181 Major Themes in the Gospel of John is it the gift of the Spirit and forgiveness of sins (a popular Baptist interpreta- tion), or is it simply a gruesome detail having no symbolic meaning at all?
Major Themes in the Gospel of John
the ordinary into the extraordinary (2:1–11) and offers people health (4:46–54), sustenance (6:2–14), and life (11:38–44; 12:17–18).
• Jesus is what God is like. Jesus reveals God through his very being. He not only discloses the truth; he is the truth (14:6). He can say, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9; cf. 12:45). According to John’s Gospel, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (14:6); through him, people gain access to God, recognize God’s authentic nature and intentions, and experience life as God intends.
Jesus as God
John’s Gospel is the only one of the four to identify Jesus as God (but see box 3.5 on p. 77). Jesus was not only with God in the beginning; he was God (1:1). After he rises from the dead, even his most stubborn disciple calls him
“My Lord and my God!” (20:28). John’s Gospel is nevertheless adamant in its insistence that Jesus is completely human: he feels grief (11:33–35), fatigue (4:6), and anguish (12:27; 13:21); he gets suspicious (2:24–25) and irritable (2:4; 6:26;
7:6–8; 8:25); he experiences thirst (19:28) and, most important, death (19:30, 33). Jesus also claims to be subordinate to the Father and completely dependent upon God for everything (5:19, 30). Nevertheless, Jesus is God, for John’s Gospel is able to speak of God in a twofold sense: there is God the Father, but there is also “God the Son” (1:18). Such language may have been disturbing to Jews (and Christians?) committed to monotheism, but John avoids compromising that principle by insisting on an essential unity of Father and Son. Jesus says,
“I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:10–11) and “The Father and I are one” (10:30).
Scholars usually see John’s Gospel as representing a transitional point be- tween two ideological developments:
• Before John’s Gospel, certain Jewish writings personified Wisdom as a divine mediator of God’s person and intent (see Prov. 8:27, 29–30, 35–36;
Wis. 7:25–26; 9:10).
• After John’s Gospel, Christian theologians developed a doctrine of the Trinity, according to which God could be understood as three in one:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (three persons, but only one God).
John’s Gospel emerges from the milieu of Jewish Christianity and provides a link between these Jewish and Christian concepts. John’s presentation of Jesus as “God the Son” may be inspired by the Jewish wisdom tradition, but it also points forward to the Trinitarian view that would be articulated by later Christian theologians.
183 Major Themes in the Gospel of John
Jesus’ Death Is His Glorification
John’s Gospel refers to Jesus’
death as the hour in which he is glorified (see 17:1; cf. 13:1;
see also 7:39; 12:16, 23–24). In part, this may be because it is a prelude to his resurrection and his return to the Father, who sent him. But there is more:
three times in this Gospel Jesus refers to his crucifixion as the occasion when he will be “lifted up” from the earth (3:14; 8:28; 12:32–34). Scholars cannot help but notice a paral- lel here to the three times in each of the other Gospels in which Jesus predicts his cru- cifixion (e.g., Mark 8:31–32;
9:31; 10:33–34), albeit without using the language of “lifted up.” That language appears to employ a pun: the Greek word in question (hypsoō) can mean
“lifted” (as when the soldiers took the cross on which Jesus was hung and raised it up from the ground) or “exalted” (in the sense of someone being praised or glorified). In John, the crucifixion itself becomes an act of glorification because it reveals the depth of God’s love for humanity (3:14–17)
and the depth of Jesus’ love for his followers (10:11, 15;
13:1; 15:13). This concept of the crucifixion also affects the way that John tells the story. For one thing, Jesus remains in complete control of everything: no one takes his life from him; rather, he lays it down of his own accord (10:17–18).
Further, when Jesus dies, he does not scream in pain (cf.
Fig. 8.4. Lifted Up from the Earth. In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of his crucifixion as exaltation, through which he will be glori- fied, and by which he becomes the ulti- mate demonstration of God’s gracious love for humanity (see 3:14; 8:28; 12:32–34). This perspective appears to have inspired Sal- vador Dali’s famous painting Christ of Saint John of the Cross. (Bridgeman Art Library)
Mark 15:37) or cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (cf.
Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34) but instead calmly declares, “It is finished” (20:30), which means, “What I came to do has been accomplished.”
Salvation as Abundant Life
John’s Gospel employs a rich and varied vocabulary for the phenomenon of salvation. Because of Jesus, people can become children of God (1:12), be saved (3:17; 5:34; 10:9; 12:47), enter God’s kingdom (3:3–5), be born again (3:3), come to the Father (14:6), and be set free (8:32). In a basic sense, as noted above, Jesus has come that people might have life (10:10; cf. 3:14–17, 36; 5:39–40; 20:31; cf.
