This post cannot offer to be a full-scale `introduction` to John, when John’s deeply profound gospel could be said to be the most important single book in the history of the world!
And as Leon Morris says, it’s like a wonderful pool in which a child can wade, but yet an elephant can swim: wonderful, and inexhaustible. There are plenty of God-gifted experts on it worth reading: a splendid detailed commentary is that by D A Carson. (Carson’s Matthew commentary is superb too.)
So the aim of this post is simply to pass on five things that have felt helpful as they’ve been passed on to me (with special cause for thanks, I think, to John Lennox); especially for some of us in parts of the world where resources like Carson’s are unavailable.
So then: 1. What if friends ask us, Why should we trust what the gospels say about Jesus?
For me it’s not just that there are no proven contradictions or errors. It’s also not just the vast number of documents we have of the gospels – many more than we have for any comparable historian such as Tacitus – and the many quotations from the gospels elsewhere. It’s also that they were written so close to the events, when many witnesses would still be alive who could challenge inaccuracies, and in a culture characterized by strong oral memory. One very strong piece of evidence is the absence in John – 2:19-20 or 5:2 might have been obvious places – of any reference to or use of Jerusalem’s fall and the temple’s destruction in AD70. This would have been such a great piece of evidence to use in arguing that the Jews had sinned disastrously in crucifying Jesus; evidence that Jesus was indeed (see 20:31) `the Christ, the Son of God`. But we find nothing of this at all, making it highly probable that John’s gospel pre-dates AD70, well within the lifetime of many eye-witnesses.
Then there are indeed the gospel’s own appeals to eye-witness testimony (John 19:35, 21:24); these can only be discounted by arguing that the book is a conscious fraud, and very few sensible readers will go that far. But most of all, people were imprisoned and died, and allowed their families to die, for the reliability of the gospel documents. The early Christians were not new-age spiritual tourists. Many of them knew they might come to very unpleasant ends for their beliefs; see, for example, Acts 8:3. They and their families could be whipped, tortured, even executed. (One of the early Roman emperors used burning Christians as human torches for his parties.) In these circumstances they would surely have sought to be as certain as they could be that their gospels were telling the truth. So we can be confident that these colourful, earthy accounts must be at least very close to what Jesus said and did. (Of course we’ll go a lot further than that if we’ve become followers of Jesus, because Jesus teaches that Scripture is 100% reliable; but this may be a useful approach if we’re talking to a sceptical friend.)
2. There is never just one way into any great book; and this great book is especially rich, like an ocean! So I’m just going to follow through the twofold themes John flags up in 1:17 at the end of his introduction: `Grace` – that is, colossal, unearned love – `and truth, came through Jesus Christ`, Jesus whose biography this is.
First, then, on the subject of God’s colossal love for us people: an odd and significant thing is that apostle John never mentions himself by name in this gospel; instead he presents himself as `the disciple whom Jesus loved`. There was nothing more crucial he could say about himself than that he was loved by Jesus; and his gospel is the gospel of Christ as the ultimate Friend.
What’s going on here? Can we see, underlying this, a sense of John’s surprise at being befriended by Jesus, surprise that he never recovered from? Originally John was quite an aggressive character, a `son of thunder` (Mark 3:17, and look at Luke 9:49,54 for two examples). (Had John’s explosive character meant that he wasn’t great at keeping friends??) It’s quite surprising when we realise that this same `son of thunder` is John the apostle of love whose wonderfully warm heart shaped (in his old age?) the epistle of 1 John. But clearly the revelation that came from being with Jesus, and realizing just what it meant that God `so loved` the world in such an astonishingly self-giving way (3:16), changed John dramatically. Like he says in 1 John 4:9-11, we’ve seen that love, and it’s because of this that we should be people who love in the same way. Blackaby and King say in their fine book Experiencing God that at the heart of Christianity is God pursuing a love-relationship with us (something to think about!); that is certainly true of this gospel!
