John

Gail R. O'Day, Susan E. Hylen

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781611644401
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

The Gospel of John is one of the most beloved books in the Christian canon. Its stories and images have long captured the imaginations of Christians. Not only is it one of the most popular writings of the New Testament, but many aspects of its style and outlook are distinctive. In this clear, thorough, and accessible commentary on the Gospel of John, scholars Gail O'Day and Susan Hylen explore and explain this Gospel's distinctive qualities.

Books in the Westminster Bible Companion series assist laity in their study of the Bible as a guide to Christian faith and practice. Each volume explains the biblical book in its original historical context and explores its significance for faithful living today. These books are ideal for individual study and for Bible study classes and groups.

1. The Beginnings of Jesus’ Ministry

John 1:1–4:54

All of John 1:1–51 serves as a prologue to the story that follows in chapters 2–21. This opening chapter can be divided into three parts. John 1:1–18, traditionally known as the prologue, is a hymnlike celebration of the coming of the Word into the world. John 1:19–34 is the initial witness of John the Baptist to Jesus, and John 1:35–51 is the gathering of Jesus’ first disciples.

John 2:1–4:54 narrates the opening of Jesus’ ministry. These three chapters introduce the full drama of the Gospel of John—the revelation of God in Jesus’ works and words, as well as hints of resistance that Jesus will encounter as his ministry continues (for example, 2:13–22). The two miracles in this section (the abundance of good wine at Cana, 2:1–11; the healing of the royal official’s son, 4:46–54) point toward the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise of “greater things” (1:50). Jesus’ words also begin to figure prominently in this section: his conversations with Nicodemus (3:1–21) and the Samaritan woman (4:1–42) are characteristic of the kind of lengthy speeches and dialogues for which this Gospel is known.

1. The Prelude to Jesus’ Ministry John 1:1–51

Each of the four Gospels opens in a distinct way that provides direction for readers as the Gospel begins its story of Jesus. Mark begins with a straightforward announcement that opens the story and at the same time declares one of the Gospel’s central themes, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Mark informs the reader right from the start that the story of Jesus will be the story of good news (“gospel”). Mark moves immediately from this announcement to the ministry of John the Baptist, his baptism of Jesus, and the opening acts of Jesus’ ministry. Matthew and Luke begin their stories of Jesus quite differently. They both take the time to tell stories of Jesus’ birth and infancy. They actually begin with promises of Jesus’ birth, in order to show the ways in which the birth story is part of the ongoing story of God and Israel. Matthew focuses on Joseph in its opening chapters; Luke, on Mary; but both emphasize the ways in which God guides Jesus’ story even before Jesus is born.

For the Gospel of John, however, the Jesus story does not begin with Jesus’ birth and the events surrounding that birth, as in Matthew and Luke, or the start of Jesus’ ministry, as in Mark. All three of the other Gospels shape their beginnings around moments in human history. A beginning point in human time and history is too constraining for the way that John wants to tell the Jesus story, however. For John, the story of Jesus cannot be contained inside the normal human calculations of time or even space. John’s opening words move readers outside of their own time frame and the created universe. They place readers instead in the presence of God that transcends both time and space. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The sweeping beginning of John 1:1–18 will lead to elements that are within the realm of time and history: John the Baptist (1:19–34) and Jesus’ first disciples (1:35–51). These elements are essential to the Jesus story as well, but for John, these features of the story can be told only after he has told us why the story that is to follow matters. The opening of John 1 positions the reader to see that the Gospel story is about God before it is about Jesus. The Gospel story matters because the story of Jesus draws the reader into the story of God.

THE PROLOGUE
John 1:1–18

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

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

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

¹⁴And 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.’”) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

John 1:1–18 are like the overture to an opera, ballet, or musical: they present in miniature the key themes that will come later. An overture makes most sense to the audience when the performance is over, however, because then the themes that were only hints in the overture have been played out in full. If one listens to the overture again, after the play is over, the overture takes on new depth and meaning. John 1:1–18 and the rest of the Gospel have a similar relationship. The full significance of much that is said in these verses will become clearer after the whole story has been told, and like the overture to a good musical, one’s joy from recognizing key themes continues to increase with time.