1 John 5:12). But what does all this mean? We should note, first, that John af- firms the traditional concepts of salvation found almost everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus deals with the problem of sin by sacrificially laying down his life for others (10:11, 15, 17–18; 15:13) and taking away the sins of the world (1:29); he will likewise deal with the problem of death by raising people up on the last day (6:39–40, 54) so that they might live forever (11:25–26) in one of the many rooms of the Father’s house (14:2–3). The main focus of John’s Gospel, however, is on the way that Jesus affects quality of life in the here and now.
In John’s Gospel, eternal life is more than just “life after death”; it is not just life that is endless in length, but also life that is endless in value and meaning.
The experience of eternal life is a present reality (3:36; 5:24). People can have this life, and have it abundantly, if they know the truth about God revealed in Jesus. What is this truth? Above all, Jesus reveals that God loves the world and desires to bless and to save rather than to punish or condemn (3:16–17). The very coming of Jesus is a demonstration of this love (3:16; cf. 1 John 4:9), and through his death on the cross Jesus reveals divine love at an unprecedented and unimaginable level: “Greater love has no one than this,” he says (15:13;
cf. 13:1). People who come to know this truth are set free (8:32); people who believe what Jesus reveals about the love of God have life that does not perish, life that is abundant and eternal.
Loving Jesus and Abiding in Christ
The beloved disciple and those who preserved his tradition believed that they were in a living relationship with Jesus Christ. The language that John’s Gospel uses to describe the Christian life is intensely relational (1:11–12): being a Chris- tian means not only believing in Jesus as one who is risen from the dead (see 20:24–29), but also loving him (8:42; 14:15, 21, 23; 16:27; 21:15–17) and abiding in him (6:56; 15:4–10). Believers are united to Jesus Christ in a spiritual relation- ship of love that sustains and empowers them (see 1:12). People are brought into this relationship by Jesus and at his initiative (15:3, 16), and they retain the
185 Major Themes in the Gospel of John connection by allow-
ing his word to abide in them (15:7; cf.
5:38) and by keeping his commandments (15:10), especially the commandment to love one another (15:12, 17; cf. 13:34–
35). As always in the Bible, love is not pri- marily an emotion but an action, exem- plified here by Jesus’
own humble acts of service on behalf of others (13:3–15;
15:13). Those who experience and ex- hibit this sort of love may remain in an abiding relationship
with Jesus Christ and experience his joy (15:11; 17:13).
Whatever they ask is granted (15:7; cf. 14:13–14; 15:16;
16:23–24). They are able to do the works that Jesus did (and even greater works) because Jesus is actually doing these things through them (14:12–13; cf. 15:5). They be- come one with him and with God and with each other (17:20–23).
The Paraclete
The Gospel of John also emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit, which is referred to distinctively as the paraklētos, the “Paraclete” (14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7 [English Bibles often translate this as “Advocate,” “Counselor,” or “Helper”]).
Jesus promises that the Spirit will come to his followers (7:37–39; 14:16–17;
cf. 1:33), and after Easter he gives the Spirit to them (20:22). In John’s Gospel, the primary role ascribed to the Spirit is that of revealing truth and teaching disciples what they need to know (14:25–26; 16:13); this is accomplished both by reminding believers of the truth revealed by Jesus (14:26) and by leading those believers into new revelation that they were not able to bear while Jesus was with them (16:12–15). The Spirit testifies on Jesus’ behalf (15:26) and
Paraclete: a term for the Holy Spirit used in the Gospel of John, often translated in English Bibles as “Comforter,”
“Counselor,”
“Advocate,” or
“Helper.”
Fig. 8.5. Jesus and the Samaritan. Although Jews did not usually have any dealings with Samaritans, John’s Gospel reports that Jesus had a memorable encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well (John 4:1–42). He dem- onstrated that he had prophetic knowledge of her private life and promised that he could give her “living water” so that she would never thirst again. (www.heqigallery.com)
counters the world’s understanding of such things as sin and righteousness and judgment (16:8–11). Jesus tells his followers that it is actually to their advantage that he goes away because only then will he be able to send the Paraclete to them (16:7).