John’s gospel is unique, then, in its presentation of Christ as the best and deepest friend: `You are my friends` (15:15, 17:24). (This relationship with us is what God has wanted ever since Exodus, Ex 25:8!) We see how Jesus’ astounding love preoccupies John as he moves towards the crucifixion, at the start of chapter 13. He loved us, `his own`, says John in 13:1, and the rest of that chapter (and 15:13 of course) sets out how Christ demonstrated `the full extent of his love`; and then, how that love is in turn the key to how we should act (13:34). And if the love of Christ our Friend is a theme, it’s not surprising that this gospel also shows us how Jesus wisely and lovingly befriends a lot of people: Nicodemus in ch3, the despised Samaritan woman in ch4, the bereaved Bethany family in ch11, Thomas in his doubts in ch20, Peter in his need for restoration in ch21. We see Jesus the Friend sharing in key life-moments, like a wedding and a funeral.
It’s not surprising, likewise, that in this gospel shaped by God’s love, there is lots we can study about God as our loving Father: eg 1:18 (Jesus makes him known to us), 2:16, 3:16, 4:23, 14:2. What rightly staggered John was that the Infinite himself (1:1) should come down here, befriend us, even die for us: and, equally (John 3:16, 1 John 4:9,14), that the Father should be willing for that. It’s also not surprising that John picked up so much of what was said about our profound union with Jesus – how he is our bridegroom, 3:25; the vine of which we are the branches, 15:1-5; how (in a bizarre but thought-provoking image) we are actually united with his flesh & blood, 6:53-57; how he and the Father come to `make their home` within us, 14:16-23; and how this amazing union can be deepened, 15:4-14.
3. But there’s another central theme to set alongside all this. As the book’s opening section sets out, Jesus is the `Word`, that is, God’s ultimate, self-revealing communication to us; he, John 1:18 tells us, is the one whose relationship with us makes the invisible God known to us. So 1:14 and 1:17 speak of the embodied twofold union in Christ of God’s grace, that is, colossal unearned love, with God’s truth. (This is the vital twofold combination Paul refers to in Eph 4:15, `speaking the truth in love`. Let’s pray that feeding on John’s gospel helps us embody it too!)
And so Jesus is presented in John both as the ultimate Friend, full of grace and colossal love, but also as the Truth (14:6), the truth that sets us free (8:32); in short, the One who reveals God (17:6; the `faithful witness`, as Rev 1:5 calls him). Throughout this gospel Jesus shows us what God is like – and thus, what he himself is like; through at least seven pictures – he is the ultimate bread, 6:35,41,48,51; the ultimate light, 8:12; the door or gate, 10:7,9; the good shepherd, 10:11,14; the resurrection and the life, 11:25; the way (and the truth and the life), 14:6; the ultimate vine 15:1,5; and also through the `I am` passages – 4:26, 8:24,28,58, 18:5-8. And as we go through this gospel, Carson notes, we learn too just how Jesus fulfils so many of what Hebrews calls the `shadows` that God gave in the old testament: `He is the new temple, the one of whom Moses wrote, the true bread from heaven, the true Son, the genuine vine, the tabernacle, the serpent in the wilderness, the Passover [lamb].` In view of all this, Carson also urges us, we should be sure to focus on the revelation of who Jesus is whenever we’re feeding on or preaching John! As we read these things in the company of his Spirit, God will surely fulfil his heart-desire of making himself known to us…
4. John’s presentation of Jesus as The Truth (14:6) is in fact what he says (look at 20:31) is his book’s primary purpose – to foster confident belief, and record the evidence and witnesses that lead to this belief. (It’s not unlike the `many convincing proofs` Luke refers to in Acts 1:3; or Matthew 11:4-5. Gospel faith is not something disinterested in evidence, as so many atheists seem to imagine!) John’s clear aim in writing is, objectively, he says, that we might believe (or maybe `go on believing`) that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah of Jewish history and prophecy), AND the Son of God (from eternity); and then he builds on that, in the last part of the verse, to what he wants for us his readers, that by this believing we might have life in Christ’s Name. (Again in the reference to `his Name` we have the idea of God’s self-revelation, compare 17:6.) And this fully-evidenced faith will lead us to joy, he adds in 1 John 1:1-4; this too is his goal! John has written his gospel because Christ, and Christ’s life, is the light of men, 1:4.
