The Spiritual Gospel of John

 

For many Christians, the Gospel of John is the most precious book of the Bible. It is dramatically different than the other three gospels on many levels; an examination of the circumstances and motivations of its writing make it especially unique. Much of this perspective of the Gospel of John comes from William Barclay’s, “The Gospel According To John, Volume 1”. It provides an in-depth analysis of many historical facts and background that most other commentaries on John’s Gospel never address.

There seems to be no real consensus about the year each of the gospels was written, but it is fairly clear that the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were written prior to A.D. 65 while John’s Gospel was not written until somewhere between A.D. 90 – 100. The Christian world at the end of the first century was made up mostly of gentiles while the early gospels appeared during a time dominated by Jewish Christians. In addition, the 30+ year time difference represented a maturing of the Christian community in terms of its understanding of doctrine since the lion’s share of New Testament works had been circulating among the churches for many years. It also meant that doctrinal deviations and heresies were appearing and John’s Gospel and his letters addressed some of these heresies, including Gnosticism and Docetism which challenged the humanity of Christ and the value of the material realm. Ultimately, John accepted and acknowledged to others his agreement with the facts presented in the first three gospels, but there were new concerns that needed to be addressed. 

The mind of God

Since the church had grown its roots in the gentile world, the Jewish concepts and mindset that was a central theme of the New Testament writers did not deal with Hellenistic concepts of John’s day, including the principle of Logos. It means word or reason in Greek and the mind of the typical Greek saw life through the lense of the world as a place of order and reason. This order was created and managed by Logos which was understood to be the mind of God. It was this same mind of God dwelling inside man that allows him to think rationally. John took this mindset and addressed it by defining that mind as Jesus Christ (see John 1:1 and John 1:14) and that this mind has become a man. Also, the Greek mind (as defined by Plato) conceived of two worlds, the material world in which we live and the immaterial and unseen world. It was the unseen world which was the real world while the material realm was made up of shadows and copies and not real. Jesus is the incarnation of not only the mind of God, but also reality! The life of Jesus is a window into the mind of God and His priorities and realities. 

A great example of this is found in John’s treatment of various miracles. Instead of emphasizing the compassion that motivated Jesus to heal a particular individual, John reveals that the miracles (signs) he was performing were meant to reveal the glory of God. In John 11:4, “But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.’" In dealing with the man born blind in John 9, He said, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (verse 3). And to put a bow on the miracle of changing the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, John says in John 2:11, “This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” The glory of God is a central theme in John’s Gospel. 

Uniqueness of John’s Gospel

There are many dramatic differences in not only the events covered by the three synoptics verses John’s Gospel, but even more importantly the depth of the coverage of the actual events and particular conclusions. Here are some important observable differences: 

1.      The synoptics basically conclude that the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry was the imprisonment of John the Baptist while John begins earlier, including the events covered in John 2, 3, and 4.

2.      The emphasis of Matthew, Mark, & Luke (MML) were the events that took place in Galilee while the main scene of John’s coverage is Jerusalem and Judea.

3.      John covers all three years of His ministry as evidenced by the facts that his gospel included three Passovers: John 2:13, John 6:4, and then the Last Supper while MML deals with one or two.  

4.      Many events covered by John are unique to his gospel, including the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), Jesus’s meeting with Nicodemus in John 3, the meeting with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John 4, and the raising of Lazarus in John 11.

5.      John covers many personal details about individuals that provides texture to their lives. A great example of this is found in John 20:24-29 where there is a rich exchange with Thomas. In fact, John’s Gospel has the only references to Thomas speaking at all.

6.      In the same way, John provides many more details when MML remains silent, for instance, the fact that the bread used in the feeding of the 5,000 was barley loaves (John 6:9). This suggests that John had a great interest and memory for details, even as an elderly man.

Quote from William Barclay’s commentary on John’s Gospel

“It was with this in mind that that great scholar Clement of Alexandria (about A.D. 230) arrived at one of the most famous and true of all verdicts about the origin and aim of the Fourth Gospel. It was his view that the gospels containing the genealogies had been written first, that is Luke and Matthew; that then Mark at the request of many who had heard Peter preach composed his gospel, which embodied the preaching material of Peter and that then ‘last of all, John, perceiving that what had reference to the bodily things of Jesus’s ministry had been sufficiently related, and encouraged by friends, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote a spiritual gospel’ (quoted in Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History). What Clement meant was that John was not much interested in the mere facts as in the meaning of the facts, that it was not facts he was after but truth. John did not see the events of Jesus’s life simply as events in time; he saw them as windows looking into eternity, and he pressed towards the spiritual meaning of the events and the words of Jesus’s life in a way that the other three gospels did not attempt.”

One great example of his disclosure of spiritual realties beyond the historical facts is found in John 6. John takes the account of the feeding of the 5,000, covered by all four writers and brings the event to a spiritual conclusion, not only quoting Jesus as, “I am the bread of life”, but further explains its meaning in a way that illustrates “the will of My Father” as the ultimate reality of spiritual life. 

Quotes attributable to Clement of Alexandria 

“This gospel is intended to reveal the one person who possesses reality instead of shadows to lead men to reality”. And again, Clement wrote around A.D. 230, “Last of all, John perceiving that his bodily facts had been made plain in the gospel, being urged by his friends, composed a spiritual gospel”. It was not just John’s idea to write his gospel; he had been teaching it orally for many years, but he now recognized, with the encouragement of others, “the rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey might say. When all is said and done, it is the Holy Spirit’s account! 

Again, another passage from William Barclay’s commentary gives us further insight into the matter: 

“Papias, who loved to collect all that he could find about the history of the New Testament and the story of Jesus, gives us some very interesting information. He was Bishop of Hieropolis, which is quite near Ephesus [where John wrote his gospel], and his dates are from A.D. 70 to about A.D. 145. That is to say, he was actually a contemporary of John. He writes how he tried to find out ‘what Andrew said or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord; and what things Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord say’. In Ephesus, there was the apostle John, and the elder John; and the elder John was so well-loved a figure that he was actually known as The Elder. He clearly had a unique place in the church. Both Eusebius and Dionysius the Great tell us that even to their own days in Ephesus there were two famous tombs, the one of John the apostle, and the other of John the elder.”

It is interesting to note that the first verses in John’s second and third letters begin as follows: 2 John 1, “The elder to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in truth;” and 3 John 1, “The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.” It seems clear that much of the apostle John’s work from Ephesus was not just his own, but a spiritual support group contributed to make them as spiritual as they could be. John’s intention in writing his gospel was to provide a spiritual framework for understanding the life and work of Christ as the God/man and encourage the Christian’s spiritual roots and heritage.

The Spiritual Man 

There is a vast difference between the moral man and the spiritual man. The moral man defines his life by whatever moral code he values and derives his self-image and identity from his ability to live up to that code. The spiritual man is not driven by God’s standards, but by His love! Paul discovered that the strength and power (ability) of God was realized in his life through the connection of the human spirit (inner man) to the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 3:16-19, “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” 

Understanding the framework of the new covenant provides the believer the greatest opportunity to find the structure of the spiritual life in Christ. The new covenant defines the boundaries of the spiritual man since it identifies God’s love and how to function within that love. The spiritual man is “able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ”. Being “filled up to all the fullness of God” is the end result of being rooted and grounded in love, preoccupied with the love of Christ. This rooting in love takes us deep and this grounding establishes a solid foundation in that love. Since God is love (1John 4:8, 16), everything He does is defined by that love; He cannot do anything outside of that love. Once the believer sees the details of his life as the ultimate by-product of God’s love, he discovers the spiritual man.