The World and the Jews
John’s Gospel portrays the world as a hostile environment that hates Jesus and his followers (7:7; 15:18–19; 16:20; 17:14). The world is not intrinsically evil, for it came into being through God and, indeed, through the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ (1:3, 14). God loves the world (3:16) and sent Jesus to be its savior (3:16–17; 4:42; cf. 1:29), but the world neither knew nor accepted him (1:10). The world is in fact ruled by the devil (12:31; 14:30; 16:11) and is unable to receive the Spirit of truth (14:17). Thus, the community that produced this Gospel has little regard for the world, except as a mission field. Jesus sends his followers into the world (17:18; 20:21), but he makes clear that they do not belong to the world (17:14); they are to be in the world but not of it (17:15–16).
Indeed, this Gospel does not seem to be greatly concerned with the beneficial or transforming effect that believers might have on the world (cf. Matt. 5:13;
Acts 17:6); rather, the prevailing concern is for believers to be protected from the world’s dangers and sanctified against its corruption (17:11–12, 17–19).
Scholars have tended to interpret this aspect of John’s Gospel as expressive of an early Christian community struggling to define itself in the milieu of the Roman Empire: conflicting claims regarding the authority and kingship of Jesus vis-à-vis that of Caesar created tensions between members of John’s church and supporters of Roman imperialism.
John’s Gospel also portrays the Jews as implacable opponents of Jesus and his followers. Of course, Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jews, and John’s Gospel acknowledges this (4:9). Still, most of the time, this Gospel uses the phrase “the Jews” to refer to a group of people that does not include Jesus or anyone associated with him. In the world of John’s Gospel, people must choose whether they are going to be disciples of Jesus or Moses (9:28), and confessing faith in Jesus is grounds for expulsion from the synagogue (9:22; 12:42; 16:2).
Against this background, we cannot fail to notice that the portrayal of Jews in this Gospel seems harsh and polemical: the Jews are people who do not believe their own scriptures (5:39–47) and whose basic allegiance to God has been sorely compromised (19:15). Compared to the world at large, the Jews are perhaps no worse than pagan people, but they are also no better. They have lost their status as the people of God (8:39, 42, 47), and so whatever can be said of “the world”
in general can also be said of “the Jews” in particular. The devil is the ruler of the world (12:31; 14:30), and the devil is the father of the Jews (8:44). Schol-
187 Major Themes in the Gospel of John ars are quick to point
out that the antipathy John’s Gospel shows toward “the Jews” was never intended to convey a generic condemnation of an entire race or na- tion (all Jewish people everywhere); what John’s Gospel offers is a more specific attack on a par- ticular expression of a rival religious move- ment (first-century Jew- ish synagogue religion).
Nevertheless, polemi- cal passages in John’s Gospel have often been used to support anti- Semitism. Some Bible translators now render the word Ioudaioi in John’s Gospel by some term other than “Jews”
(e.g., “Judeans”) to in- dicate that it refers to a specific group of people who lived at a particular place and time.
Loving One Another
John’s Gospel has more to say about love than the other three Gospels combined. The word love occurs well over fifty times in this book, and yet there is no mention of lov- ing one’s neighbor (cf. Mark 12:31) or one’s enemies (cf.
Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27). The focus, rather, is on loving one another—that is, on the love that believers have for each other (13:34–35; 15:12, 17). Jesus tells his followers that this is a “new commandment” (13:34; cf. 1 John 2:7–8) and that
everyone will know who his followers are by the love they have for one another (13:35). How a Gospel with such a strong focus on love can also exhibit such
Fig. 8.6. Sacred Heart. More than any other Gospel, John’s narrative has inspired mystical devotion to Jesus. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks his disciples repeatedly (21:15, 16, 17), and he gives them instruc- tions throughout the book as to what those who love him should do. “Sacred heart” piety, which informs this painting, connects love for Jesus with mystical long- ing and visionary experiences—a religious movement primarily associated with Roman Catholics and Anglicans, it owes much to the Gospel of John. (Bridgeman Art Library)
hostility toward Jews and outsiders is a frequent subject for theological and pastoral reflection. Still, Christians throughout the centuries have prized John’s Gospel for its poetic and persuasive presentation of this simple ethic: “Love one another as I have loved you.” The first of the Johannine Letters continues and expands upon this theme (1 John 3:11–18; 4:7–21; see also 2 John 5–6).
Conclusion
The question is sometimes raised as to whether the community behind John’s Gospel should be labeled “a sect.” Was this Gospel written and preserved by Christians who were a community unto themselves, isolated if not alien- ated from other Christian groups? Parallels are drawn to the Jewish monastic community at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found: the group that lived there apparently regarded themselves as the only true believers in a world populated by pagans, apostates, and heretics. Like the Gospel of John, the Dead Sea Scrolls present community members as children of the light who belong to the truth, while castigating others (including other Jews) as children of darkness and falsehood.
