The Gospel According to John "Jesus - The Word Was God"
Each book in the Bible gently guides God's people into a more intimate relationship with their Creator, as He knows must occur, for His people to receive Him in the depth of the relationship that He purchased for them. Each day we are covering, in sequential order, one of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and expecting people’s lives to change through the revelation of His leading in this way.
Today is the fourth day, and the book is, The Gospel According to John, the fourth book in the New Testament as it appears in our Bible. John is known as the disciple that Jesus loved; because he referred to himself with this title three times in this book. John gets much deeper into the relationship in His account of Jesus’ life and teachings than any of the three previous authors, and this shows his revelation of the depth of the relationship that God sent Jesus to give to His people.
John’s first account of Jesus is, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” This is the first-time Jesus was spoken of in this way. Until now, Jesus was the Son of God and the Saviour of people’s souls, but not the Creator and it was not said that He was in the beginning with God, or that He was God, but this is just the beginning of John’s gospel, and it gets much deeper than this by the end of it.
The next highlight I’m going to touch on is the third chapter when a religious leader comes to Jesus during the night and says, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” Jesus’ reply was, “ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus was telling the religious leader that he did not know nor could he know anything about the kingdom of heaven unless he has been born again spiritually, and the religious leader did not have any idea of what Jesus was talking about, let alone had the man been reborn spiritually.
Chapter four has Jesus at a well with a foreign lady who says she knows that Christ is coming, and Jesus replies to her, “Jesus saith unto her, ‘I that speak unto thee am he.’” This is Jesus boldly proclaiming Himself to all people groups and sexes by His own mouth that He is the Christ. Before this, Jesus had only responded to a high priest when He was questioned if He were the Son of God, "Ye say that I am."
In chapter five of John’s record, he has Jesus saying, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” Jesus is saying that the scripture is speaking of Him and telling the religious leaders who were filled with pride they would not come to Him because of who they were.
In chapter six Jesus tells people they “must drink His blood and eat His flesh” and many of them turned away from Him and walked no more with Him. Jesus is being more boldly known by His disciples and further rejected by the worldly people.
In chapter eight of forgives a woman caught in “the very act of adultery” after He had the religious leaders “convicted by their own conscience…” A woman who was by the letter of the Law deserving to be stoned to death was forgiven, and the religious leaders were corrected by their own consciences. This was unheard of until this point in the Bible.
Chapter eleven has Jesus waiting for days to respond to a dying friend’s request for help so His followers could have a certain experience explained as follows, “Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe;…” Jesus allowed a friend of His to die, and stay dead for four days, so His followers could and would believe in a deeper more intimate way than was possible without this life experience.
In chapter seventeen, Jesus prays, “…I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world…..Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me….” This shows the origin, intent, and purpose that Jesus has for all of His people.
In chapter twenty John shares the intent of his writing with the readers as follows, “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” This is the first book that comes right out and tells its audience the purpose, and this allows us to realize the confidence and value placed on relationships, especially the one with our Creator and Saviour.
John concludes his book with, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.” That is how I’m writing my blog; there are so many things to share, but a limited space and time to do it for everyone on this externally restrictive world on which we live.
The examples in this blog are only a limited sample of the differences of the relational depth described through John’s depiction of Jesus as it is compared to the previous three accounts, and it is like this throughout his account of it.
The intent of the blog is to demonstrate the difference in the revelation that God gives to His people as they intently follow Him and focus on what He has told them through their individual lives and the revelation they’ve received through the Holy Spirit and His Holy Bible.
