Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book
If you have come to John from Job, you have come to the right book. Job cried out for a mediator who could lay one hand on God and the other on a man, and he trusted a Redeemer he could not yet see. What he was given, in the end, was an encounter out of the whirlwind, and that was enough for him, though it was not the last word. The deepest ache of that whole book is still hanging in the air when this one opens.
As you read, hold this: These are written so that you may believe.
John tells you why he wrote, near the end, in a sentence that governs the whole.
"Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name." John 20:30–31 (BSB)
He is not setting out to write a complete life of Jesus; he is making a case, and the verdict he longs for is belief that leads into life.
The book’s word
The first word we will sit with tomorrow is λόγος (logos), pronounced LOG-os. Strong’s G3056. John does not open with a birth or a genealogy. He opens before the world was made.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1 (BSB)
That sentence closes every door but one. The Word is no mere principle and no lesser being, for He was with God, and He was God. A Greek ear, hearing this, would have caught the rational order standing behind the whole cosmos, while a Hebrew ear would have caught the word of the LORD by which God spoke the world into being. John takes up the highest word that both of those worlds possessed and then says what neither of them ever dared: this logos is a Person, and He became flesh.
"The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14 (BSB)
The God who answered Job out of the storm has now answered in a Person, and the Mediator Job longed for has been given a name. Tomorrow we will stand at that hinge and look at it closely. For today it is enough simply to know the claim that the whole rest of the book will set out to defend.
What makes John different
Matthew, Mark, and Luke share so much between them that they are called the Synoptic Gospels, a word that means “seen together.” John stands apart from the other three, and most of what he records is his alone. He does not give us the parables or the exorcisms; he gives us long, unhurried conversations instead, Nicodemus coming by night, a Samaritan woman met at noon, the disciples gathered in an upper room. And he frames the whole of the public ministry around two things.
Seven signs. John does not call them miracles. He calls them sēmeia, signs, wonders that point past themselves to who Jesus is. He turns water into wine, heals an official’s son and a lame man at a pool, feeds five thousand, walks upon the sea, gives sight to a man born blind, and raises Lazarus from the grave. Each sign is a door, and the conversation that follows it walks the reader through.
Seven “I AM” sayings. He is the bread of life and the light of the world, the door and the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and the truth and the life, and the true vine. Behind every one of them stands the name God gave Moses at the bush. So when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58), the crowd stoops for stones, because they have heard the claim exactly.
The shape of the book
John falls into two halves.
- The Book of Signs (chapters 1–12). Jesus reveals His glory to the world, and the world divides over Him, some believing while most do not.
- The Book of Glory (chapters 13–21). Jesus turns to His own, and we follow Him into the upper room, out to the cross, on to the empty tomb, and down to breakfast on the shore. The hour He has been naming all along at last arrives, and the glory He reveals turns out to be the glory of a love that gives itself away.
A few threads run the whole way through the book. There are the signs that keep pressing the reader for a verdict, and the “I AM” that keeps sounding, and the long contest of light against darkness. And there is belief, which John always keeps as a verb, for he never once uses the noun “faith.” To believe, in this Gospel, is something a person does: a coming to Jesus, and a clinging to Him once you have come.
"In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:4–5 (BSB)
"But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." John 1:12 (BSB)
The Gospel claims eyewitness authority. “The one who saw it has testified, and his testimony is true” (John 21:24). Christian tradition from the second century names the author as John the apostle, son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved. We will read it as what it claims to be: the witness of one who leaned on His chest.
Most place the finished book around AD 85–95, likely written from Ephesus. By then the eyewitnesses were dying off and the church had come to speak Greek, and into that hour came a Gospel that said not merely what Jesus did but who Jesus is, which was exactly the word the moment needed.
The map
- Day 1. Orientation (today).
- Days 2–3. The Prologue and the first witnesses (John 1).
- Days 4–12. The Book of Signs: Cana, Nicodemus, the well, the bread, the light, the man born blind, the shepherd, Lazarus (John 2–12).
- Days 13–18. The Book of Glory begins: the upper room, the vine, the promised Spirit, the high-priestly prayer (John 13–17).
- Days 19–22. Arrest, trials, the cross (John 18–19).
- Days 23–24. The empty tomb and the risen Lord (John 20).
- Day 25. The shore, and the series close (John 21).
But a map is only a map, and the sentence that governs the journey is still John 20:31. These things are written so that you may believe. Not so that you may collect up a set of signs, and not so that you may admire a great teacher from a safe distance, but so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life in His name.
The verse the book stands on
The Prologue will say it tomorrow in the language of eternity, and the purpose statement says it in the language of a case brought before a court, but the two of them are making one and the same claim. The Word became flesh. John wrote every line of this book so that you would believe it, and in believing have life in His name.