John

Composition

The Gospel of John is attributed to a Palestinian Jew named John who was the son of Zebedee and the brother of James. They were among the twelve disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. They traveled with Jesus and witnessed his ministry and miracles.

John was also part of Jesus’s inner circle of his closest three disciples and is referred to as “the disciple Jesus loves.” One of the first called to follow Jesus, John was the only disciple present at Jesus’s crucifixion. While dying on the cross, Jesus asked John to care for his mother (John 19:26). He is also credited with writing the three letters known as John 1, 2, and 3, as well as the final book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation.

Most, but not all, scholars agree that the disciple John is the author of this gospel. Some suggest that Lazarus, a friend of Jesus whom he brought back from the dead, is the author of the book because this event is reported only in the Gospel of John (John 11:1-44). Others suggest disciples Thomas or John Mark may have written the work. However, the gospel purports to have been written by “the disciple Jesus loved,” which is John, and other historical documents also support this.

John chronicles events in the public ministry of Jesus, which occurred for about three years between 28 and 33 CE, and the book is believed to have been written somewhere between 70 to 95 CE. Its original audience was Jews and gentiles, or anyone who was not Jewish, living in or near the town of Ephesus in modern-day Turkey.

This gospel is one of four in the Christian Bible and is different from the other three. The others—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—are similar in content and presentation. Because of this, they are known as the Synoptic gospels. “Synoptic” comes from the Greek words syn, meaning “together,” and optic, meaning “seen.” They are written in a more straightforward, descriptive manner. John is generally believed to have been the last gospel written and included greater emphasis on the divine nature of Jesus than the others. John focuses less on the everyday events of Jesus’s life and ministry and more on Jesus being both fully human and divine, the bearer of God’s word in human form.

Summary

Unlike the other gospels, which open by reporting on Jesus’s life or ministry, the first chapter of John starts with a prologue asserting that Jesus is God in a human body, or God incarnate. John emphasizes that Jesus is the word of God and reveals God and his purposes for humankind. The prologue describes how John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as the Son of God. John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher who encouraged people to turn away from sin before the coming of the Messiah.

Following the prologue, the next eleven chapters include descriptions of Jesus’s teachings and his miracles. In what John calls the first of Jesus’s signs, Jesus and his disciples are at a wedding where the hosts run out of wine, a mistake with dire social consequences, and Jesus changes urns full of water into wine (John 2:1-11). Jesus also heals a royal nobleman’s son (John 4:46-54) and a man paralyzed for decades (John 5:1-15), feeds five thousand men plus their families with five loaves of bread and two fish, walks on water (John 6:16-24), and heals a man who was born blind (John 9:1-7). The first three and last signs are only recorded in John, as is the healing of Lazarus (John 11:1-44) and a final miracle near the end of the gospel, where the disciple Peter makes a miraculous catch of fish in the presence of the resurrected Jesus (John 21:1-6).

John’s Gospel also includes the story of the Jewish leader Nicodemus. Most of the Jewish religious leaders, or Pharisees, are dismissive of Jesus’ teachings; others consider him a threat. Some, like Nicodemus, are open to learning more. Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of night. This leads to one of the most famous verses in the Bible, John 3:16, where Jesus explains the reason for his ministry: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life” (John 3:16, NIV).

Unlike the other gospels, John does not include any instances where Jesus cast out demons. It also does not relay information in parables, which are stories that use day experiences to relay moral or spiritual teachings. Instead, the Gospel of John includes long discourses, or passages of teachings, where Jesus essentially delivers a lecture or sermon on a subject. One of the most famous is the Good Shepherd discourse, which comprises nearly all of chapter ten. In it, Jesus likens himself to a shepherd sent to care for a flock and bring it safely home.

Chapters thirteen through twenty include lengthy teachings by Jesus and an account of Jesus’s trial and death, which is also known as the passion narrative. The farewell discourses span all of chapters fourteen through seventeen and take place after Jesus shared a last meal—the Last Supper—with his disciples, just before his arrest, trial, and execution.

