📖 New Testament Survey — Unit 5: John: The Identity of the Logos

I. The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

Of all the writers in the New Testament, John was the one who had been closest to the Lord's heartbeat. He was the disciple "whom Jesus loved" (John 13:23). He was the one who leaned on His breast at the Last Supper. He was the one to whom, from the cross, the Lord entrusted His own mother (John 19:26–27). And of all the writers in the New Testament, John was the one who lived the longest — into the closing years of the first century, into Ephesus, into the dawn of the second generation of believers who had never seen the Lord with their eyes. Imagine being the last man alive who had walked the dusty roads with Jesus of Nazareth. Imagine being the last living witness of the empty tomb. That is the old man who picked up a pen around AD 85 to 95 and wrote the Gospel we are about to study.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been in circulation for thirty years by then. John did not write to repeat them. He wrote because there was still one question hanging in the air over every reader of the other three, and only the man who had leaned on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper had the right to answer it. The question was the simplest in the world, and the deepest: Who is this Man? Matthew shows you the King, Mark shows you the Servant, Luke shows you the Man — but John shows you what your heart most longs to know. John shows you God.

II. The Logos Prologue

John's first eighteen verses are not a story. They are a hymn. They are perhaps the highest paragraph of prose ever written in any language. They open with words deliberately chosen to overlap, syllable for syllable, with the opening words of the Hebrew Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1–4). The Greek word translated Word is Logos. To a Jew, Logos meant the speaking-self of God, the breath that called the worlds into existence in Genesis 1: "And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). To a Greek philosopher, Logos meant the rational mind behind the universe, the principle that holds all things in coherent order. John takes a word that already meant the deepest possible thing in both Jewish and Greek thought and announces that this Logos is not an idea. The Logos is a Person. And then in verse 14 John drops the hammer: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The eternal principle of the universe took on a body and pitched His tent in a village in Galilee. That is the identity John is here to defend.

III. The Question Behind the Gospel

I have often pictured the disciples lying out under the stars with the Lord on a summer night by the Sea of Galilee. I can imagine Peter or John waking in the night, rising up on an elbow, looking at the sleeping figure beside him, and whispering to himself, Is it true? Can this Man be the eternal God? Who is this? No wonder they puzzled. They had been with Him every day for three and a half years; they had seen the dust of His feet and the bread of His table and the tears of His grief and the sweat of His exhaustion. He was a man. There is no doubt that He was a man. And yet — He had calmed the wind with one sentence, raised a dead twelve-year-old by the hand, fed five thousand from a boy's lunch, looked at a paralytic and said, "Son, your sins are forgiven." The question grew larger every month. Who is this Man?

By the time John sits down to write his Gospel, the question has only one answer that fits the data. And John writes the whole book to demonstrate it. Hear how he himself stated his thesis near the end: "And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:30–31). That is the purpose statement. That is the key verse. Two propositions: Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus is the Son of God. John's argument for the first is the seven signs. John's argument for the second is the seven I AMs. The whole Gospel is built around those two columns of seven.

IV. The Seven Signs — The Credentials of Messiah

John never uses the synoptic word miracle. He uses the word sign. A miracle is something amazing; a sign is something amazing that points. John selects seven of them out of the many he had personally watched the Lord perform, and arranges them so each one points at a particular mark of the promised Messiah. (1) Water into wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2): the inanimate is made alive — the symbol of the joy of the new covenant. As one Sunday-school child put it, having heard the story: "It is always a good idea to have Jesus around." (2) The healing of the nobleman's son at a distance (John 4:46–54): the brokenhearted father is healed along with the boy. (3) The healing of the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda after thirty-eight years of captivity (John 5): the oppressed are set free. (4) The feeding of the five thousand (John 6): the hungry of soul are fed. (5) The walking on the water (John 6): the fearful are quieted with "It is I; do not be afraid." (6) The healing of the man born blind (John 9): the blind see. (7) The raising of Lazarus from the tomb (John 11): the dead are raised. Lay those seven signs alongside Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61 — the Messianic credentials read out in Nazareth — and they line up exactly. John has not chosen at random. He has chosen the seven signs that prove the resume.

