John--The Gospel of the Beloved

Today, we are continuing our journey along Route 66, and we are stopping off to visit the Gospel of John…

 

AUTHOR

 

First, we must ask and answer: why is this called “The Gospel of John”? As we learned in our study of the other Gospels over the past few weeks, the titles of the Gospels were not an original part of the text, but they reflect who the early church thought the authors of the Gospels were.

 

So, who is the John that the early church thought wrote this Gospel? As you may know, Jesus had a disciple named John. But the interesting thing is that John, the disciple, is never mentioned by name in this Gospel. That’s the first fact to take note of.

 

The second fact to notice is that this Gospel, unlike the other three Gospels, refers to “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. He is mentioned for the first time in John 13:23 where we read, “One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him.” That is, next to Jesus. So, this disciple whom Jesus loved sat next to Jesus at the Last Supper.

 

The next time this phrase is used is in John 19:26. The scene takes place while Jesus is hanging on the cross and we read, “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son.’” So, this disciple whom Jesus loved was at the cross and Jesus established a new relationship there between his mother and this beloved disciple.

 

Next, we see this same disciple whom Jesus loved on the morning of the resurrection. In John 20 we read… 

 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

So, the disciple whom Jesus loved was one of the first to go to Jesus’ tomb on Sunday morning and he was one of the first to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

 

This disciple is mentioned again in John 21. This scene takes place after the resurrection. The disciples are fishing on the Sea of Galilee. They have fished all night and caught nothing. In the morning, a man on the seashore calls out to them in their boat and tells them to throw their net in on the other side. The disciples do this and catch a whopping 153 fish. That’s when we read in John 21:7, “Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’”

 

Peter then jumps into the water and swims to shore. The other fishermen bring the boat to shore with their miraculous catch and the resurrected Jesus cooks breakfast for them beside the Sea of Galilee.

 

After breakfast, Jesus has a conversation with Peter in which he tells Peter what kind of death he is going to die. After this we read…

Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”

Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”

This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.

That final verse suggests that this Gospel is made up of the testimony of this beloved disciple and that there was a community around the beloved disciple who published his Gospel. That would explain the “we” in the sentence: “we know that his testimony is true.” 

 

So, what have we learned? We have learned at least four things:

1. We have a Gospel in which John the Disciple is never mentioned.
2. But the beloved disciple is mentioned.
3. And it is the beloved disciple’s testimony we have in this book.
4. And finally, there is a “we”, a group of people involved in the publication of this Gospel. 

 

Finally, we know a fifth thing. It was the unanimous belief of the early church, going back to the second century, that John the Disciple was the author of this Gospel. Early church fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian, among others, agree that John wrote this Gospel.

 

 

DATE

 

So, that still leaves us with the question: when was this Gospel written? We have a fragment of papyrus with writing on both sides. That means it is from a codex (a hinged book). And the writing on this piece of papyrus is from the Gospel of John. Scholars have dated this piece of papyrus to approximately AD 125. The papyrus has the designation “p⁵²” and it was found in Egypt. 

 

Since Egypt is quite a distance away from the presumed location of writing, in Ephesus, that would put the composition of the original text of John’s Gospel back into the first century. A date between AD 85 and 100 would also fit with the later statement of Clement of Alexandria who said John wrote to supplement the earlier Gospels. (See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6.14.7)

 

THEMES

 

Anyone who has read all four Gospels can see that John’s Gospel is different from the others. It has characters and events that aren’t in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. And John lacks significant stories that are in the other Gospels. John uses language that is rich in symbolism, with subtle shades of meaning. Irony and paradox are common in John. People often misunderstand what Jesus says, but in a way that opens the listener/reader to new levels of meaning. Instead of speaking in parables and short sayings about the kingdom of God, Jesus has long monologues and dialogues with individual people. The kingdom of God is seldom mentioned in John, but a phrase that seldom appears in the Synoptics is very important here: eternal life. 

 

It has been common to think of John as the spiritual Gospel. But this Gospel is clearly grounded in history as well. There are details in some of the stories that could only have come from an eyewitness. For example, in John 8, when the woman caught in the act of adultery is brought before Jesus for his judgment, Jesus bends down and writes something in the sand with his finger. Nothing is ever made of this theologically or spiritually. And not until the invention of the realistic novel in the nineteenth century did writers add irrelevant details to make a scene more convincing. The only explanation for the appearance of this detail in the story is that someone saw Jesus do this and recorded the fact.