The farewell discourse has three parts. In the first, Jesus tells his disciples that he will be die, return to the Father, and send the Holy Spirit. He also reminds them to love one another. In the second part, he reminds them that they will be hated and persecuted as he himself is about to be persecuted but will be rewarded for this. In the third, he prays for the disciples and all who will follow them in a passage known as the Farewell Prayer or the High Priestly Prayer. The final chapters include John’s account of the arrest, trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Following the resurrection, Jesus appears again to his apostles. He shares a meal with them and demonstrates forgiveness by forgiving Peter three times after Peter denied the existence of Christ during the passion passage.

Themes

John’s focus is asserting that Jesus is God and the Messiah promised throughout the Jewish Scriptures and that belief in him is the gateway to eternal life. Beginning in the opening prologue, John emphasizes Jesus as having existed before the creation of the world. Near the Gospel’s end, John specifically reiterates that he wrote his text so that people would “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31).

Throughout the narrative, John uses miracles and discourses shared by Jesus to demonstrate that Jesus has knowledge and power beyond anything human even though he took on a human body. Scholars have pointed out that the signs he chose to include demonstrate Jesus’s power as God and creator. For example, turning water into wine shows that his power extends to the very molecular level of the water, something impossible for a human but easy for the water’s creator. Similarly, the healing of the man born blind is more than a restoration of sight, it is granting an ability that the man never had. Once again, John is making the connection that this is something only possible for God, a creator.

John also seeks to show that Jesus’s life and death are the fulfillment of all the Jewish festivals, rituals, and practices—everything that Jews have done in their efforts to seek and honor God. Unlike the other three gospels, John has Jesus’s death occurring just before the Jewish Passover, where lambs are sacrificed to commemorate the salvation of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. By tying Jesus’s death to the same time that the lambs are being sacrificed for Passover, John points to Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of this festival and ritual, a lamb saving humankind from slavery to sin. The theme of Jesus as the lamb of God is an important one in John’s Gospel and one that recurs throughout the text.

John’s Gospel also emphasizes that Jesus is the giver of eternal life. According to John 3:16, God gave Jesus to save the world. In including the Farewell Discourse, John makes it clear that Jesus was an aware, willing participant in his sacrificial death and did this to create a path to eternal life for humankind. In John 14:6, Jesus tells his followers “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and that no one can come to the Father. In other words, people will not receive eternal life unless they believe in Jesus. This is one of seven “I am” statements that John includes to help form a picture of Jesus’s identity. Another is “I am the Light of the World,” a statement made at the healing of the blind man (John 9:1- 7). It was one of several instances where John used the theme of Jesus as a light in the world.

Another theme is the responsibility of believers to continue Jesus’s mission. For example, in the Farewell Discourse, Jesus reminds his disciples of the responsibility to love one another. He also prays for the disciples for generations into the future, reiterating that the responsibility to follow his teachings carries forward to future generations.

Bibliography

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“Gospel of John Commentary: Who Wrote the Gospel of John and How Historical Is It?” Biblical Archaeology, 27 Jan. 2022, www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/gospel-of-john-commentary-who-wrote-the-gospel-of-john/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.

“Introduction to John.” ESV.org, www.esv.org/resources/esv-global-study-bible/introduction-to-john/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.

“John.” Christianity.com, www.christianity.com/bible/niv/john/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.

“John.” Insights for Living Ministries, insight.org/resources/bible/the-gospels/john. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.

Mellowes, Marilyn. “An Introduction to the Gospels.” Public Broadcasting Service Frontline, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/mmfour.html. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.

“The Gospel of John.” Brigham Young University-Idaho, emp.byui.edu/SATTERFIELDB/Rel211/JOHN.htm. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.

Strauss, Mark L. “John: The Gospel of the Eternal Son Who Reveals the Father.” Bible Project, bibleproject.com/blog/john-gospel-eternal-son-reveals-father/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.