John’s Gospel does exhibit some marks of sectarian literature, such as a pronounced use of dualistic language, a tendency to differentiate between “us and them” (believers and unbelievers), and a strong emphasis on establishing and maintaining internal cohesion. Furthermore, John’s Gospel is sufficiently distinctive to mark it as the product of a Christian group that had limited contact with other Christians. However, John’s Gospel also insists that believ- ers remain engaged with the world to which Christ has sent them (17:15–18), and it presents a grand vision of all believers being one in Christ (17:20–23). If Peter and the beloved disciple are to be regarded as the representatives of two
hyperlink 8.7
hyperlink 1.1
Hyperlinks—www.IntroducingNT.com
8.1. Content Summary: Expanded Overview of the Gospel of John 8.2. Three Persons Named “John”?
8.3. Distinctive Characteristics of John’s Gospel 8.4. Comparison of John and the Synoptics 8.5. Symbolism in the Gospel of John 8.6. Misunderstanding in the Gospel of John 8.7. Competition among the Pillars?
8.8. The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of John 8.9. John in the Revised Common Lectionary 8.10. Bibliography: The Gospel of John
189 Conclusion major strands of Christianity, in this Gospel they are presented as competitive in a friendly way: they obviously respect each other and seek to outdo each other only in devotion and faithfulness to Christ (13:24–25; 18:15–16; 20:4;
21:7, 21–23). Furthermore, John’s Gospel also exhibits a strong (if paradoxical) tendency to push outward, testing if not obliterating boundaries: the salva- tion that comes from the Jews (4:22) is also for Samaritans (4:39–42), Greeks (12:20–26), and “other sheep” (10:16)—the ambiguity of this last reference seems to invite application to anyone, anywhere. And whose sin does Jesus take away? Not just that of John’s church members, or even of Christians in general. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world (1:29). Could there be a more ecumenical (i.e., less sectarian) statement of Christian faith than that?
In any case, John’s Gospel was not regarded as a sectarian work in the early church. There never seems to have been any question that John’s testimony to Christ, while distinctive, was wholly compatible with that offered by the Synoptic Gospels and other writings of the New Testament. John’s under- standing of the incarnation and divinity of Jesus became standard Christian doctrine; John’s interest in freedom, truth, and glory became a mainstay of Christian theology; and John’s tantalizing promises of receiving God’s love and experiencing abundant life would appeal to a wide variety of new readers in every generation.
For Further Reading
Beasley-Murray, George R.
» Gospel of Life: Theology in the Fourth Gospel.
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996.
Carter, Warren.
» John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist. Peabody, MA: Hen- drickson, 2006.
Koester, Craig R.
» The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Neyrey, Jerome H.
» The Gospel of John. New Cambridge Bible Commentary.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
O’Day, Gail R., and Susan E. Hylen.
» John. Word Biblical Commentary. Lou-
isville: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
Sloyan, Gerard S.
» What Are They Saying about John? Rev. ed. Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist Press, 2006.
Smith, D. Moody, Jr.
» The Theology of the Gospel of John. New Testament Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
191
9
Acts
T
he book of Acts has everything but dinosaurs. It’s got earthquakes (16:26), shipwrecks (27:41–44), avenging angels (12:23), harrowing escapes (9:23–25; 21:30–36), riots (19:23–41), murder plots (9:23;23:12–15; 25:1–3), political intrigue (16:35–39; 22:24–29; 24:26–27), courtroom drama (23:1–10), and so much more. The book of Acts tells the story of the early Christian church with all the flair of an exciting adventure novel. Things start out rather calm—constant prayer (1:14) and some business to attend to (1:15–26)—then the Holy Spirit comes roaring into the room, ig- niting the pious with tongues of fire and causing them to behave in ways that lead onlookers to think they’re drunk (2:1–13). From that point on, we know we are in for a bumpy ride.
The book of Acts has something else that is not all that common in the New Testament: humor. A maid is so overjoyed when Peter escapes from prison that she runs to tell everyone, leaving him on the doorstep, a wanted man, banging on the door to get in (12:13–16). Paul speaks to a group late into the night, going on so long that a young man falls asleep and tumbles out of an upstairs window; he is allowed to go home, but the others are brought back upstairs—
Paul isn’t done yet (20:7–12). Some non-Christian exorcists decide that if the
“name of Jesus” works for Paul, maybe it will work for them as well; however, the demon that they try it on has other ideas, and . . . well, Ephesus would not soon forget the sight of a high priest’s sons (seven of them) running naked from that