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(including flesh) is evil.
This is known as the belief in "dualism." Spirit is good, matter is evil.
    What, then, does a person do who believes in dualism but wants
to make some room for the message of Jesus? He has to get around
the plain fact that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. So these teachers,
known to the early church by the term Docetics,23 denied that Jesus
truly had a physical body so that they could keep the idea that He was
good and pure and holy. They even spread stories about disciples walking with Jesus along the beach, and when one of the disciples turned
around, he saw only one set of footprints, because, of course, Jesus
doesn't leave footprints! John is tremendously concerned that his beloved readers do not fall for this kind of teaching, so he strongly emphasizes the reality of Christ's physical nature. He leaves no stone
unturned in his quest to make sure we understand: the eternal Logos,
fully deity by nature, eternal Creator, the very source of life itself, became a human being. This is the only way to understand his words.
    John insists that he and his companions observed the glory of the "only begotten from the Father." It would be good to stop for a moment and make sure we have a firm understanding of what "only begotten" means. Huge misunderstandings have arisen about the use of
this term. For those interested in the in-depth story, an extended note
is attached to this chapter. To summarize that information for our purposes here, the Greek term used is µovoyEvij (monogenes). The term
does not refer to begetting, but to uniqueness. While the traditional
translation is "only-begotten," a better translation would be "unique"
or "one of a kind."

    In verse 14, John uses the term as a title, "the glory of the One and
Only" (NIV). Immediately we see that the term monogenes has special
meaning for John, for he speaks of the One and Only having "glory."
The One and Only comes "from the Father." This is the first time John
has specifically identified the Father by name in this Gospel. He differentiates the Father from the Logos, the "One and Only," clearly directing us to two persons, the one coming from the other. Yet the Logos
is seen to have glory, to have a divine origin with the Father, and is
said to be "full of grace and truth."
    John moves on to again make note of John's testimony to Jesus in
verse 15, and finally makes it plain that he is speaking of Jesus Christ
by using that phrase for the first time in verse 17. But before he closes
his prologue, John uses what is often called the "bookends" technique.
He provides a closing statement that sums up and repeats, in a different form, what he said in his introduction. And this is found in the
final verse of the prologue, verse 18.
    THE ONLY SON, WHO IS GOD
    When you are speaking to someone, it is usually the last thing you
say that will be remembered. That's what we are taught in classes on
"How to Make a Great Presentation." John seemed to understand that
concept, because in John 1:18 he provides us with a summary statement, the second bookend, so to speak, for his prologue. Here's what
he wrote:
    No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (NASB)

    Let's note a couple of other translations:
    No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is
at the Father's side, has made him known. (NIV)
    No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close
to the Father's heart, who has made him known. (NRSV)
    Yet if you have a KJV or NKJV, your translation reads differently
at a very key point. Note the NKJV translation:
    No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who
is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
    The KJV and NKJV follow a later, less primitive text in reading "the
only begotten Son" rather than "the only begotten God" (NASB). We
have here a textual variant, pitting the earliest, oldest manuscripts of
the