The Gospel of John has long been recognized for its theological depth, often paired with Romans as one of the most robust doctrinal books in Scripture. Some of the earliest commentators in the church recognized the significant theology presented by the Fourth Gospel, giving it the title, “the Spiritual Gospel.”1 The commentary proper has tried to assist the reader of the Gospel in an examination of the narrative in a manner that was attentive to the theological intentions and categories it applied to the person and work of Jesus Christ. And in the “Theology in Application” section at the end of each pericope, we examined the theological issues driven and being developed by the specific section of the narrative. It is fitting that we conclude the commentary with a macrolevel overview of the theology of John, using the larger categories of biblical and systematic theology along with sensitivity to the historical doctrines and practices of the church.
The Gospel could not be clearer: God is the beginning (1:1) and the end, that is, the goal or purpose of human existence—what the Gospel simply calls “life” (1:18; 20:31). In this Gospel God is emphatically described as the one through whom all things were made (1:3), in order to make clear to the reader that nothing that has been, is, or will be is outside the authority and plan of God. In the Fourth Gospel, God is the main character—not just generally but specifically in every pericope. Every part of the Gospel describes what God is doing, with other characters—the disciples, “the Jews,” or the Roman authorities—serving as minor characters that reflect by their lives the purposes and identity of God. In this way, the characters in the Gospel’s narrative are no different from humanity in general, whose primary task is “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 1).
Reflective of the early Christian concern to take belief in “God” seriously, the Gospel depicts God not by his nature, based upon Greek philosophy, but by his identity, rooted in the already-established biblical depictions of his person and work in the Old Testament—the God of Israel (see comments on 1:1). In the Gospel, “God” is defined not by ontological categories but by relational or personal categories. While God can easily be spoken of as having attributes befitting his “divinity,” such as eternal existence (8:58), the power to create (1:3), and omniscience (2:24–25), the Gospel directs the reader to understand such attributes as belonging more properly to the identity of God, not to some vague category of “divinity.”
When the Gospel of John speaks or refers to God in any way, it depicts the divine identity of God as Father, Son, and Spirit. In short, from beginning to end the Gospel is Trinitarian, presenting as its theological subject matter what the church would recognize as present throughout all Scripture. Thus, to speak of “God” is to speak about his three-person identity. As the church has long understood and explained, while the Father (or the Son or the Spirit) is fully God, God is not fully the Father. The Gospel reflects God as Trinitarian in nature in every pericope. When God is mentioned in any way, all three persons of God are relationally and functionally involved. The question often asked of this Gospel as to whether it is christocentric or theocentric (i.e., patricentric) is entirely misguided.2 The Fourth Gospel would never make such a distinction, for not only could the Father and Son not be divided in such a manner, but both—not to mention the Holy Spirit—are essential to the identity of God. To be christocentric is to be theocentric. The Son honors himself when he defers to the Father (5:19). And the Son’s presence is magnified at his departure and the arrival of the gift of the Spirit (14:16; 16:7). To make such a choice is to pit God against himself. Since the Gospel demands that God be understood in his Trinitarian form, it is necessary for us to summarize the Gospel’s teaching on each person of the Trinity.
God the Father is listed first elsewhere in Scipture (cf. Matt 28:19) and is presented similarly in the Gospel of John. The order is not one of rank or importance but economy, for it is the Father who sends the Son. Quite simply, the work of God is directed by the Father and done for the Father (17:4). In the Gospel of John, everything God is doing is directed from and for the Father (5:19–27). The Fourth Gospel describes God the Father as the source and starting point of all God’s activity. The Father sends the Son (3:16; 20:21), and the Son does the will of the Father (4:34). The Father expresses his love for the world by giving his own Son (3:16) so that he might receive through him more children (1:12–13). In short, the Father is depicted throughout the Gospel as the giving and receiving one, the sending agent who directs and structures the divine activity so that the work of God can properly be described as beginning and ending with the Father, that is, “to the glory of God the Father” (cf. Phil 2:11). This depiction of the Father, of course, is simply to speak in a manner that depicts or emphasizes the economic Trinity, for certainly the Son, as part of the divine identity of God, is just as involved in the sending as he is in being sent.3 While the Father’s sending of the Son might merely be an expression of the economic Trinity (function), it should also be grounded in the immanent Trinity (ontology).