 

Whereas Matthew and Luke are clearly dependent on Mark and on Q, John is not dependent on any of these sources. One thing that would explain the independence of John is if it were written by an eyewitness who did not need the other Gospels to tell him what happened in the life and ministry of Jesus. It seems to me that the author of this Gospel could make the same statement that is made at the beginning of the First Letter of John…

 

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

 

STRUCTURE

 

The structure of John’s Gospel is also different from the Synoptic Gospels. John shows Jesus going up to Jerusalem at least three times for the Passover. This is where we get the idea of Jesus’ three-year ministry. John also has, at times, a different order of events. For example, Jesus cleanses the Temple at the beginning of his ministry in John rather than at the end. By placing that event at the beginning, John seems to be making a theological point, rather than trying to maintain a rigid historical chronology. 

 

The structure of John’s Gospel works out like this…

1. Prologue (1:1-18)
2. Beginnings of Jesus’ Ministry (1:19-51)
3. Jesus’ Public Ministry: Signs and Discourses (2-11)
4. The Passion Week (12-19)
5. The Resurrection (20:1-29)
6. The Statement of Purpose (20:30-31)
7. Epilogue (21)

 

KEY CONCEPT: BELIEVE

 

John states his purpose clearly in 20:30-31…

 

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

 

The word “believe” appears some 98 times in John’s Gospel. That’s more appearances than in any other Gospel or in any other book of the Bible. The word “believe” appears just 22 times in the Old Testament but 222 times in the New Testament, and 98 of those appearances are in John.

 

In the story about the disciple whom we call “doubting Thomas”, Jesus promises a blessing to those of us who can believe without seeing. That’s great. But what can help us believe, we who do not have the opportunity to put our hands into Jesus’ side? We must believe without seeing, or not believe at all. But how does this thing called faith really work?

I think an answer, at least a partial answer, is given to us in the verses we just read from John 20:30-31. The Gospel of John was written that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we might have life in his name.

We do not have Jesus physically present with us to help us believe, but we do have something Thomas did not have. We have the record of the entire Gospel of John. We have three other Gospels on top of that. In addition, we have twenty-three other books in the New Testament. All these documents were written at most only sixty or seventy years after Jesus’ death and claimed resurrection. Some of these documents were written as early as 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

“But how do we know that the story they tell is true, that it really happened?” you might reasonably ask.

The most convincing argument I have ever heard is this one… Some of the people who told this story, of a dying and rising Jesus, gave up their lives because of their faith in the resurrection.

You say, “Well, that’s fine, but there are probably many people who have given up their life for something they thought was true, but really wasn’t in the end.”

Yes, that is true. But I have never met or heard of anyone who would give up their life for something they knew was a lie. Thus, the idea that the first disciples made up the story of Jesus’ resurrection and then died for that lie, simply does not make sense to me. They must have given up their lives for something they thought was true. 

Was it a hallucination? If so, it was the most unusual hallucination in all recorded human history—fooling as many as five hundred people who claimed to have witnessed Jesus risen from the dead at one moment in time. (1 Corinthians 15)

Was it a hoax? If not perpetrated by the disciples, and I have already shown how that simply cannot be, then by whom? 

German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg has said, “The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”

 

So where does the power to believe come from, to believe in such an unusual event, to believe when the cost of change in our own lives is so great?

The power to believe, while based upon recorded human history, ultimately comes from God. It is his gift.

Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Faith is ultimately, also, a gift we can ask God to give us, like the man who brought his son to Jesus for healing who said: “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

It was this very Scripture in Mark 9:24 that helped an agnostic named Sheldon Vanauken come to faith in the risen Jesus. He prayed the same prayer that father prayed to Jesus. Vanauken realized that faith was a risk. After all, in the end, the Christian faith might be wrong. But he also realized that to reject Jesus was the greater risk: to reject Jesus and find in the end that he had rejected God. That outcome, Sheldon Vanauken concluded, would be unbearable. Therefore, he made the leap of faith. Afterwards, he wrote a poem entitled “The Gap” about his decision…

Did Jesus live? And did he really say

The burning words that banish mortal fear?

And are they true? Just this is central, here

The Church must stand or fall. It’s Christ we weigh.

 

All else is off the point: the Flood, the Day

Of Eden, or the Virgin Birth—Have done!

The Question is, did God send us the Son

Incarnate crying Love! Love is the Way!

 

Between the probable and proved there yawns

A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,

Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,

Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns

Our only hope: to leap into the Word

That opens up the shuttered universe.