For study leader: Instead of starting directly in chapter 1 or verse by verse, a group may consider to read John’s gospel in advance to then look at it from a bird’s eye view, e.g. as an introduction some other writings of John. The present study examines what John declared in 20:30-32 to be his aims (part 1), and how he structured his narrative to achieve them.
Background: See also intro page. Commentators recognize in John’s gospel two major sections that they call the book of signs (chs. 1-12) and the book of glory (chs. 13-21), with chs. 1 and 21 serving as their prologue and epilogue. Four subsections are considered that address the following questions:
- Who is Jesus? (chs. 1-8)
- Why follow Him? (chs 9-12)
- How to follow Him (chs 13-16)
- Where to follow Him (chs. 17-21)
Warm-up: John’s gospel and pastoral letters address objections against the Christian faith of people both outside and within the church. In our own culture, what do you find are the most common objections of non-Christians why they don’t believe the gospel? What were (or what are) yours? How did John sum up the chief question that he wished to address with his own narrative of the gospel, and where?
1) Read Jn 20:30-31. Did John seek to answer several objections, or only one? Which ones?
- Is it only about whether Jesus is the Son of God?
- What hinders many to “have life in His name”, even despite their belief in the deity of Christ (v32)?
- Does ‘life’ mean eternal life that cannot die anymore? Jn 5:24 (cf 6:58; 1Jn 2:25; 5:11-12; Rev 20:6)
- If you compare different sects who call themselves Christian, to they agree how we can attain to this eternal life?
- How do they question that eternal life can only be received by faith alone?
- Why does everything else hinge on this one question? Gal 5:4; Ro 3:20-22 (cf Ro 4:16; 11:6)
2) Who cared whether or not Jesus was “the Christ” and why? If he is, how does it answer how we must be saved? cf Jn 4:20-25
- Who first said that this ‘anointed one’ (Christ, hebr. Messiah) was Jesus? cf 1:19-27
- How did his own people respond to this claim,1:11? Jn 7:40-47; Mt 20:30-31; 21:15-16
- Why did only few believe that Jesus is this son of David who will save Israelites and Gentiles from their sins (Mt 1:21; 1Jn 2:2)?
- Read Ro 9:32 => How did Jesus become a stumbling block to them?=> Why didn’t the rabbis accept that God counts faith in the promised Messiah alone as our righteousness (as He did for their patriarch Abraham, Gen 15:6; cf Ro 4:2-3; 4:16; Gal 3:14)?
3) Who said first that Jesus is truly God?
- John the Baptist called Jesus God by using a quote from Isa 40:3 about YAHWEH (1:23). John the evangelist uses the Greek θεός (1:1;20:28). Who else in the first century called Jesus God? e.g.Mt 1:23 (citing Isa 7:14); Heb 1:8 (attributing Ps 45:6-7 to Jesus); Ro 9:5
- How can we be sure that this was not an invention of Christians centuries later?
- What proved at least to Jews that Jesus undoubtedly claimed to be God? Mk 2:5-7 (cf Dan 9:8-9; Ps 49:7-8)
4) Read Jn 1:1-18. How does this prologue define in what sense Jesus “was” God (past tense, v1)?
- vv1-2 are structured as a chiasmus*, a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or entire sections according to the patterns A-B-B’-A’ or A-B-C-B’-A’:
- A : In the beginning was the Word
- B : and the Word was with God
- B’ : and the Word was God
- A’ : He was in the beginning with God.
- A : In the beginning was the Word
- The resulting parallelisms interpret each other, and they indicate what the author regarded as the main conclusion. How so?**
- “In the beginning…”: As God ‘incarnate’ (v14), what distinguishes Jesus from all who are created in God’s image like Adam and Eve? vv1-3
5) Personal & application
- A common objection to Christianity is that it should not matter how people call their god(s), because they are all the same anyway. What are your thoughts about that?
- What made you consider whether the Christian belief that Jesus is God is not just wishful thinking?
- After today’s discussion, what do you think would the John say about it who wrote the fourth gospel?
- Do you think this teaching in the Bible was easier to believe for people in the first century than it is today? Why or why not?
* chiasmus, from Greek χίασμα, “crossing”. Ancient authors used this literary form all the time (for scholarly discussion, see Welch, John W., “Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis” (1998). Maxwell Institute Publications. 22; and so does John’s gospel (>100x), see Ellis, Peter (2003), Understanding the Concentric Structure of the Fourth Gospel. St Vladimir’s Theol. Quart. 47(2), 131-154; and Breck, John (1994). The Shape of Biblical Language: Chiasmus in the Scriptures and Beyond. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
** Here, a chiastic design is used to explain that the Word in (A) is He (A’), who is with God (B’) as a person of the Trinity (B). Another example given by Breck is the overall structure of John’s prologue (Jn 1:1-18) with the asymmetric pattern A-B-C-D-E-F-E’-D’-C’-B’-A’:
- A (1-2):The Word with God
- B (3) : His role in creation
- C (4-5) He gave life and light to men
- D (6-8) : The witness of the Baptist
- E (9-11) : The Word came into the World
- F (12-13) : He adopted as heirs all who believe
- E’(14) : The Word became incarnate
- D’(15) : The witness of the Baptist
- C’(16) : He gave grace upon grace to men
- B’(17) : His role in the new creation
- A’(18) :The Son at the Father’s side
Here, the resulting symmetric structure serves to define what John proclaims to be the heart of the gospel (in unison with Ro 3:20-22): Salvation is through faith alone by grace alone (F). It also explains the repetitiveness and non-linearity of the narrative that characterizes John’s writing: E.g. by mentioning the Baptist a second time at the position D’ (v15), he made it obvious that the resulting chiastic structure is deliberate, and that e.g. C’ is therefore by design a further explanation of C, namely that the life-giving light of Christ’s teaching is that it teaches grace (rather than more laws).
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