God the Son, though a distinct person in the identity of God, must also be defined by his functional (economic) relationship to the Father. The Son is listed second elsewhere in Scipture (cf. Matt 28:19) and is presented similarly in the Gospel of John, not because of rank or importance but economy, for the Son is the “one sent” from the Father (e.g., 4:34; 5:24, 37; 6:44; 7:29; 8:29; 20:21). The Gospel of John is a biography of the Son and his coming to the world and becoming “flesh” as Jesus Christ. The reason for this is clear; God the Son is the expression of the love of God for the world. If the Father is the sending agent, the Son is the sent agent, the one who does what the Father wills. The Son is the doing of God (5:19), the one who comes, who joins, who completes, and who fulfills. Jesus is the Son of God, the Son of Man, the unique Son; each of these titles reflect divine status and purpose and are given definition and expression throughout the Gospel narrative. But Jesus does more than complete the will and pupose of God—he does the same for humanity. Jesus takes on “flesh” (1:14) so that he can become and perform everything humanity needed to do and to be. Three areas can be briefly summarized.
First, Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all human persons. The Gospel frames its entire narrative with symbols and allusions to Genesis and the creation story in order to depict Jesus as the second Adam (19:5) and therefore as the fulfillment of human life. Jesus is the faithful man who lived under and fulfilled the old covenant expectations of God—a sinless life that gave full glory to God, making possible the perfect, sacrifical offering for a new covenant. In this way then, Jesus fulfills the role of prophet (4:44; 6:14; cf. 1:21), since he lived in such a way that his life spoke and directed others toward God and true (eternal) life.
Second, Jesus Christ is the fulfullment of all human religion. The Gospel drenches its pages with OT practices, symbols, allusions, and even direct quotations to declare emphatically that Jesus’s person and work is the completion of Judaism, and therefore everything God required of human religion. Jesus, specifically his crucified and resurrected body, is the true temple of God (2:19–22), for he is “the tabernacling one” (1:14). Jesus is also uniquely both the sacrifice, the Lamb of God (1:29), and the High Priest (18:12–27; 19:30), the one who offers the sacrifice. For this reason Jesus completes in himself the cycle of sacrifice and sacrificer, allowing it to come to its completion in his person and work and making obselete any human religion which tries to mediate between God and humanity. It is not enough to say that Jesus replaces human religion, or even Judaism, and perhaps fulfillment language only reflects the economic (Trinity) reality of what Jesus has performed. For Jesus is the perfect and long-awaited means (e.g., 5:46: Moses wrote about him) by which God would redeem humanity from sin and death and declare himself the way, the truth, and the life (14:6). In this way then, Jesus fulfills the role of priest, since he offered perfect and eternal mediation for all humanity on behalf of God and for God and on behalf of humanity.
Third, Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all human kingdoms. The narrative works hard to declare that Jesus speaks about and with the authority of another kingdom—the kingdom of God (3:3, 5). Jesus has received “from above” all power and authority and is the judge over both the living and the dead (5:22–29). Jesus has also defeated all enemies, even “the ruler of this world” (12:31; 14:30; 16:11), and has received again the glory properly belonging to him (17:5) even before “the beginning” (1:1). In this way then, Jesus fulfills the role of king, since he defeated all opposing powers and claimed the exalted throne of authority and judgment that has always belonged to him.
The church has long spoken of Jesus as fulfilling the roles of prophet, priest, and king. These are categories for God’s person and work that are projected by the OT Scriptures and find fulfillment in the careful depiction of Jesus’s person and work in the Gospel of John. In this Gospel, Jesus establishes the creation of a new humanity (children “born new”), a new religious people (the church), and a new kingdom (the kingdom of God). Yet he is only the first Paraclete—the foundation of the work God had inaugurated in the new covenant. The second Paraclete (14:16) was only able to come after God the Son had completed his role.
