Christ in John

John 1 does not arrive at Christ by the end of an argument; it begins in Him and never leaves. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (v. 1). The Word is the One by whom everything came to be - All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made (v. 3) - and in Him is life , and that life is the light of men (v. 4), shining in a darkness that could not put it out (v. 5). John the Baptist comes only as a…

John tells us plainly what to make of the wedding at Cana: This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him (v. 11). The glory that John announced in his opening - the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory…) (John 1:14) - now breaks out at a village feast, and it breaks out as joy: water for the rites of purifying becomes wine in abundance, and the governor of the f…

John 3 holds the single most quoted sentence in the Bible, and the whole chapter is built to carry it. A ruler of the Jews comes by night and grants what he can: Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God (v. 2). Jesus answers with something no teaching can supply - a birth. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God (v. 3); Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (v. 5). This new life is the Spir…

John 4 is the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels, and He has it with a Samaritan woman of broken reputation drawing water alone at noon. To her He offers what He calls living water : whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life (vv. 13-14). John himself reads that water for us a few chapters later: If any man th…

John 5 is the chapter where a sabbath healing becomes the occasion for the plainest words Jesus speaks about His union with the Father. He heals a man infirm thirty-eight years - Rise, take up thy bed, and walk (v. 8) - and when the act is challenged because it falls on the sabbath, He answers, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work (v. 17). His hearers do not mistake the weight of it: the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but sa…

John 6 is the bread-of-life chapter, and from beginning to end it is about Christ Himself given to be fed upon. He feeds five thousand from five barley loaves and two small fishes, and twelve baskets are taken up over and above (vv. 11-13) - the Shepherd setting a table in a desert place, an echo of the manna the fathers ate (v. 31; Ex. 16:15). The crowd would take him by force, to make him a king (v. 15), but the sign points past the bread to the Bread: Labour not for the…

John 7 sets the whole city arguing about one man, and every line presses the reader toward the same verdict the crowd is forced to reach. At the Feast of Tabernacles - the feast of water drawn and poured - Jesus stands on the last and greatest day and cries the great open invitation: If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (vv. 37-38). John himself tells us w…

John 8 is one long disclosure of who Jesus is, and it climbs to the most explicit self-naming in the Gospels. It opens in mercy: a woman is thrown down in the temple court as a trap, and Jesus answers, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her (v. 7); when her accusers are gone He neither condemns nor excuses but sends her into new life - Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more (v. 11), grace and truth held together (cf. John 1:14, 17). The…

John 9 is a single healing that becomes a parable acted out in real life - the long descent of a man blind from his birth into clear sight, and the matching descent of the men who could see into blindness. The disciples open with the old assumption that suffering must be punishment - who did sin, this man, or his parents? - and Jesus refuses it: Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him (vv. 2-3). He turns the q…

John 10 is the chapter where Jesus gathers the long Scriptural picture of the shepherd into Himself and names it: I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep (v. 11). Israel had been promised that God Himself would come for His scattered flock - I will both search my sheep, and seek them out… I will feed them in a good pasture (Ezek. 34:11, 14) - and had sung for centuries, The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want (Ps. 23:1). Here that S…

John 11 is the last and greatest of the signs before the cross, and the whole of it turns on a single, staggering claim. When the friend Jesus loves falls sick, Jesus stays away two days on purpose - This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby (v. 4) - and arrives only after Lazarus has lain in the grave four days. To grieving Martha He speaks the words that answer the grave itself: I am the resurrection, and th…

John 12 is the hinge on which the Gospel turns from the public ministry toward the cross, and Christ is everywhere in it. In Bethany, Mary pours a pound of costly spikenard over His feet and wipes them with her hair; when Judas objects at the waste, Jesus shields her with a word that reaches straight to the cross: Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this (v. 7). Her extravagant love has sensed what the disciples cannot - that He is going to die. The…

John gathers the whole night before the cross into one sentence - having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end (v. 1) - and then shows what that love does. The One who knew that the Father had given all things into his hands (v. 3) rises from supper, lays aside His garments, girds Himself with a towel, and washes the disciples’ feet (vv. 4-5): the Lord and Master takes the place of the lowest slave. It is the towel before the cross, the same sel…

John 14 opens the farewell discourse, and from beginning to end it is the voice of Christ Himself. He steadies frightened men with His own person: Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me (v. 1). He holds out the hope of the Father’s house and His own return - I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go… I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (vv. 2-3). When Thomas asks the way, Jesus answe…

John 15 is the Gospel text itself, and so it is the Christ Connection from its first words: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman (v. 1). Israel had been called a vine and had failed - the LORD’s pleasant plant that brought forth wild grapes (Isa. 5:1-7), the vine brought out of Egypt and then broken down (Ps. 80:8-16). Jesus names Himself the vine that does not fail, the true vine in whom the branches at last bear what Israel could not. And the whole life of…

John 16 is the heart of the upper-room promise, and the Christ Connection runs through every line, because the chapter is Jesus speaking of His own going and coming and of the Helper He will send in His place. He calls that Helper the Comforter - the parakletos , the one called alongside - and says the unthinkable: It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you (v. 7). The Spirit…

John 17 is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus, prayed aloud on the night He was betrayed, and the Gospel text is itself the Christ Connection - every line is the Son speaking to the Father about His work, His people, and His glory. He opens by naming the moment that has shaped the whole Gospel: Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee (v. 1), and He defines the gift He has been given to give: And this is life eternal, that they might…

John 18 sets the arrest and trial of Jesus under one steady claim: that no one takes His life from Him - He lays it down of Himself. When the armed party comes for Him in the garden, He does not flee; He steps forward and asks, Whom seek ye? At His answer, I am he , the whole company goes backward, and fell to the ground (vv. 4-6) - a flash of the majesty of the One who could not be taken unwilling, and who then gives Himself up so that His own may go free: if therefore ye…

John 19 is the crucifixion, and from the first verse to the last it is the Christ Connection - every scene is Jesus, and almost every scene is Scripture coming true before our eyes. Pilate scourges Him, the soldiers crown Him with thorns and drape Him in a purple robe and hail Him in mockery, and Pilate leads Him out beaten and bleeding: Behold the man! (v. 5). The irony runs to the bottom of the page - the true King stands crowned and robed precisely while He is being moc…

John 20 is the chapter the whole Gospel has been moving toward, and every line of it names the risen Christ. The tomb is empty, but it is not robbed: the grave-clothes lie undisturbed and the napkin that bound His face is wrapped together in a place by itself (v. 7) - the body did not leave, it rose. To Mary, weeping in the garden, the risen Lord speaks one word, her name - Mary (v. 16) - and the Shepherd who said he calleth his own sheep by name (John 10:3) is heard doing…

John 21 is the last page of the Gospel, and from first line to last it is the risen Christ providing, restoring, and calling. He shows Himself a third time at the sea of Tiberias to disciples who have fished all night and caught nothing (v. 3); a voice from the shore says, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find (v. 6), and the empty night becomes a catch of an hundred and fifty and three great fishes that does not tear the net (v. 11) - the Lord givi…