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John the ApostleGospel of John
Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | Published in 90A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Identity of Jesus Christ
The central theme of the Gospel of John is an assertion of the identity of Jesus, addressed in almost every chapter. There are at least two parts to the gospel’s exploration of Jesus’s identity, which conforms to the Christian doctrine of his two natures, being both fully human and fully divine.
Showing the divinity of Jesus is the gospel’s primary concern, as can be seen in the opening prologue, which identifies Jesus as the pre-existent Word of God, the active agent of creation existing in eternal union with God, and the Son of God who has been made incarnate as a human being. Further assertions of his divinity are made throughout the gospel, often in one of three ways: through the supernatural power evident in his miraculous signs; in his repeated use of “I Am” rhetoric, which borrows the terminology of the personal name of God from the Old Testament (see Exodus 3:14); and in his many statements about the unity he shares with God the Father. Sometimes he combines these strategies, simultaneously claiming the personal name of God and the attribute of divine pre-existence: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (8:58).
The humanity of Jesus is addressed in two aspects: his role as the promised Messiah of the Jewish people, and his possession of a truly physical human body. Jesus is first cited as the Messiah (the Hebrew word for “the anointed one,” for which the Greek translation is Christ) in the first chapter, when John the Baptist deflects the speculation about messianic identity away from himself and points to Jesus instead. Shortly thereafter, Jesus’s newfound disciples enthusiastically share the news with their family and friends: “We have found the Messiah” (1:41). Jesus himself asserts or affirms this identification in several places in the gospel (see 4:25-26; 11:27; 17:3). In most of Jesus’s public discourses in John, speculation as to whether he really is the Messiah almost always arises, with some hearers believing and others remaining skeptical.
The second aspect of Jesus’s humanity, his possession of a truly physical body, is likely emphasized to address a theological concern that had come up by the time of the gospel’s composure: Gnosticism, a Greek-influenced philosophy, asserted that Jesus was only spirit, with no real body. Against this, John emphasizes Jesus’s physicality, especially in the resurrection appearances, where disciples touch his wounds and eat food with him. John further asserts that in Jesus, the pre-existent Son of God has become “flesh” (see 1:14), underscoring the full physicality of his human incarnation.
Love as the Foundational Christian Ethic
Jesus’s actions throughout the gospel are marked by compassion, sympathy, and love, except in those cases where he is dealing with religious authorities whose misinterpretations and abuses of power have resulted in sin and spiritual damage. To all others—and particularly to those who are judged and mistreated by others—Jesus acts with remarkable kindness and compassion. This is true in his interaction with Nicodemus (a Pharisee), in his honest intentionality in his conversation with the Samaritan woman (a member of a despised religious minority), in his compassion toward the woman caught in adultery, and in his healings of those who have illnesses or chronic disabilities.
Jesus not only exemplifies love in interacting with others, but he also makes love the main theme of his discourse to his disciples on the night before his death: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (13:34-35). This love is defined not as an emotion that one feels toward another, but as an action one takes, which can be seen in Jesus’s chosen illustration for introducing his “new commandment,” washing his disciple’s feet: “I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (13:15). Jesus’s example illustrates that by love he means engaging in intentional, humble acts of kindness and compassion. Further, when he repeats his new commandment later in the same discourse, he sets it in the context of self-sacrifice: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (15:12-13). Jesus also expresses love as an action when he asserts that to love him is to keep his commandments (14:21). At the end of the gospel, when Jesus prompts Peter to profess his love, his immediate response is a call to action: “Feed my sheep” (21:17). Through Jesus’s discourse and interactions, he presents love as the foundational Christian ethic, a lifestyle of obedience to God and of sacrificial acts of servanthood toward others.
Jesus’s Relation to God the Father and the Holy Spirit
In close connection with the theme of Jesus’s divine identity is that of his relation to God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Israelite religion portrayed in the Old Testament was rigorously monotheistic (see Deuteronomy 6:4) but also appeared to permit a plurality within the one God’s identity. This plurality is seen in the language God employs (see Genesis 1:26), in the divine person of the Angel of the Lord (see Exodus 3:2-6), in the independent actions ascribed to the Spirit of God (see Genesis 1:2), and in the personification of divine wisdom (see Proverbs 8:22-31). For the most part, though, Old Testament texts left the exact outworking of this idea—God as both monotheistic and a plurality of divine persons—undefined. The Gospel of John’s depiction of Jesus fits into this literary and religious tradition, but brings it into better focus, ascribing to Jesus many of the roles granted to divine wisdom and the Angel of the Lord (“angel” being a translation of a Hebrew word that simply means “messenger”). Implicit in John’s presentation is the view that would later be encapsulated in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity: a single, monotheistic God, composed of three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
John clearly regards all three Trinitarian persons as fully divine, but does not suggest that they represent three different gods. Rather, the gospel asserts the fundamental unity of the persons, with special emphasis on the unity between Jesus and God the Father. Jesus frequently asserts his union with the Father, as when he tells the crowds, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). The meaning of what he is claiming is not lost on the crowd, because they immediately pick up stones in an attempt to kill him for his perceived blasphemy. After referencing his union with the Father many times in public discourses, he also states it plainly to his disciples: “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (14:9-10).
The gospel is less interested in Jesus’s ontological relationship with the Spirit than in how their roles interrelate. Jesus’s discourse in John indicates that the Spirit’s work is closely tied with Jesus’s mission of salvation, as it is the Spirit who will bring new life to those who believe in Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (3:5). Further, it is Jesus who will send the Spirit out to accomplish that work, after Jesus has ascended and been glorified with God the Father in heaven: “Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (7:39; see also 14:16-17). Jesus’s death and resurrection is a necessary prerequisite for the coming of the Spirit.