God the Spirit, though a distinct person in the identity of God, must also be defined by his functional (economic) relationship to the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is listed third elsewhere in Scipture (cf. Matt 28:19) and is presented similarly in the Gospel of John, not because of rank or importance but economy, for the Spirit’s coming and work—the Spirit’s sending—is dependent upon and rooted in the Father’s sending of the Son and the Son’s person and work (14:16–20). The Gospel of John provides Scripture’s introduction and teaching about the Spirit as the Paraclete, who is a witness to God and a spokesperson for God as well as a counsoler, teacher, and helper for God’s people. The Spirit is “another Paraclete” (14:16), the functional presence of Jesus for his disciples (14:18–21). The Spirit/Paraclete has a special relationship to the disciples—he is the indwelling presence of God with the people of God. The Spirit/Paraclete also has a unique role in the world to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (16:8). The Spirit/Paraclete is the “Spirit of truth” (14:17), the functional presence of God in the church and for the world. The disciple of Christ lives in and by the Holy Spirit. According to the Fourth Gospel, the Christian life is to be lived in Christ, by the Spirit, and for the glory of God.
The term “the world” becomes foundational in the Gospel of John, appearing seventy-eight times in the Gospel, over five times more frequently than in the Synoptics (fourteen times). Although the term can refer to the physical, created universe (17:5; 21:25), it is used in the Gospel in a more personal and relational manner. The Gospel narrative depicts the world in the fullness of its relationship to its Creator, not merely as the “good” object that he made (Gen 1) but also as an evil entity that is best defined as “darkness” (1:5), that is, as something opposed to God, who is the light (1:4–5). In this way then, “the world” refers primarily not to the earth but to its people, a particular class of people who by their darkened nature are in conflict with God. In this Gospel the world is both the place where and the people with whom God works.
In the Gospel of John, “the world” is a character in the narrative. In a very important way the world is the primary opponent of God, made up of fallen creation and humanity, the latter of which includes both Jews and gentiles. Even the disciples, those with whom Jesus most intimately works, are shown to be “worldly” in their inability to understand or obey the instructions of Jesus. The world is ultimately depicted, in line with the rest of Scripture, as defiled and dominated by the darkness (1:5). It distorts reality and is enslaved to sin (8:31–36) and therefore is in need of the light (8:12; 9:39), the truth (14:6), and the freedom (8:36) that only Jesus can provide.
The story the Gospel tells of God and the world is one of conflict, reflected in each interaction Jesus has with opponents, whether they be the Jewish authorities, the Roman authorities, the various people with whom he ministers or speaks, and even his own disciples, who are only just beginning to see the light standing in the darkness before them (1:5). While many people are just seekers or onlookers, they are still by definition opponents, challengers of God by their unfaithful existence to their Creator and Lord. It is likely for this reason that the Gospel provides seven dialogues (see Introduction) that depict in theologically substantive words the issues God has with humanity and the means by which he plans to defeat his challengers—to offer himself as the defeated one. God did not defeat the world as he could have with the magnitude of his holiness and justice, but with grace and truth (1:17). That is, God defeated the world—every single opponent—with love. For in the Fourth Gospel the world may be the opponent of God, but it is also the object of God’s love. This is why this Gospel (along with the other three) was entitled by the church as “the gospel,” for it declares the “good news” for the whole world.
The world was in darkness because it was plagued, stained, and enslaved to sin. Early in the Gospel the narrator explains that the work of Jesus was intended to take away “the sin of the world” (1:29). The world was so darkened by sin that it did not recognize (1:5), know (1:10), or receive (1:11) God in the person of Jesus. The Gospel of John speaks about sin in a manner that matches its discussion throughout Scripture. Sin is a condition or state of all people, and it can only be cleansed or remedied by God. Jesus enters into the sinful state of the world, best exemplified by the prologue’s depiction of Jesus becoming “flesh” (1:14), a term which presents the incarnate body of Jesus like both a corpse and a sacrifice. The Gospel does not spend much time defining sin, because it assumes that the rest of the biblical story has made it clear. The clear connection to Genesis is prerequisite for this Gospel. The failure of humanity (Gen 3) requires repair, for sin is now innate to human existence (8:7).
The Gospel also makes clear that sin has its consequences (5:14). As much as the Gospel invites every person to understand how God has provided redemption and forgiveness from sin through Jesus Christ, it also exhorts those who have already been redeemed to live a life free from the influence and stain of sin. Said another way, the Gospel does not merely invite the readers to become “children of God” (1:12–13), but demands that the already “born new” (3:3–8) children live as sons and daughters in the household of God and not as slaves to sin (8:35–36). The conflict in the Fourth Gospel is not presented in statements alone but also in situations. The narrative depicts the consequences of sin, often detailing a person’s condition, such as the blind man (9:1–41), the lame man (5:1–15), and the Samaritan woman (4:1–42), with the last suggestive of religious illness. The Gospel makes clear that sin is everywhere and that Jesus is the Savior who not only redeems a person from sin but instructs them to embrace a life that is Spirit filled not sin filled.
