The Story Behind JOHN and His Gospel

The Story Behind John and His Gospel

John is about our God who

I. John important to the New Testament and your faith:

• John wrote the Gospel of John, three Epistles and the Apocalypse. In terms of sheer volume, Luke wrote most of the New Testament. He is followed by John, and then Paul. We think of Paul writing the most because he had so many letters; but his letters were short word wise compared to the heavy volume in Luke and Acts, and John and Revelation.
• John’s Family: His father was Zebedee, his mother Salome (probably the sister of Mary.) James and John would have been cousins of Jesus. The Lord chose these two to be apostles, and until James died, the two were inseparable.
• The family owned a fishing business. Unlike Peter, who was a day fisherman, this seems to have been a more expansive operation. We know that the family had “ties” to the upper class in Israel, because John was related to the High Priest and able to gain access for himself and Peter to the High Priest courts during the trial of Jesus.
• John is called the “younger” in church history because he is always mentioned second to James. I think some of the Apostles may have been very young (older teenagers.) Peter appears to have been the older in the group, since they defer to him, and he’s obviously married. But the young men have time to spend with John the Baptist as their teacher, and like college students today, go back and forth between instruction and work. When Jesus called them, it seems they gave themselves to fulltime ministry with Jesus. (This is my opinion.)

II. John is called:

1. He was a disciple of John the Baptist. (John 1:25-39)

2. Jesus invited John to go deeper. (Matthew 4:18-22) He set John aside as an Apostle.

3. John had a fiery personality:

• In Luke 9, he offered to call down fire from heaven to destroy a Samaritan village. (Luke 9:51-55)
• The offer to call down fire is interesting, since they were in the same area where Elijah had called down fire on king Ahaziah’s troops when they came to arrest him. Just a little earlier in Luke, Jesus had been transfigured and they had seen Elijah standing with Jesus.
• Jesus gave James and John the nickname “Boanerges (Sons of thunder) (Mark 3:17)
• John once told Jesus he saw a man driving out demons in Jesus’ name and stopped him. Jesus told him not to do that.

4. John was anxious Promote. (Matthew 20:22-23)

III. How become the Apostle of Love?

He is called, “The disciple whom Jesus loved.”

John was part of the inner core of the Apostles. This inner core was made up of three, Peter, James and John. They were alone with Jesus several times, including:

• The raising of Jairus’ daughter. (Luke 8:51)
• The transfiguration.
• Some of the events in Gethsemane.

1. Jesus confronted him.

• In Luke 9:55 he “rebuked” John for asking to call down fire from heaven.
• When they argued about who was the greatest, Jesus was strong in his response.
• Jesus was unafraid to confront the sinful behavior, attitudes and words of the disciples.

3. Jesus made him a witness.

• He was at the last Supper.
• John was in Gethsemane.
• He followed with Peter and was witness to some of Jesus’ trial, as well as a witness to Peter’s denial. (John 18:15)
• John followed Jesus to the cross. And so he was an eyewitness to Jesus’ death. (John 19:25)
• When Mary said that Jesus body was gone, Peter and John raced to the tomb. John (younger) beat Peter to the tomb, but in deference to the older Apostle, waited for Peter to determine if they should go in.
• He personally encountered Jesus the night of the Resurrection. Jesus came in through locked doors! (John 20:20)

3. Jesus gave him

• Jesus gave his Apostles a mission to share the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:13.
• Acts 4, in the temple courts, he healed the lame man by Jesus’ power and preached the Gospel.
• Acts 8, When the Samaritans began to turn to Jesus, the church sent Peter and John. There they prayed and the Holy Spirit was poured out on the new converts. This is powerful, John once asked to call down fire on the Samaritans. Now the fire the holy Spirit came!
• I think one of the most painful things John endured was not the lashing of the Jews or the prison cells; but he lived while the others were murdered. His brother James was killed in Acts 12. In Revelation 6, when he saw the altar and the saints under the altar; that was not a faceless mass under the altar that he saw. Ryan Brown pointed out to me that he would have seen friends he’d known on earth standing in the blood of Jesus.

IV. Became pastor at

• This is the church Paul had founded.
• He preached and taught at Ephesus. I think that church was a big part of putting his teachings into writing and giving form to the Gospel.

The Gospel of John:

1. John is like the ocean. You can stay int eh shallow water, or go deep.

2. John is sometimes called the “Maverick” Gospel because it has so much unique material when compared to the Synoptic Gospels. I think John bares the markings of a well worked out theology. While the Synoptic Gospels give us newspaper like accounts of Jesus life; I think that is because they are written soon after the events. Like a car crash, it takes time to digest what just happened. John is written later, and he’s had more time to think deeply on what happened.

