Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 103 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This lecture maps the Gospel of John from the inside. Dr. Essex begins with the purpose statement, traces the eight signs and the speeches that interpret them, and walks the great themes: believe, life, light, truth, glory, the world, the hour, the Jews, remaining. He then takes up the scholarly debate over whether John wrote to confirm believers or to convert, sides with the evangelistic reading, and closes by following the narrative from broad welcome to Jerusalem's hardened unbelief. Listen for the phrase believing unbelievers; it will explain some of the strangest people in the gospel.
John 20:30 and 31 is universally recognized as the purpose statement of the gospel: many other signs Jesus did, but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. Sign is John's word for the supernatural works of Jesus, used steadily through the book and building to this summary. The first two are numbered for us, the water made wine at Cana manifesting his glory, and the healing of the royal official's son, again in Galilee. John also notes unspecified signs done in Jerusalem, which is why Nicodemus can speak of signs in the plural, and when the Jews demand a sign Jesus points forward to the culminating one: destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The therefore of 20:30 reaches back to Thomas, who saw the risen Lord and confessed, my Lord and my God; these signs are written so that those who do not see may believe as Thomas believed.
The signs of the gospel are the water made wine, the healing of the official's son, the healing of the lame man of chapter 5, the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on the water, which carries a question mark since John does not label it, the healing of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus, and, as the culminating eighth, the resurrection itself. John does not leave the signs to speak alone. Each is tied to discourse: the new wine precedes the new birth conversation with Nicodemus, the official's son follows the living water discourse with the Samaritan woman, the lame man leads into the witnesses to Jesus, the feeding into the bread of life, the blind man follows the light of the world, Lazarus follows I am the resurrection and the life, and the resurrection follows the farewell discourse. Tenney's study, John: The Gospel of Belief, draws out what each sign shows, the Creator who makes wine, the omnipresent one who heals at a distance, the omnipotent one who commands the lame; in John the works and the words of Jesus together lead to belief.
John portrays the deity of Jesus so plainly that even Barrett, a critical commentator, opens his work on John 1:1 by warning that the student who does not recognize that for John Jesus is God will miss the point of the gospel. Essex amends the sentence: the reader who misses that Jesus is also fully man misses the point as well. Twice the two stand side by side in open dispute. In chapter 8 Jesus calls himself a man who has told you the truth heard from God, and by verse 58 that same man says, before Abraham was born, I am. In chapter 10, having said I and the Father are one, he hears the charge exactly: because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God. His opponents understood the claim; they judged it blasphemy. The gospel presents the God-man.
Only twice does John transliterate the Hebrew title, Messias: when Andrew tells Simon, we have found the Messiah, and when the Samaritan woman says, I know that Messiah is coming. In both places John immediately translates, which is called Christ, and everywhere else he simply writes Christ. The pattern implies readers who are Jewish in background but whose first language is Greek. The companion title, Son of God, is filled out in chapter 5: persecuted for healing on the Sabbath, Jesus answers, my Father is working until now, and I myself am working, and presses further, whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. He does the works of God because he is the Son; likewise in chapter 7 his teaching is not his own but comes from the one who sent him.
John uses the verb believe ninety-eight times and never the noun faith. The verb appears in four constructions: believe that, stressing the content of faith, as in the purpose statement itself; believe with the simple dative, giving credence to someone's word, as when Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, believe me; believe in or into, directing trust toward a person, as the disciples believed in him at Cana; and the absolute use, emphasizing the act of faith itself, as when Jesus asks Nathanael, do you believe? Against a culture that believes in belief, John insists faith has content and an object: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. The goal is life, the noun thirty-six times, most often modified by eternal: not mere survival beyond death but an eternal quality of life in his name, and belief in Jesus is what divides those who have it from those who remain in death.
A cluster of further themes runs through the book. Light and darkness: the light comes into the world, the darkness cannot extinguish it, and men either come to the light or love the darkness. Truth: the Word is full of grace and truth, and Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, both real and reliable. Glory: the signs manifest his glory, and John 17 discloses a greater glory the Son had with the Father before the world was. The world, seventy-eight times, usually the created order in rebellion against its Creator, yet loved by the God who sent his Son into it. His hour, not yet come through the public ministry, arrived at chapters 12 and 13, so that one could almost outline the gospel by it. The Jews, sometimes neutral, usually the leaders in opposition. And witness: the Son bears witness to the Father he has seen and heard, so that, as John 1:18 puts it, the only begotten God has explained him; Boice built his doctoral dissertation on this theme.
Alongside follow, John's word for true discipleship is remain, or abide. The Spirit descended and remained on Jesus; and in chapter 8, to Jews who had just believed in him, Jesus says, if you abide in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine. They took offense, and by the chapter's end were picking up stones. John's gospel is full of such people, whom Essex calls believing unbelievers: they follow for a time, they credit the signs, some even conclude he is the Messiah, but they do not remain. The disciples scandalized by the bread of life discourse no longer walked with him; only the twelve stayed. In John 15 the true branches abide in the vine, in his love, in his word. In this gospel the believer who is truly a believer is the one who remains.
A student's question draws out a balance: Peter in Acts says Jesus did his works through the anointing of the Spirit, while John grounds them in his divine nature. The answer is both, not either. John himself records the Spirit descending and remaining on Jesus before any miracle, and John 3 declares that God gives him the Spirit without measure. The incarnate Son lives on earth in dependence on the Father and in the enablement of the Spirit, yet is God in flesh who at times displays his inherent glory. Essex declines the word contradiction and chooses mystery: the tri-unity of God, which eternity itself will not exhaust, though it will replace the word contradiction with the word amazing.