The ultimate consequence and result of sin is death (8:24). Jesus, however, is the provision that allows the person who believes in his person and work—in the gospel—to pass from death to life (5:24). Death in the Gospel is the fullest manifestation of sin, and yet it also becomes the means by which sin and all its consequences are defeated, including death itself. In this Gospel death is countered by the Life (1:4), who offers “eternal life” (3:16; 20:31), which can only be defined by the source and substance of life itself—Jesus Christ (1:1–3). Eternal life is participation in God through Christ in and by the Spirit. To view life as something outside of or even beside God is to speak not of life but death. God is the source of life and the meaning of life, and everything not (re)sourced or defined by God is death.
The Gospel of John narrates a story that conceptualizes by its emplotment the two realities simultaneously at work in the story. These two realities are best defined as two narrative strands that run parallel and interpenetrate one another throughout the Gospel. The historical strand of the Gospel’s plot is the visible persons and events that happened in time-and-space history in the life and ministry of Jesus. The cosmological strand of the Gospel’s plot is the invisible God—his forces, workings, and purposes. Neither strand of the plot is complete on its own; in fact, each strand is supported by and intertwined with the other. This is vital information that the prologue (1:1–18) reveals to the reader and provides as hermeneutical (i.e., reading) instructions in order that the Gospel’s message can be fully understood and rightly applied.
The two-stranded plot of the Gospel is what makes it the “spiritual Gospel” or, better, a historical narrative that is robustly theological. In every pericope the reader starts in first-century Palestine (the historical strand) and without ever leaving sees in the visible historical persons and events the invisible realities of God and his purposes (the cosmological strand). The historical persons and events are not minimized or declared untrue—not at all! Rather, they are given interpretation and meaning in light of the cosmological context into which the narrative places them. Said another way, the cosmological strand is the background and foreground out of which the historical strand of the narrative must be interpreted. Without the cosmological insights, the historical details would be incomplete. In this way, the story of the Gospel is not merely about the Jesus of history or as he could be understood by means of historical investigation alone, but it is about Jesus the Word, who must be understood in the fullness of Scripture and its (theological) subject matter. Again, this is not to deny in the least the historical referents of the Gospel but to show what (or who) the true and ultimate referent really is. Jesus really did become flesh, but the flesh is not for the purpose of demotion but promotion—his exaltation (3:14; 12:32).
The reason for the Gospel’s use of a two-stranded emplotment is its subject matter: the person and work of God. In order to grasp the fullness of who God is and what God is doing, the narrative needed to be able to be flexible and complex enough to contain and express the nature and workings of God. By placing the historical strand of the narrative into the cosmological strand, “The two- to three-year time span of Jesus’s earthly mission . . . are placed in the continuum of the Word’s preexistence with God and the eventual return of the Word and his disciples to God’s realm, that is, the ‘story time’ of the cosmological [story].”4 And it is God who connects and interconnects the two strands within the narrative itself. While the cosmological strand narrates the arrival of the Son, the historical strand narrates the events of his arrival into the world, with both reaching their climax in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. This is where the events of history (Jesus the man, the disciples, the world) meet the intentions of God (Jesus the one sent from above, God, the coming Paraclete) in a unified way. Thus John is able to speak simultaneously about real space-time history and God’s activity in one story. The cosmological strand serves as the metastory, allowing the narrative to present a cosmic drama that serves as the overarching temporal, geographical, theological, and narrative framework for the entire Gospel.5 The cosmological aspects are employed by the narrative by the use of biblical symbols and allusions (e.g., the signs, the “I am” statements), irony, paradox, and at times even apparent narrative contradictions (e.g., 3:22 and 4:1–2; 7:8–10), all of which assist the reader to see the invisible in the visible.
