The Gospel of John

A Theological Commentary

Ford, David F.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493432271
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Christianity Today 2023 Book Award Finalist (Biblical Studies) John is a Gospel of abundant truth, life, and love. David Ford, one of the world's leading Christian theologians, invites readers into a fresh, profound encounter with Jesus through the Gospel of John in this comprehensive theological commentary. This commentary will appeal to a wide audience, including pastors, church leaders, and other readers interested in the intersection of theology and spirituality. It will also be of interest to professors and students doing research on John and the reception of the Gospel in Christian theology.

John 1:1–18
The Unsurpassable Horizon

God and All Reality, Jesus and Us, Ultimate Mystery and Intimacy

John’s prologue, the first eighteen verses of the Gospel, is perhaps the single most influential short passage in the history of Christian theology. It is a daring, innovative account of God and all reality, and this is the context for making sense of the ongoing drama of Jesus Christ and his followers. The prologue is not ascribed to Jesus; it is a mature theology springing from long and hard thinking about Jesus. The author1 explores the depth and breadth of the significance of Jesus, while being in intimate relationship with him and taking part in the Christian community of the friends of Jesus.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

This introduces key themes, images, and essential categories of the Gospel: God, Word, creation, all things, all people, life, light, darkness, John (the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus), witnessing and testimony, believing, the world, knowing, Jesus’s own people, the name of Jesus, power, children of God, birth from God, flesh, glory, father, only son, grace, truth, fullness, law, Moses, Jesus Christ, seeing, and the intimacy between Jesus and his Father. These might be seen as large containers into which more and more is poured as the Gospel progresses, deepening and expanding the meaning.

The prologue can be read as a poetic hymn and as a fresh interpretation of Scripture in the light of Jesus Christ; it is also crafted as an introduction to the entire Gospel, and it suggests that it is to be considered as itself Scripture. It opens (1:1–5) with the Word related to God and all things, affirming a God-centered, meaningful universe. It then (1:6–17) plunges into the complexity and messiness of history and ordinary life, as the Word becomes a human being. Its culmination (1:18) is about the intimacy between Jesus and his Father into which the Gospel invites all its readers.

Those (“we” [1:14]; “we . . . all” [1:16]) who accept this invitation are “children of God” (1:12), who, as the rest of the Gospel shows, receive the Spirit that is breathed by Jesus into his disciples (literally, “learners”), leading them “into all the truth” (16:13) and inspiring them to do even “greater things” than Jesus did (14:12). So the unsurpassable extensity of the prologue’s horizon, embracing God and all reality, combines with the ultimate intensity of intimacy between Jesus and his Father, and this frames and introduces not only the drama of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and giving of his Spirit, but also the ongoing drama of following Jesus in the company of his friends (21:19, 22).

Beginning with Scripture: Learning to Read with John (1:1)

“In the beginning” (en archē) is the opening of the Septuagint, John’s Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.2 They are the first words of the first verse of the book of Genesis. John begins with Scripture, and this whole Gospel is steeped in allusions to it, so that in order to understand it we have to read it alongside other texts. One of its main ways of inviting us deeper into its meaning is to lead us to reread both what is written and the Scriptures to which it refers. So throughout this commentary there will be suggestions for such fruitful “intertexts.”

This way of opening the Gospel is just one of many indications that it has been written as Scripture. That is especially important for how we are being invited to read it: as a text that is to be reread repeatedly, savored and meditated upon, inhabited through prayer and practice, connected to other scriptural texts, and continually shared with other readers.

But even more than that, if John is writing Scripture, then his own way of interpreting Scripture can be a guide to his readers in interpreting what he himself writes—John’s way of reading can be a model for ours. How does John read Genesis 1:1 in this prologue? Thoughtfully, daringly, surprisingly, as no one, so far as we know, had ever read it before. Instead of continuing the quotation from Genesis to say “In the beginning God created” (en archē epoiēsen ho theos), he takes from Genesis that God created through speaking (“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’” [Gen. 1:3]) and says “In the beginning was the Word.” Then in the rest of the prologue he takes this further and identifies the Word with God and also with Jesus Christ as God’s full self-expression. What might this mean for our reading John? There are at least three guidelines that can be drawn initially from the prologue and confirmed in the rest of this Gospel.

