earth itself which was made is not life. In the Wisdom of God however there is spiritually a certain Reason after which the earth is made. This is Lifef. A chest in workmanship is not life, a chest in art is, inasmuch as the mind of the workman lives wherein that original pattern exists. And in this sense the Wisdom of God, by Which all things are made, containeth in art ‘all things which are made, according to that art.’ And therefore whatever is made, is not in itself life, but is life in Him."
Origen: "It may also be divided thus: That which was made in him; and then, was life; the sense being, that all things that were made by Him and in Him, are life in Him, and are one in Him. They were, that is, in Him; they exist as the cause, before they exist in themselves as effects. If thou ask how and in what manner all things which were made by the Word subsist in Him vitally, immutably, causally, take some examples from the created world. See how that all things within the arch of the world of sense have their causes simultaneously and harmoniously subsisting in that sun which is the greatest luminary of the world: how multitudinous crops of herbs and fruits are contained in single seeds: how the most complex variety of rules, in the art of the artificer, and the mind of the director, are a living unit, how an infinite number of lines coexist in one point. Contemplate these several instances, and thou wilt be able as it were on the wings of physical science, to penetrate with thy intellectual eye the secrets of the Word, and as far as is allowed to a human understanding, to see how all things which were made by the Word, live in Him, and were made in Him."