It would not be a stretch to suggest that each of the two strands of the Gospel’s plot expresses one of the two aspects of the divine identity of God: the historical strand portrays the economic Trinity (function), and the cosmological strand portrays the immanent Trinity (ontology). While this is not fully accurate, it gives further warrant for our reading of the Gospel, for it assumes that God’s activities in even the most basic historical aspects of the world are unable to be grasped without a multidimensional and theological lens. To limit God to what can be seen or analyzed by historical investigation (what he does in the flesh) is to deny that God is unique (the unique Son!), the Creator (not creation), and free from the constraints of time and space. When the prologue provides for the reader the two strands of the narrative’s plot, it was not simply giving methodological definition to the Gospel. Rather, it was giving theological definition to the nature of God and his intentions for the world.
The church was not wrong to suggest that the Gospel of John was the “spiritual” Gospel, but it was incomplete when it explained, as Augustine suggested, that John “disdained to walk on the earth” and wrote instead as he “soared . . . above the earth.”6 Such a depiction emphasizes the cosmological and minimizes the historical. No, John was standing firmly on the ground as he wrote and yet saw every historical detail “from above.” John cannot speak of a “historical Jesus” (per the scholarly construction) if that disallows the Word who was “in the beginning with God” (1:1). Jesus was real “flesh” (1:14) at the same time as he was the second person of the Trinity. This apparent paradox is the message of the Gospel, and the entire narrative is written with this paradoxical ink.
It would not be accurate simply to examine the Gospel’s use or application of OT quotations, allusions, or symbolisms when describing the relationship between the Gospel of John and the rest of Scripture. This would be too thin of a description of the canonical relationship between John and the OT, let alone John and the rest of the NT. Our exegesis of the Gospel revealed that at the most foundational level, the Gospel is so tied to the rest of the biblical story and canon that its own (“Johannine”) meaning is rooted in not merely its historical context but also its biblical-canonical context. Two aspects need to be briefly discussed.
First, the Fourth Gospel participates in the biblical story told by the OT. The Gospel is telling its story in dependence on, in participation with, and with the perspective of the past in what is a backward reading. The story it tells requires the story already told about Adam (19:5), Abraham (8:31–58), Moses (1:45; 5:45–47), David (7:42), and all Israel (15:1–8). To read the Gospel as if it is the beginning of the story or a self-contained story is to misread it. This is the continuation of a story already underway and already told, even if only in part. In this way the Gospel not only continues the OT story but retells it, showing how Jesus fulfills, replaces, exposes, rebukes, and even is and does what the OT promised God would be and do. It might not be enough, then, to describe the Gospel as the continuation of the OT story, for it also is commentary on the OT; even more, it is a second telling. The Gospel of John does not merely use the OT or add one more chapter to the same volume. Without ever replacing it, the Gospel rewrites the OT. Said another way, the subject matter of the OT and the Fourth Gospel are so intertwined that they can only be rightly understood when read symphonically (on method related to canon, see Introduction). The Gospel makes clear that the OT was looking to the same object: the life and ministry (especially the death and resurrection) of Jesus Christ. The OT, then, is not mere background but the shared foreground of the Gospel’s content and message.
Second, the Fourth Gospel also participates in the biblical story told by the rest of the NT. The Gospel tells its story in dependence on, in participation with, and with the perspective of the present and future in what is a forward reading. Throughout our exegesis in the commentary proper, it became clear that the Gospel was speaking about topics or a subject matter that not only resonated with the message of the rest of the NT (in part or in whole) but also necessitated expression from other NT books and authors. At times we even used language or discussion from other NT books and authors to help express or elucidate what John was also intending to communicate (see comments on 13:23–25). Our interpretation was not merely based upon conceptual links but an alignment or overlap of sorts in subject matter that made the description, analysis, or categories of the NT essential to grasping the actual meaning of the Gospel of John. Such collaboration does not intend to stir together individual sections of Scripture so as to make them unrecognizable but to let them speak in concert or symphonically in regard to their related and shared subject matter.
The Gospel of John instructs its reader to read all Scripture, for the subject matter it addresses—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and life in his name (20:31)—is the message of the whole Bible and needs the whole Bible for its expression. According to John, Jesus explained to the Jews that he is (and had always been) the subject matter of Moses’s writings: “For he wrote about me” (5:46). Such a statement not only provides hermeneutical instruction for reading Scripture in light of its shared subject matter but also shows how the Jesus that John portrays in this Gospel has always been a sixty-six-book Jesus, so that the primary context for understanding the Gospel of John is the canon in which it has been rightly placed and published by the church.