• The text is to be taken very seriously in its plain sense, but this is a “deep sense,” with abundant meaning. Rereading need not simply lead to repeating Genesis or John, or previous interpretations of them, but needs to be open to further meaning. If the Holy Spirit has led John into more truth (16:13), then likewise, since the Spirit is shared with others too (20:22) and is given “without measure” (3:34), his readers are to be open to further truth. Just as John improvises afresh in his reading of Genesis, so his readers might improvise on what he writes.
• This improvisation is not arbitrary, or a matter of “anything goes.” Not only is the text taken seriously in its plain sense, but also there is a basic discipline and criterion: Jesus Christ.3 He is the inspiration for John’s rereading of Genesis. But the understanding of Jesus also is not just a matter of repeating what previous texts or testimonies have said. John himself improvises on the Synoptic Gospels. One of the most important things to do while reading any passage in John is to ask how it connects with passages in the other Gospels (e.g., reflecting on John 1:1 alongside Mark 1:1, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”—that looks like the theme on which John’s prologue improvises, embracing “beginning,” testimony, and the relation of Father and Son, with John affirming and deepening each). There are other affirmations, omissions, additions, and transformations, and by thinking through them we can be led deeper into understanding who Jesus is and appreciating better both the Synoptics and John.
• The double improvisation on the Scriptures of the Septuagint and the Synoptic Gospels is not just about reading texts but is also a model for practical living and is meant to shape it. New “light” and new “life” go inseparably together in the prologue and the rest of the Gospel. John above all is concerned with the ongoing drama of a community (the prologue’s “we”) being led by the Spirit of Jesus, following Jesus into new situations where there is no choice but to improvise and into new engagements with realities and people within the prologue’s horizon of “all things” and “all people.”

The Sense of the Word: Self-Expression, Scripture, and Civilization (1:1, 14)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory (1:1, 14). Why does John use the Word (ho logos) as his key opening term? Of the many suggestions made over the centuries about this, there are three that together seem to me to be least inadequate.

First, and most obvious, John is beginning a writing that is made up of words and is trying to communicate the most important meaning and truth he knows, which he traces to God. At the heart of his conception of God is the relationship of Jesus to his Father (see 1:14, 18), which is one of mutual indwelling. They are utterly, inseparably involved with each other, yet can also be distinguished from each other. “Word” captures this combination of communication, identification, intimacy, and differentiation.

As so often, John is not only taking up a meaning but is also transforming it. The rest of his Gospel fills out what he means by “Word.” Most speech only expresses something of the person speaking; it is a partial self-expression. This is full self-expression. God is free to express completely in Jesus who God is. Such a unique act of self-revelation in history has to be told mainly through the medium best suited to unique events involving people: testimony in story form. So most of the Gospel is in the form of a dramatic narrative. But, if one wants a key summary term for an initiative in which the truth of God’s own reality is shared with human beings, then “Word” makes good sense. This has been confirmed by the fruitfulness of “Word” in Christian theology century after century and across cultures, worldviews, and civilizations. The two remaining points give some of the main reasons for that.

Second, “Word” leads into an engagement with the whole of Scripture. The obvious plain sense of the term logos is rooted in the Septuagint. There logos and related words for “saying” are used for ordinary human speech and also for God speaking, as in the creation narrative of Genesis 1. Besides creation by God’s word, logos can also be used in relation to each of the three parts of the Septuagint: Torah (Law), Prophets, and Writings. It can refer to Torah—the Ten Commandments, for example, can be called the “ten words” (Decalogue, deka logoi); it is used for “the word of the LORD” that is spoken by the Prophets; and among the Writings it can refer to wisdom, and frequently occurs in Psalms. So John’s key opening term resonates with the whole of his Bible: it recalls creation, law, prophecy, and wisdom, and the response to God in worship.

In addition, there is the use of logos in the rest of the New Testament. It often means the Christian good news (Luke 8:11; 2 Tim. 2:9; 1 John 1:1; Rev. 1:9), the Gospel message as given by apostles (Acts 6:2), Paul (Acts 13:5; 1 Thess. 2:13), or Jesus (Luke 5:1). The main, and very important, theological point is that the Synoptics show through their narratives the inseparability of the message, or logos, of Jesus from his person—the emphasis on his teaching and actions during his ministry moves into a climax centered on what happens to him in person, his death and resurrection; and John’s prologue, combined with his “I am” sayings and the narrative of Jesus’s teaching, signs, death, and resurrection, is the most explicit and direct of all in its insistence on the identification of his person with his message and work. For John the question Who is Jesus? is u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• John 1:1-18 The Unsurpassable Horizon
• John 1:19-51 The Formation of a Learning Community
• John 2:1-25 Signs of Glory and New Life
• John 3:1-36 Astonishing Teaching
• John 4:1-54 Two Surprising, Life-Giving Encounters
• John 5:1-47 Into Controversy
• John 6:1-71 Food in Abundance
• John 7:1-52 Danger and Division, Identity and Desire
• John 8:1-59 A Drama of Bitterly Contested Identities
• John 9:1-41 “He Opened My Eyes”
• John 10:1-42 Wonderful Shepherd, Abundant Life, Father and Son
• John 11:1-57 “The Dead Man Came Out”
• John 12:1-50 “The Hour Has Come”
• John 13:1-38 Love like Jesus—Utterly, Intimately, Vulnerably, Mutually
• John 14:1-31 Comfort and More
• John 15:1-27 “Abide in Me”
• John 16:1-33 The Final Realism and Encouragement
• John 17:1-26 The Summit of Love
• John 18:1-40 Arrest and Trial
• John 19:1-42 Condemnation and Crucifixion
• John 20:1-31 “Mary!”—The Free, Surprising Presence of the Crucified and Risen Jesus
• John 21:1-25 The Ongoing Drama
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Flaps
• Back Cover