The music analogy fits in another way also, because John 1:1–18 is written like a poem or a hymn. One gets a good sense of that if one reads the verses out loud, because then one can hear how the words and verses flow into one another and even feel their cadences and rhythms. The poetic phrasing and repetitions in these verses also present a challenge to the reader. John 1:1–18 can be very frustrating to read if we think that we must figure out the precise meaning of each word and how everything fits together in order to understand these verses. To read John 1:1–18 that way, however, is to miss the poetry of these verses. These verses are not a straightforward introduction or recounting of events. Instead, these verses are John’s celebration of the gifts and new life that have been given to the Christian faith community because of the presence of God in Jesus. Through them John hopes to create a sense of joy and anticipation for what is to come.

The following section analyzes the component parts of John 1:1–18 so that we can see more clearly how the “overture” is created. John 1:1–18 can be read like three stanzas of a hymn. Each stanza celebrates that the Word has come into the world. In the first stanza, verses 1–2 focus on the eternal Word and then turn to the human story by telling of creation (vv. 3–5) and of John the Baptist (vv. 6–8). The second stanza, verses 9–13, focuses on human response to the coming of the Word. In the third stanza, verses 14–18, the Word becomes flesh and lives among us, bringing us “grace upon grace.”

“In the beginning was the Word”

The opening words of John 1:1, “In the beginning,” intentionally recall Genesis. (Note that these words are repeated in v. 2.) Because the books of the Hebrew Scriptures were known by their opening words, the first words of John not only echo Genesis 1:1, but evoke the whole book of Genesis. There is little doubt that John wants his readers to understand that the story that they are about to read is a story of a new creation of the same importance as the first creation of Genesis. It is a dramatic opening phrase and a dramatic beginning.

For many contemporary Christians, John’s statement that “the Word was with God and the Word was God” is hard to understand. We are so used to thinking in traditional Trinitarian categories that it is difficult for us to envision what John describes in verses 1–2. He is not yet speaking of the Father and the Son. Instead, John begins with language that is not restricted to any one religious setting. “Word” or logos would have been familiar to John’s Jewish and non-Jewish readers. Logos figured prominently in Greek philosophy of the time, for example, where it was used to speak of the rational principle that governed the universe. Among Jewish writers, most especially Philo (a Jewish contemporary of the author of the Fourth Gospel), logos was used to speak of the creative plan of God that governs the world.

God and God’s Word also have a prominent role in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the creation account in Genesis 1, the world is called into being solely through the power of God’s word. God does not do any physical action at creation; God does not mold the earth with God’s hands, for example. All of creation comes into being through God’s spoken word, and as such, it is through the spoken word that God comes to be known and that God’s presence is felt in creation. Throughout Israel’s subsequent history with God, Israel continues to come to know God through God’s word. God spoke through the law at Sinai and through the prophets. In Jewish wisdom traditions such as Proverbs, Wisdom is depicted as being with God “before the beginning of the earth” and at the time of creation (see Prov. 8:22–31).

John draws on all these traditions and ways of knowing God when he writes about the Word in verses 1–2. The Word is how God makes Godself known in the world, how God moves from the realm of the eternal and transcendent into the places where we live. John 1:1 proclaims that the Word shares fully with God. If we restrict what John is saying here to “Father” and “Son” instead of “God” and the “Word,” we miss the breadth of what he is trying to say about how God communicates and governs the world. We may want to rush ahead and think of the Word in John 1:1–2 as a synonym for Jesus, but John is not making that move yet. From these opening sentences of the Gospel, John speaks of Jesus metaphorically. This way of expressing who Jesus is through metaphor gives John’s language a richness and depth that have attracted many readers.

The metaphor of Jesus as Word is one of the ways John expresses how Jesus provides unique and unprecedented access to God. At this point in John’s hymnic celebration of God, both the Word and God exist outside the bounds of time and space. God is the divine power and presence; the Word is the way God meets the world. As God’s self-expression, the Word can take many different forms and sound many different sounds. In a few verses the hymn will turn to the specific form the Word takes for the Christian community, but it begins with the theological reality that lies behind the Jesus story. For John, God and the Word are one. Because of that, when one encounters the Word, one experiences God.