It is not an oversimplification to state that the basic message of the Gospel of John is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is, the Gospel tells the gospel. This is not to say that John is the gospel, but as a Gospel it participates in the fourfold telling of the gospel. Since all four Gospels have the same title prefacing four different authors, the title makes a striking claim: there is one gospel written or expressed in four different accounts—“according to” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Thus, there is one gospel and four Gospels, with each Gospel offering a necessary perspective, witness, and interpretation of the one and only gospel. (On the title and function of “Gospel,” see Introduction.) As the Fourth Gospel, John (the author and text) is one of the evangelists, declaring and defining the gospel. As the fourth, John is neither the climactic statement of the gospel (though the canonical order is certainly significant), nor is John only able to address one-quarter of the gospel. In the providence of God, each of the four Gospels tells the full gospel without ever being the authorized account of the gospel, for the authorized gospel requires four Gospels. Our discussion here is not to confuse the reader but to guide him or her to read the Gospel of John for its subject matter, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What is the gospel, according to the Gospel of John? In short, the gospel is the person and work of Jesus Christ and all that it means. Clearly John does not describe the gospel in a merely past-tense manner, something that happened back then; yet neither does he describe it in a merely present-tense manner, something only for the present day. According to this Gospel, the gospel is both descriptive and prescriptive in that it is based upon facts about God and drives toward faith in God. Even more simply, the gospel is both believed and lived (20:30–31). Both these aspects need to be briefly defined.
First, according to John the gospel is a description of fact. The gospel that John announces centers upon the meaning and significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The entire Gospel aims at the cross, and the time spent on the last week of Jesus’s life and ministry is by far the longest section of the narrative. For John the gospel is the fact that Jesus died and rose again, and the meaning of that fact: that Jesus has now accomplished the full purposes of God. The Gospel presents Jesus as the fulfillment of all human persons (the Second Adam), religions (fulfillment of Judaism and the true High Priest), and kingdoms (the true King) with numerous maneuvers in the narrative that help express their fuller meaning and subject matter, as in the “exaltation/lifting up” theme (3:14; 12:32), which helps express not only the nature of the King but also his relation to the necessity of sacrifice.
Second, according to John the gospel is a prescription of faith. While the factualness of the gospel is strongly rooted in what God accomplished through Jesus Christ in the past event of the cross, such a foundation necessarily invites the world to “believe”—a central term in the Gospel. And belief, though inclusive of propositions, is ultimately a manner of life. The word is used a total of ninety-eight times, which is more than any other NT author, nearly doubling the use of the term by the apostle Paul (fifty-four times). Belief in John is about both alignment and allegiance. Upon believing the gospel, the believer is properly aligned to God. He or she becomes a new creation (recall the Genesis theme) by being “born new” (3:3). Such are received as “children of God” (1:12) who enjoy the full rights of sonship in the house of God (8:35) and friendship with God (15:15). This is the passive effect of the gospel. But there is also an active effect of the gospel. Upon believing, the believer is exhorted to be aligned to God. He or she accepts God as the Father, Jesus as the mediating unique Son, and the Spirit as the source and guide of this new life. The believer submits and entrusts himself to God, remains in him (15:1–8), follows his guidance and instruction (16:5–15), and participates in his continuing mission to the world (17:18; 20:21).
According to the Gospel of John, therefore, the gospel of Jesus Christ is both the fact of God and faith in God. It is Jesus Christ as the High Priest and the Lamb of God. But it is also Jesus Christ as brother, friend, and King. Stated more simply, as much as the gospel is Jesus Christ “the truth,” it is also “the way” and “the life” (14:6). The Gospel of John calls the reader to grasp both doctrine and discipleship, and it denies that any dichotomy or wedge can be placed between them. The gospel is the word of the Word, which like the Greek term “w/Word” (ὁ λόγος) refers to both a message (word) and the person of Jesus Christ (Word). Jesus is the Word who speaks a word, and their intersection is the gospel. It might be for this very reason that the author of the Gospel decided to use this broadly defined term “w/Word,” allowing the reader to see at the end of the narrative how the multifaceted meaning of the term with which the Gospel began explains how Jesus’s life and ministry is his subject matter and therefore the “good news.”
