Lecture 14: John Completed: The Farewell Discourse, Water and Spirit, Receive the Spirit, and Beginning the Life of Christ

The lecture, section by section

1. The self-disclosure to his own

   After the public ministry closes, chapters 13 to 17 record the communication of Jesus to his own who will remain in the world he is leaving. He loves them to the end; yet among them sits the ultimate rejecter, and only after Judas goes out does Jesus begin the discourse that prepares the disciples for his departure. Five times he promises the Paraclete: he is going, but the presence of God will be with them through the Spirit whom the Father and the Son will send, and as Jesus bore testimony to God on earth, so the disciples, empowered by the Spirit and abiding in him, will bear testimony to the world. He warns that the world which hated him will hate them, and he bequeaths them his peace. The image of chapter 15 reaches back to Isaiah 5: where the nation was the unfaithful vine, Jesus is the true vine, and fruit comes only by abiding in him.

2. The prayer, the glorification, and Thomas

   In chapter 17 Jesus prays: first for himself, that the Son may be glorified with the glory he had with the Father before the world was; then for the eleven, left in the world, that the Father would protect them and sanctify them by his word; then for those who will believe through their word, that they may be one and behold his glory. Chapters 18 and 19 record the glorification through death, and even in his dying the Scripture is fulfilled point by point. Chapter 20 brings the resurrection and its final appearance within the body of the book, where Thomas, seeing, confesses, my Lord and my God. That confession is the destination of the whole gospel: the hearer, through this written testimony, is to say of Jesus what Thomas said, and believing, have eternal life.

3. The epilogue, and the last word of the book

   Chapter 21 answers the question, what now for those who believe? The risen Jesus commissions the disciples, restores Peter beside a charcoal fire, and tells him, follow me, even to death, while the beloved disciple stands as the one whose written witness is true. The closing verse says the world itself could not contain the books that might be written about what Jesus did. Essex notes the providence in the canon: John comes last of the gospels, as if to say, after all you have read there is more still, but this is enough, enough to bring you to faith and to following Jesus Christ.

4. Building a shelf on the Gospel of John

   Two works stand out: Carson, the first purchase, strong on background and structure with help for the preacher, roughly eight hundred pages; and Morris, closer to a thousand, who beyond exposition contends apologetically for the historicity of John against liberal attack. Asked to choose one, Essex says Carson; asked which to get, he says yes, both. The exegetical standards from the critical side are Barrett, who reads the book from John's vantage point even where he dissents, and Raymond Brown's two Anchor Bible volumes. Milne's exposition in The Bible Speaks Today distills Carson and Morris into sermons. Burge's NIV Application volume is to be read with discernment, for his Presbyterian and charismatic leanings color the applications, yet he is exactly right on the deity and exclusivity of Christ in a pluralistic age. For lay classes, Tenney and Homer Kent serve well.

5. Born of water and the Spirit

   Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. The proposals for the water are many: an interpolation, though no manuscript lacks it; the semen of physical birth, so that natural birth is paired with spiritual; Calvin's view that water is itself a symbol of the Spirit, water even the Spirit; Kent's view that it is the cleansing word of God; Barrett and Burge's view that it is John's baptism; and Christian baptism, which can be dismissed at once, for Nicodemus could have known nothing of it. The best answer comes from the rebuke in verse 10: you are the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things? Jesus is speaking Old Testament, and the passage is Ezekiel 36, where God promises to cleanse his people with water and put his Spirit within them so that they may enter the kingdom. Water is the purifying element of that promise, and this is the position of Carson and MacArthur, which Essex shares.

6. Receive the Holy Spirit

   On resurrection evening Jesus stands among the disciples, says, as the Father has sent me, so send I you, breathes out, and says, receive the Holy Spirit. Four positions. Liberals call it a theological myth, a Johannine Pentecost rivaling Luke's. Some say the Spirit was fully bestowed that evening, but then Acts 1 makes no sense, where the disciples must still wait in Jerusalem for the promise. The traditional evangelical favorite is a temporary bestowal to carry them until Pentecost, held by a legion of good men, but the text says nothing of anything temporary. The best reading takes the command as anticipation. John himself shows that a present imperative can point to the future: in John 7, come and drink, but this he spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified, and glorification, per John 17, is complete only when the Son returns to the Father. Jesus breathes out, not on them, signifying that when the Spirit comes at Pentecost he will come from Jesus, equipping them for the commission just given.

7. Preaching John

   John is the evangelistic gospel for those acquainted with the Old Testament; Mark for those with a pagan background, and Essex observes that the culture is moving from John toward Mark as biblical literacy fades. Yet John remains vital, for in a pluralistic age the church needs evangelists convinced of the deity and exclusivity of Jesus, and the exposition of John produces exactly that conviction. His counsel: preach John or Mark early in a ministry, not at the end. He can point to three recent graduates who began their pastorates in John and report stability in their people's Christology and renewed evangelistic fervor, and to a longer precedent: the first gospel preached by the seminary's president at his church was the Gospel of John.

8. The harmony of the Gospels

   Turning to the life of Christ, Essex holds up the book he has used most in pastoral ministry after the biblical texts themselves: the Thomas and Gundry harmony of the gospels, first issued in 1978. A congregation expects its pastor to be an expert in the life of Christ, to answer on the spot whether an event fell in the first year of ministry or the last, and the harmony is the tool that puts the four accounts side by side in sequence. Behind his own conviction stands the seminary course he once took from Pentecost, preserved in The Words and Works of Jesus Christ, a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on a harmony.

9. The life-of-Christ shelf, and the questions ahead

   Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, the work of a converted Jewish scholar of the nineteenth century, reads the gospels against the rabbinic background of the Mishnah and Talmud; written before the archaeological revolution and light on Josephus and Philo, it is judged unbalanced by some scholars, yet it remains cheap, beloved, and genuinely useful, and the reading members of a congregation will have read it, so the pastor should too. Pentecost and Van Bruggen offer commentary keyed to a harmony; Harrison's A Short Life of Christ treats the great topics, birth, baptism, temptation, teaching, one by one, with Guthrie's briefer treatment beside it. For chronology, two works govern the coming discussion: Hoehner's Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ and Finegan's Handbook of Biblical Chronology, the tools for the questions every congregation eventually asks, when was Christ born, how long was his ministry, and on what day was he crucified.

1. Jesus prays in John 17 for those who will believe through the disciples' word, which includes every believer since. What difference does it make to know that you were prayed for by name-in-advance, so to speak, on the night before the cross?

2. Essex resolves both disputed texts by reading them against other Scripture, Ezekiel 36 and John 7. What does that method teach about how to handle a hard verse before reaching for a novel explanation?

3. Why might preaching a gospel early in a ministry, as Essex urges, shape a congregation differently than saving it for later? What does a church's diet of preaching form in its people?