The manuscripts divide almost evenly between a present subjunctive, that you may go on believing, and an aorist, that you may come to believe, and on that hinge scholars have debated whether John wrote to confirm believers or to evangelize. But John does not use the tenses so mechanically: an aorist appears in chapter 11 where the disciples' existing faith is being strengthened, and a present in chapter 6 where unbelievers are called to initial faith. Carson argued in a late-seventies journal article that the decisive clue is not the tense but the article: the question the purpose statement answers is not, who is Jesus, but, who is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the gospel's answer is, Jesus. That aims the book at readers who know the Old Testament promise and are asking, especially after the temple's destruction, where Israel's hope now lies. The Messiah is not coming; he has come, and he is Jesus.
If the purpose is evangelistic, the means is the believing community. The gospel does not wander into a synagogue by itself; believers take it, read it, and speak it. So a distinction follows between purpose and result: the purpose is the conversion of unbelieving Jews and God-fearers; a repeated result is that believers who study it have their understanding of Jesus deepened and become better evangelists. Essex's pastoral counsel: if you want a church trained in evangelism, preach Mark and preach John. Few may be converted inside the church service itself, but the congregation will carry the message out.
The book opens with a prologue, 1:1 to 18, and closes with an epilogue, chapter 21. Whether or not the prologue is a full chiasm, an inclusio frames it: the Word who was with God and was God at the beginning, and the only begotten God in the bosom of the Father who has explained him at the end, with the witness of John the Baptist set in balanced panels between. Verses 1 to 13 run in the third person; at verse 14, with the Incarnation, the voice turns personal, we beheld his glory, of his fullness we have all received. Verses 12 and 13 are the hinge: to as many as received him he gave the right to become children of God, born of God. The prologue thus prepares for the purpose statement, and the epilogue answers it: now that you believe, follow him, as Peter is told, even to death.
The body falls into the public ministry, 1:19 to 12:50, under the sign of the hour not yet come, and then the hours with the disciples once the hour has arrived. Through chapter 4 the response is largely positive: the first disciples believe at Cana, Nicodemus at least confesses a teacher come from God, the Samaritans receive him, the royal official takes Jesus at his word. Everything turns at chapter 5, in Jerusalem, at a feast, on a Sabbath. Jesus heals a lame man of thirty-eight years, a man with a chip on his shoulder before and after, who promptly reports him; Jesus's answer, that he works because his Father works, begins the open hostility. In chapter 6 the crowd wants to make him king because their stomachs are full, and the bread of life discourse scandalizes even his followers. Chapters 7 through 10 gather the feast conflicts around one sign, the man born blind, healed while Israel is shown blind. The raising of Lazarus forces the decision: Caiaphas, prophesying better than he knew, declares it expedient that one man die for the nation.
At the end of chapter 12 John pauses to answer the question his own narrative raises: if Jesus so plainly proved to be the Messiah, why the unbelief? His twofold answer. First, judicial blindness: though he had done so many signs, they were not believing, that the word of Isaiah might be fulfilled; because they would not believe, they could not believe, for God blinded the eyes of the generation that refused his Son, just as Isaiah, who saw his glory, had said. Second, the fear of men: many even of the rulers believed in him, but would not confess him lest they be put out of the synagogue, for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. Of seventy-one members of the Sanhedrin, only Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea publicly left. Then Jesus cries out once more to the crowd he is leaving forever: whoever believes in me believes in the one who sent me. The issue is set for John's readers: leave the synagogue if you must, seek the approval of God, and believe.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all eighteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does John 20:30-31 declare about the signs recorded in the gospel?
2. What is the culminating sign toward which the gospel builds?
3. Why can Nicodemus speak of signs in the plural so early in the gospel?
4. How does John keep the signs from speaking alone?
5. What warning does even the critical commentator Barrett give readers of John 1:1?
6. How do the disputes of chapters 8 and 10 present Jesus?
7. What does John's handling of the title Messias suggest about his readers?
8. How does Jesus defend working on the Sabbath in John 5?
9. What does John's use of believe insist on, against believing in belief?
10. What is the usual force of the world in John?
11. Who are the believing unbelievers of John's gospel?
12. How does Essex answer the question whether Jesus's works came from his deity or the Spirit's anointing?
13. Why does the tense of the subjunctive fail to settle John's purpose?
14. What is Carson's argument for the evangelistic purpose?
15. What pastoral counsel does Essex attach to John's purpose?
16. What frames the prologue, and what is its hinge?
17. Where does open hostility against Jesus begin in John?
18. What twofold answer does John give for Israel's unbelief at the end of chapter 12?
All eighteen correct. Lecture 13 is complete.
John pairs every sign with a speech that interprets it. What does that pattern suggest about the relationship between what God does and what God says, and about how we should read miracles today?
Essex describes believing unbelievers who accepted that Jesus was Messiah but loved the approval of men more than the approval of God. Where does that same trade still tempt people, and what does John say it costs?
Carson's argument turns on a single Greek article, yet it reframes the purpose of the whole gospel. How should the weight of such small details shape the patience we bring to Bible study?
To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, born not of human descent or human decision, but born of God. (A paraphrase of John 1:12-13)
Dr. Essex points students to Merrill Tenney's John: The Gospel of Belief for the meaning of the signs, and to D. A. Carson's journal article on the purpose of the Fourth Gospel for the argument that John wrote to evangelize readers who knew the Old Testament promise.