Scholarship on the Gospel of John has often emphasized its “realized eschatology” and minimized its “futuristic eschatology.” As instructive as such language is for interpreters, both phrases have a tendency to speak right past the other. The present reality of the “eternal life” that Jesus gives need not deny its future implications or reality. For example, the healed man in 5:14 could be warned quite strongly about something worse happening to him in the future only because he had already experienced something bad in the present. Likewise, Jesus can speak of the gift of life in the present without thwarting in any way the glorious aspects of the life to come (see 14:1–4). Another example is when Jesus qualifies the aspects of “life” in 5:24 by claiming that the believer “does not come into judgment” and “has passed from death to life.” Both of these aspects speak right through the present to the future. It seems that modern interpreters have been so captured by the cosmological strand of John’s emplotment (without designating it as such) that they have imputed to the Gospel an overly realized eschatology that according to their reading either denies or strongly mutes the futuristic eschatology of the Gospel. But such an imbalance is altogether missing from the Gospel. In fact, for John the promise of a future eschatology is the best argument for the reality of a present eschatology. The fact that Jesus will be the life and the Judge in the future is proof that he is serving as the life and the Judge in the present (5:28–29).
This balance is important because according to this Gospel, Jesus, the Word-become-flesh (1:14), unites the past, present, and future in his person (cf. Heb 13:8). While John may provide for the biblical-canonical witness a more nuanced and even emphatic presentation concerning the manifest presence of God and his kingdom in the present, this in no way allows for a reading of the Gospel that denies futurist elements. The Gospel of John fits within Scripture’s overall presentation of an “already-not yet” eschatology. Such a position allows eschatology to be defined not merely by its linear development, especially as an “end times” reality, but also as a subset of God’s in-breaking into human history. Thus, as the NT authors recognized, even the coming of Jesus was eschatological in the sense that God had become “the tabernacling one” (1:14) and was now working in a way that inaugurated the eschatological reality that the OT had promised long before. The Fourth Gospel’s portrait of the person (the incarnation) and work (the cross, the resurrection, the Spirit) of Jesus portrays “eschatology” in a theocentric manner, so that eschatology is not merely a period of time or a particular event but is everything that God does.
The emplotment of the narrative we discussed above is significant for the Gospel’s presentation of eschatology. For the Gospel of John, the first-century events of Jesus’s life and ministry need to be placed in their cosmological context. That is, the Gospel is careful to show how human history is a subset of something more; it is a created thing that is not a self-contained and closed entity but is formed and ruled by a Creator. Thus, when God enters into his creation, his presence and work can rightly be defined as eschatological (i.e., cosmological). For example, the “Word became flesh” (1:14) was an eschatological event, just as the resurrection was eschatological in that it was the sign and seal of the new creation (20:1, 19). This is why the rest of the NT commonly refers to the time since Jesus as “the last days” (e.g., Acts 2:17; 1 Tim 3:1), for Jesus’s presence and ministry inaugurated the final work of God in the world.
The fullest expression of Scripture’s presentation of inaugurated eschatology is the Spirit, who is the most permanent and intimate manifestation of God’s presence. The Spirit is the ultimate sign of God’s presence and grace, the seal of his power and the deposit of his promise (Eph 1:13–14; cf. Rom 8:23; 1 Cor 1:18–22; Gal 3:14). The Spirit is a manifestation of the fact that the believer is now sharing and participating in God’s life, that is, “eternal life.” Even though sin and death have not yet been vanquished, their defeat has been guaranteed. The Christian, then, is exhorted to live in light of their newly bestowed eschatological status as children of the light not darkness (1 Thess 5:4–8; 1 John 1:5–10; 2:8), and as heirs of the kingdom of God and not as slaves of sin and death (John 8:34–36). In this sense, therefore, the Christian life is eschatological.
The Gospel of John states as its opening concern to reach the world (1:1–18) for the purpose of establishing a new people, the “children of God” (1:12), who are to live and serve as a family under God the Father. Biblical theologians over the last century, primarily in America, have debated the relationship between Israel and the church. Dispensational theologians have pressed for various levels of distinction, claiming that the people Jesus establishes are not a replacement of the people of Israel. Covenant theologians, on the other hand, press for continuity, claiming that the people Jesus establishes are the fullest and cumulative expression of the people of God, inclusive of all people for all time, Jews (Israel) and gentiles. Although the discussion is rooted in an analysis of the whole of Scripture, the Fourth Gospel offers something to the conversation.
