The Word was God, and the Word became flesh
John opens where Genesis opens and goes back further. Genesis 1:1 says 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'; John 1:1 says 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' Three claims stand in one sentence: the Word already was when the beginning began, the Word was distinct from God, and the Word was God. Then the creation account is handed over to him, 'All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made' (1:3), and Genesis 1:3 is answered, 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men' (1:4). What follows is the sentence the rest of Christian theology is built around: 'And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth' (1:14). The verb rendered 'dwelt' is the verb for pitching a tent, which puts the tabernacle of Exodus in the reader's ear. The prologue closes by saying what the whole book is for: 'No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him' (1:18).
John 1:1 · John 1:14 · John 1:18
Seven times I am, and once without a predicate
Seven times in this Gospel Jesus says 'I am' and completes it with a picture. 'I am the bread of life' (6:35). 'I am the light of the world' (8:12). 'I am the door' (10:9). 'I am the good shepherd' (10:11). 'I am the resurrection, and the life' (11:25). 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life' (14:6). 'I am the true vine' (15:1). Each one takes something Israel already lived on, manna, the pillar of fire, the sheepfold, the vine of Isaiah 5, and says the substance is standing in front of them. Then there are the places where the sentence stops with the two words and no picture. The ASV completes the sense at 8:24 and 8:28 with 'I am he'. At 8:58 it lets the Greek stand as it is: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was born, I am.' The tense is deliberate and so is the reaction. Nobody in that courtyard heard a claim about age. 'They took up stones therefore to cast at him' (8:59), because Exodus 3:14 says 'I AM THAT I AM' and Isaiah 43:10 says 'that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he'. The same charge is laid out plainly two chapters later, after 'I and the Father are one' (10:30): 'because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God' (10:33). They understood him exactly.
John 8:58 · John 10:30 · John 14:6
Signs, and the belief they are for
John never calls a miracle a work of power. He calls it a sign, seventeen times, because the point of it is what it points at. He numbers the first two, 'This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory' (2:11) and 'This is again the second sign that Jesus did' (4:54), and seven run through the book to the raising of Lazarus. Then he states the selection principle and the purpose together: 'Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name' (20:30-31). John is honest about the limits of evidence. He records that the signs were seen and refused, 'But though he had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on him' (12:37), and he closes the resurrection chapter by blessing people who will never see one: 'blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed' (20:29).
John 2:11 · John 12:37 · John 20:31
Believing, and eternal life as a present possession
John uses the verb for believing ninety-eight times, more than a third of all its uses in the New Testament, and he never once uses the noun for faith in this Gospel. That is a decision about grammar with theology inside it: in John, faith is something a person does toward someone rather than something a person has. And the thing believing gets is given in the present tense. 'He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life' (3:36). 'He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life' (5:24). The transfer has already happened. Eternal life in John is defined by relationship rather than by duration: 'And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ' (17:3). The most quoted verse in the Bible puts the whole transaction in one line, with the world as its object: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life' (3:16).
John 3:16 · John 5:24 · John 17:3
Another Comforter, and everything he was sent to do
The word John uses for the Spirit in the upper room appears five times in the whole New Testament, four of them here and once in 1 John, where it describes Jesus himself as 'an Advocate with the Father' (1 John 2:1). It means someone called alongside to help, and the word 'another' at 14:16 means another of the same kind: 'And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever'. The job description runs across four chapters and none of it has expired. He abides with the disciples and is in them (14:17). He 'shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you' (14:26). He bears witness to Christ (15:26). He 'will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment' (16:8). He 'shall guide you into all the truth' and 'shall declare unto you the things that are to come' (16:13). And he points away from himself: 'He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you' (16:14). Jesus called his going away an advantage on exactly this ground, 'It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you' (16:7). The promise at 7:38 was already pointing here, 'from within him shall flow rivers of living water', and John adds the note himself: 'But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive' (7:39). Everyone who believes on him is inside that sentence, and the church still lives on the whole of what the Comforter was sent to do.
John 14:16 · John 16:13 · John 7:39
The hour, the glory, and a command with a measure attached
A clock runs through this Gospel. At Cana his mother is told 'mine hour is not yet come' (2:4), and the phrase repeats until the week of the cross, when it turns over: 'The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified' (12:23), and in prayer, 'Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son' (17:1). John's word for glory arrives at the cross rather than around it. Being lifted up is the glorifying, and Jesus says what the lifting means, 'And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself' (12:32). The final word from the cross in this Gospel is a single Greek word of completion, 'It is finished' (19:30). Inside that same hour he leaves a command with a standard on it that no one had used before: 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another' (13:34). The measure is the new part. And the identifying mark of his people is set by it: 'By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another' (13:35).
John 12:23 · John 13:34 · John 19:30
