Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
But as many—individuals, of the "disobedient and gainsaying people."
gave he power—The word signifies both authority and ability, and both are certainly meant here.
to become—Mark these words: Jesus is the Son of God; He is never said to have become such.
the sons—or more simply, "sons of God," in name and in nature.
believe on his name—a phrase never used in Scripture of any mere creature, to express the credit given to human testimony, even of prophets or apostles, inasmuch it carries with it the idea of trust proper only towards GOD. In this sense of supreme faith, as due to Him who "gives those that believe in Himself power to become sons of God," it is manifestly used here.
He was in the world, etc.—The language here is nearly as wonderful as the thought. Observe its compact simplicity, its sonorousness—"the world" resounding in each of its three members—and the enigmatic form in which it is couched, startling the reader and setting his ingenuity a-working to solve the stupendous enigma of Christ ignored in His own world. "The world," in the first two clauses, plainly means the created world, into which He came, says John 1:9; "in it He was," says this verse. By His Incarnation, He became an inhabitant of it, and bound up with it. Yet it "was made by Him" (John 1:3-5). Here, then, it is merely alluded to, in contrast partly with His being in it, but still more with the reception He met with from it. "The world that knew Him not" (I John 3:1) is of course the intelligent world of mankind. (See on John 1:11-12). Taking the first two clauses as one statement, we try to apprehend it by thinking of the infant Christ conceived in the womb and born in the arms of His own creature, and of the Man Christ Jesus breathing His own air, treading His own ground, supported by substances to which He Himself gave being, and the Creator of the very men whom He came to save. But the most vivid commentary on this entire verse will be got by tracing (in His matchless history) Him of whom it speaks walking amidst all the elements of nature, the diseases of men and death itself, the secrets of the human heart, and "the rulers of the darkness of this world" in all their number, subtlety, and malignity, not only with absolute ease, as their conscious Lord, but, as we might say, with full consciousness on their part of the presence of their Maker, whose will to one and all of them was law. And this is He of whom it is added, "the world knew Him not!"
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing John 1:12:
Isaiah 56:5
Jeremiah 3:19
Hosea 1:10
Malachi 4:6
John 1:1
John 1:10-13
2 Corinthians 12:9
Galatians 3:29
Galatians 4:6
Philippians 1:29
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