The Gospel shows precise connections between what Jesus accomplishes by his person and work and the Jews and Judaism. There is nothing in the Gospel to suggest that Jesus is creating a people who are primarily gentile or non-Jew, that is, who are different from the people God established in the OT. Rather, the Gospel intentionally shows how Jesus repairs and restores Israel through his person and work. There is also nothing in the Gospel to suggest that the Jewish people are firmly established in God’s covenant without Jesus and that only others are in need of him. From the perspective of the Gospel, it is Jesus who finally establishes or becomes the temple, the High Priest, the presence of God, the Lamb of God, the final sacrifice for sins, and the final and eternal (new) covenant (Heb 13:20). There is no evidence in the Fourth Gospel, therefore, to suggest that Israel has some ministerial role that is outside of what Jesus has already done or that is distinct from the church. While this author is well aware that a discontinuity approach is rooted in much larger biblical-theological and hermeneutical issues,7 the Gospel strongly presents continuity between the two testaments, between the two covenants, as they are centered upon and established by Jesus Christ.
The people established by Jesus can be described as the recreated people of God, who through Jesus have fulfilled the old covenant and are now in the new covenant relationship with God the Father through God the Son and living in and by God the Spirit. That is, the people of God in the Fourth Gospel, inclusive of both Jews and gentiles (the world!), is the church. The church is the Spirit-indwelt and Spirit-empowered people of God, who have been created to reflect God in two ways.
First, the church is to participate in God’s love by obeying and fulfilling the love commandment (13:34–35). Jesus commands his disciples to display God’s love for them to one another. And this love manifests itself in sacrificial service, best exemplified by Jesus’s action at the start of the farewell discourse where he washed the disciples’ feet (13:1–17). According to the Gospel, this act of service is to be expressed not only as a ceremony but as a lifestyle. The church is to live as the family of God, with all members (brothers and sisters) functioning as servants of one another and ultimately, therefore, of God. In this way the love of God manifests its presence in and through the people of God.
Second, the church is to participate in God’s mission by being sent by the Son and therefore also the Father to the world in the power and truth of the Spirit. Just as the Father sent the Son, the Son sends his church (20:21), bestowing upon them his Spirit and authority (20:22–23) to do the work assigned to them by the Father. The foot washing (13:1–17) and the prayer of consecration or dedication (17:1–26) is the preparation for service, the initiation of Christian discipleship. The foot washing is done not only to one another but also as part of the mission of God to the world, heralding the new covenant and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And since Christ was superior in every way to those whose feet he washed, no Christian may ever claim to be so superior that he or she is above washing the feet of another. This means that, according to the “example” of Christ, “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matt 20:16). The significance of the church for the mission of God is surpassed, however, by God himself, who by the Spirit will be the primary ministering agent at work in the world (16:8).
The Gospel of John is written for the reader and stated clearly as such (20:30–31; cf. 21:24–25). But the reader is not embraced by the Gospel and its intentions by a purpose statement, for he or she is quickly grasped by the beauty and majesty of the Gospel’s subject matter, the person and work of Jesus Christ, and is graciously invited to “follow.” Like the earliest disciples, the reader of the Gospel is confronted by Jesus and asked, “What do you seek?” (1:38). Through the Fourth Gospel, Jesus questions the reader and invites him or her to believe in him and to have life in his name (20:31), that is, to become his disciple.
Every reader of this Gospel, no matter their relationship to God or stage of their Christian walk, is beckoned to “come and see” (1:39, 46). In this Gospel, the Beloved Disciple comes alongside the reader and shares his testimony and life with the reader. Just as the Gospel begins with a disciple of Jesus (Andrew) seeking his brother (Peter) and leading him to Jesus (1:41), so the Gospel ends with a disciple of Jesus (the Beloved Disciple) leading a brother or sister (the reader) to Jesus. Ultimately, the mysterious identity of the Beloved Disciple is eclipsed in importance by his ministerial role as author of the Gospel, and it is the reader who becomes the referent of this mystery as he or she receives the Gospel’s message, believes its subject matter, and lives as a disciple of Jesus Christ. And since all disciples are sent by Jesus, even the Beloved Disciple’s text-based ministry is an extension of the love of God to the reader, an ongoing invitation to believe in Jesus Christ and receive life in his name. Amen.