John (Understanding the Bible Commentary | UBC)
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
John the apostle, the last of the original 12, writes the final and most spiritual of the four Gospels. His intention is to clearly announce that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who has come in the flesh to redeem the world. This volume unpacks and explains the beautiful and rich signs and symbols that John used so that “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Top Highlights
“True prophecy (i.e., a ‘spirit which is given from God’) is distinguished from false prophecy by the fact that it is not ‘asked questions’ or consulted like an oracle.” (Page 281)
“In chapter 2, as he tells his mother, his time has not yet come (v. 4). Yet the early placement of the temple cleansing is deliberate, and its effect is twofold. First, it puts everything that follows under the shadow of Jesus’ impending Passion and gives his dialogues with the Jews the character of a trial. Second, it makes the story of the Cana wedding a kind of epitome or scale model of Jesus’ entire Galilean ministry, in which he turns the water of traditional ritual cleansing (v. 6) into the wine of a new and joyous messianic age.” (Page 47)
“He is here the personification of God’s creative word, just as he will later be seen as the personification of things that the word called into being—light, truth, life and resurrection, bread from heaven, and the vine that God planted. The one who gives life is the Life; the one who speaks truth is the Truth. Above all, Jesus is introduced in the prologue as the Revealer, the one through whom God spoke in the beginning and through whom he continues to speak. Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks the word, but in the prologue he is the Word, the personal embodiment of all that he proclaims.” (Page 21)
“Most of the other ‘I am’ sayings in this Gospel are accompanied by an invitation to ‘come’ to Jesus or ‘believe’ in him (e.g., 6:35; 8:12; 10:9; 11:25–26; 14:6), but I am the vine focuses instead on those who have already come and has as its corollary the command to ‘remain in’ (or ‘united to’) him in whom they have believed. The vine metaphor seems, in fact, to have been introduced at this point in the discourses primarily to dramatize the single imperative of ‘remaining’ (Gr.: menein) spiritually united to Jesus in a life-sustaining relationship.” (Page 271)
J. Ramsey Michaels is emeritus professor of religious studies at Missouri State University, Springfield. He has taught New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Fuller Seminary, and most recently, Bangor Seminary. Michaels has written commentaries on 1 Peter, Revelation, Hebrews, and John.