Verses 3–5 tell the story of the creation of the world and stress the role of the Word in creation. As “the Word,” Jesus takes on the creative function of God’s Wisdom or word: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (1:3; see Prov. 8:22–31). With these verses, the hymn’s focus shifts from the cosmic, eternal realm to the created order. These verses also introduce new vocabulary to talk about how God is experienced by God’s creation: as life and light. These images will figure prominently as the rest of the Gospel unfolds. The prologue’s account of creation also introduces a note of tension. In the created order, light and life have an opposite, darkness. Darkness, too, will be an important theme throughout the Gospel. Darkness is a symbol for all that is opposed to the light that the Word brings into the world. Even though the mention of darkness introduces tension and opposition, the hymn nonetheless celebrates that light is more powerful than darkness (and life is more powerful than death). The relationship of light and darkness will be another important theme throughout John.

The prologue uses symbolic language in the opening verses in order to invite the Gospel’s readers out of their everyday world and into a world shaped only by the presence of God and the Word. The opening of the hymn is a dramatic and powerful beginning point that contains within it the reminder that God’s story is not simply the human story writ large. Rather, God’s story is wholly other, a story that begins when human beings are not even in the picture. John wants his readers to remember this, so that when God enters the human picture, they will recognize the significance of the moment.

John shifts the reader’s attention in verses 6–8 with the appearance of John the Baptist. John’s appearance confirms that God’s story has moved from the cosmic and eternal to a specific time and place within the arena of human history. The mention of John here recalls the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. In these two Gospels, John appears as a character before Jesus does, because John’s main role is to point to Jesus. He is a guide and witness to Jesus and his ministry. John is the first witness to Jesus, the first to tell the world who Jesus is. The theme of “witness” is another theme that the prologue introduces that will appear throughout the Gospel. For the Gospel of John, to witness is an essential ingredient of discipleship. To witness is to tell the world what one has seen. John will witness that Jesus is the light, the presence of God shining in the world.

Children of God

Contrary to its paragraphing in the NRSV, verse 9 does not belong with the story of John the Baptist, but begins the second stanza of the hymn that retells the story of the Word coming into the world. Like verses 3–5, these verses tell the story of creation (“the world came into being through him”) and also repeat the note of tension (“yet the world did not know him”). The tension in verse 11 (“his own people did not accept him”) is even more explicit than in the opening stanza of the poem (v. 5), but the story of acceptance is also more explicit (vv. 12–13). These verses summarize the whole story of the Word in the world, with the full range of responses to the Word from rejection to acceptance and new life. In the Gospel story that follows this overture, the Gospel’s characters will enact the full range of responses first signalled here. Verses 12 and 13 name the new creation that the allusions to Genesis in verses 1–3 have already suggested. Everyone who believes “in his name”—who believes that in the Word one sees and knows God—is given new life and existence as a child of God. The Word has come into the world to bring new life. This theme of rebirth and new creation will be repeated many places in John (for example, the Nicodemus story in John 3, the healing of the blind man in John 9, and the raising of Lazarus in John 11).

The Word Became Flesh

The third stanza, verses 14–18, brings the opening hymn to its conclusion. An important shift occurs in these verses that can help us share John’s celebration with him. In the first two stanzas of the hymn, John reports in the third person on the effects of the Word’s coming into the world: “the light of all the people” (v. 4), “but to all who received him” (v. 12). In these verses, however, John’s stance changes dramatically. In this stanza, John does not simply report, but sings as one who has shared in the coming of the Word. These verses are full of first-person plural pronouns (“we,” “us”), making clear that the story into which John invites his readers is a story that he claims for himself.

In this final stanza “Word” or logos is used explicitly for the first time since verse 1. The move from logos in verse 1 to logos in verse 14 is the key to understanding the Gospel of John. The eternal Word of verses 1–2 now completely enters the human and time-bound sphere by becoming flesh (Greek, sarx). The story of God and the Word is no longer a cosmic story, but is an intimately human story.

Christian doctrine speaks of the Word becoming flesh as the incarnation. The Gospel of John helps us to understand the origins of this important word...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1: THE BEGINNINGS OF JESUS’ MINISTRY John 1:1–4:54
• PART 2: REVELATION AND CONFLICT: JESUS’ MINISTRY CONTINUES John 5:1–12:50
• PART 3: THE ARRIVAL OF JESUS’ HOUR John 13:1–17:26
• PART 4: THE EVENTS OF JESUS’ HOUR John 18:1–21:25
• Works Cited