Within this, Jesus’ recorded words are foundational for our belief. Personally I find chapters 13-17 particularly wonderful: in their deep profundity, but also in their unmistakable claims to deity (eg 14:6-10; and we have these elsewhere, eg 8:58), they face us with the overwhelming question, who is this Man? Sharing such wonderful words (and none of his disciples is likely to have been able to come up with them, as atheist J S Mill once observed), he is clearly not a conscious liar leading his closest friends to martyrdom; but nor, clearly, is he the sort of pitiable maniac who sits in a psychiatric ward claiming to be God. So then Jesus is not mad (unaware his claim is untrue); he is not bad (aware his claim is untrue); he is evidently truly God! But `so that we may believe`, John also carefully records for future generations a whole series of miraculous events and `signs` (20:30-31): in chapters 2 (leading to v11), 4 (leading to v54), 5, 6, 9,11, and 21; plus of course the resurrection, pointed to in 2:19 as the ultimate sign. And there are further references in I:50, 2:23, 3:2, 4:39,45, 5:36, 6:2, 7:31, 9:16,30-33, 10:21,25,32,37-38,41, 12:18,37, 14:11, and 15:24. Through all these John feeds our faith with how God breaks into the world in power in Jesus. (While also, let’s note, showing us often how it happens that some people won’t believe, or else won’t believe in any real depth, no matter how much evidence they get; because unbelief is above all a matter of the will, not the intellect).
Or another angle on these `signs` (I owe this to Derek Tidball): `We beheld his glory`, says John in 1:14: how, through this book, does John help us to behold this glory? Again, through the many signs (eg 2:11). But as we look out for other references we will find so much else showing us Christ’s glory in wonderful, multifaceted ways, that we can turn into worship; particularly, but not only, in the cross, for example in 7:39, 11:4,40, 12:16,23-28,41, 13:27-33, 14:13, 16:14, and 17:1,5,10,22 and 24.
5. Lastly a couple of comments on how and why John is different from the three, more mutually similar `synoptic gospels`. Of course it’s entirely possible that John, knowing what was already available, set out as the final gospel writer to record for future generations a lot that he remembered and that had not already been recorded; and his personality, significantly different from those of Matthew, Mark, or Luke, shaped what he selected as he did so – as will be the case with any biographer. It’s also true, as Rendle Short observed long ago, that in this gospel we see a lot of Christ’s ministry among the educated and critical Jerusalem scribes, whereas much of the other gospels describe what Jesus says and does among very different kinds of people in Galilee. (Carson’s commentary, pp.49-58,93, is excellent on how John and the Synoptics complement and explain each other.)
But one other thing. Throughout the Church’s history the gospels have been compared to the four beings in Revelation 4 around God’s throne that reflect His nature, one like a lion, one like an ox, one like a man, one like a flying eagle. People have commented how Matthew presents Jesus as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the King of Israel, the fulfilment of Israel’s prophecies (note how he starts with a genealogy focusing on King David, and Abraham). And then, how Mark is different: it’s the Gospel of the Ox, the lowly servant creature, presenting Jesus as the lowly Servant, whose servanthood finally leads to the sacrifice of the cross; and getting overworked and disappointed as He serves. Then Luke’s gospel is a very human document, written by a doctor, presenting Jesus as the Man; and, as it’s stressing Jesus’ humanity, with a genealogy looking back not to King David but to Adam. So now, John’s is the Gospel of Jesus as the flying eagle whose home is heaven, the Heavenly Man (eg 3:13); thus it begins about Jesus: `He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made`….
So, as with all the other gospels, there is a great deal here we won’t find anywhere else. Read; pray; worship; enjoy!