• John has no temptation of Jesus, no story like parables, no transfiguration (except his note “we have seen his glory), no Lord’s Supper (except in John 6, Jesus saying eat by body drink my blood), no kiss from Judas and no Olivet discourse.
• But John also includes things the others leave out, such as: The changing of water to wine, the discussion with Nicodemus about salvation, the Samaritan woman at the well, the events surrounding Lazarus’ death and resurrection, the analogy of the Good Shepherd, the picture of Jesus as the Vine, the High Priestly prayer in the Garden and the appearance to Thomas and the recommissioning of Peter.
• Instead of having an onslaught of miracles, John organizes the miracles into seven clear “signs” that are meant to show that Jesus is God in Flesh.
• John also has seven “I Am” statements from Jesus that are also unique to his Gospel. (I am the Bread, I amt he Light, I am the Gate, I am the Good Shepherd, I amt he Resurrection, I am the Way, I am the True Vine.)
• John focuses also on seven conversations, including, John the Baptist, Nicodemus, the Woman at the well, the Father, the man at the pool, the blind man and Martha at Lazarus’ tomb.
• John is not structured chronologically but theologically. The structure seems to me to be built around the Holy Days. So it starts with Passover, and moves through several Holy Days.
• John is fighting a heresy called, “Gnosticism.” This group taught that the physical was bad, and that Jesus didn’t really come in the flesh, but he only projected himself down to look human.
• The arch enemy of John was a heretic named Cerinthus. He taught that the spirit of the Christ descended on the man Jesus at baptism and left before his crucifixion. Much of John’s Gospel appears to be a response to Gnosticism.

V. John suffered personally for his faith

• Tradition is he was boiled in oil but lived. (This might explain the rumor in John 21:22)
• He was exiled to Patmos. On the Island he had a revelation of the Risen Christ giving hope to the Church. This is called the “Apocalypse.”
• When he was released from Patmos, he returned to Ephesus.

Church father Eusebius (4th book Christian History) tells this story: After John returned from Exile on Patmos:

It’s the late first century and John the Apostle has just returned from exile on the island of Patmos (where he received Revelation), and he’s traveling around appointing bishops. In one city, he gives the new bishops a special charge to look after the spiritual health of a particular young man: “This one I commit to you in all earnestness in the presence of the Church and with Christ as witness.”

The bishop taught the young man the faith and baptized him. But, unfortunately, soon after, the young man fell in with the wrong crowd. He first indulged with them in worldly pleasures, and then fell into robbery and other crimes.

The young man still had a conscience, though, and realized that what he was doing was wrong. But rather than repent and turn back to Christ, he despaired of God’s mercy, thinking his crimes were beyond forgiveness, and plunged himself deeper into his sinful lifestyle. He eventually “became a bold bandit-chief, the most violent, most bloody, most cruel of them all.”

Some time passed and John visited the city again. And soon after he arrived, he asked about the young man. The bishop “groaning deeply and at the same time bursting into tears” told John what had happened.

And here’s how Eusebius describes John’s reaction: “The Apostle rent his clothes, and beating his head with great lamentation, he said, ‘A fine guard I left for a brother’s soul! But let a horse be brought me, and let some one show me the way.’ He rode away from the church just as he was, and coming to the place, he was taken prisoner by the robbers’ outpost.”

Captured, John didn’t resist, but merely asked to be taken to their leader. The young man was armed waiting to see the new prisoner, but when he saw it was John, “he turned in shame to flee.”

“John, forgetting his age, pursued him with all his might,” Eusebius writes, “crying out, ‘Why, my son, do you flee from me, your own father, unarmed, aged? Pity me, my son; fear not; you have still hope of life. I will give account to Christ for you. If need be, I will willingly endure your death as the Lord suffered death for us. For you will I give up my life. Stand, believe; Christ has sent me.’”

John’s words penetrated the young man’s hardened heart: “When he heard, first stopped and looked down; then he threw away his arms, and then trembled and wept bitterly. And when the old man approached, he embraced him, making confession with lamentations as he was able, baptizing himself a second time with tears, and concealing only his right hand. John, pledging himself, and assuring him on oath that he would find forgiveness with the Savior, besought him, fell upon his knees, kissed his right hand itself as if now purified by repentance, and led him back to the church.”

But John wasn’t done with him yet.

“And making intercession for him with copious prayers,” Eusebius explains, “and struggling together with him in continual fasting, and subduing his mind by various utterances, he did not depart, as they say, until he had restored him to the church, furnishing a great example of true repentance and a great proof of regeneration, a trophy of a visible resurrection.”

• John probably died around A.D. 98, during the reign of Emperor Trajan. Jerome in his commentary on Galatians said that in his last days, John was so frail they had to carry him to the church services. He always said, “My little children, love one another.”
• Asked, why always said this? John responded, “It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough.”