V. The Seven "I AM" Statements — The Name of God

The seven signs prove that Jesus is the Christ. But John is going higher than that. He is going to prove that the Christ is God Himself. And to prove it he reaches not for a miracle but for a sentence. At the burning bush in Exodus 3, Moses asked the voice for a name to take back to Israel. The voice answered: "I AM WHO I AM... Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14). That sacred Name — the eternal I AM — is the name no Jew dared to speak. John records seven moments when the Lord Jesus reached out and took that Name on His own lips and applied it to Himself.

"I AM the bread of life" (6:35) — the sustainer of the hungry soul. "I AM the light of the world" (8:12) — the illuminator of the dark heart. "I AM the door" (10:9) — the only authorized entrance to the fold. "I AM the good shepherd" (10:11) — who lays down His life for the sheep. "I AM the resurrection and the life" (11:25) — power that needs no help from outside. "I AM the way, the truth, and the life" (14:6) — the only path home. "I AM the true vine" (15:5) — the source of every fruit any branch will ever bear. Seven I AMs. Each one a Person attached to the Name of God.

And there is one more I AM that John saves for the climax. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the cohort of soldiers comes for the arrest. Jesus steps forward. "Whom are you seeking?" "Jesus of Nazareth," they answer. He says two words in Greek: egō eimi — I AM. John notes that when He said it, "they drew back and fell to the ground" (John 18:6). A whole arresting cohort knocked off its feet by two words. The Name of God in the mouth of the carpenter from Galilee.

VI. The Upper Room Discourse

Five of the seven I AMs sit in the first half of the book. The last two — "I am the way, the truth, and the life" and "I am the true vine" — sit inside the most intimate section of any Gospel, the Upper Room Discourse. John gives us five chapters (13–17) in the night before the cross. Matthew, Mark, and Luke devote one paragraph each to the Last Supper; John gives us the conversation that followed it. He records the foot-washing (13). He records the promise of the Father's house with many mansions (14). He records the true vine and the call to abide (15). He records the promise of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit (16). And in John 17 he gives us the High Priestly Prayer — the longest recorded prayer of the Lord Jesus in all four Gospels, the prayer in which He prays for His disciples and then for every believer who would ever come to faith through their word — which means He prayed for you. By name. Even before you had one. The interior life of the Trinity is opened to us for one chapter, and we are allowed to overhear the Son speaking to the Father about us.

VII. "It Is Finished"

Mark and Matthew let us hear the cry of dereliction from the cross. Luke lets us hear the prayer of pardon. John lets us hear one word in Greek that becomes the whole gospel: tetelestai — "It is finished" (John 19:30). It is in the perfect tense, which in Greek means a completed act with permanent results. Finished and standing finished forever. Archaeologists have found Greek receipts from the first century with that very word stamped across the top: tetelestai — paid in full. In John, the cross is not the tragic defeat of a rabbi; it is the triumphant completion of a mission that began before time. The Logos who in chapter 1 spoke creation into being, on a Friday afternoon in chapter 19 announced its redemption from a cross.

And John alone records something else. When the soldier thrust the spear into the side of Jesus, "immediately blood and water came out" (John 19:34). Medical writers have argued that the watery serum separated from the blood is a sign of a ruptured heart — that the Lord Jesus did not merely die of crucifixion. He died of a broken heart. The Word made flesh laid down the flesh willingly, of His own accord. "No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself" (John 10:18). The Logos who had spoken the universe into being chose the precise moment to give up His Spirit. Tetelestai.

VIII. The Empty Tomb and Doubting Thomas

John's resurrection chapter (20) has four scenes. Mary at the tomb, weeping, who turns and hears one Greek word: "Mary." Peter and John running to the empty tomb, John seeing the grave clothes lying as if a body had passed through them undisturbed and believing on the spot. The disciples in the locked upper room that Sunday evening, the risen Lord standing among them with the wounds in His hands. And one disciple was missing. His name was Thomas, and he refused to believe on hearsay. "Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe" (John 20:25). Eight days later the Lord appeared again, and Thomas was in the room. The Lord looked straight at Thomas and said, "Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." And Thomas, in the only one-sentence confession of full deity in the New Testament, said, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). That is the climax of the whole Gospel of John. From the Logos in chapter 1 to my Lord and my God in chapter 20. The journey is complete. The identity is confessed. The eagle has landed.

IX. The Key Verse — Why John Was Written

Two verses later John tells us why he wrote the book. "And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:30–31). It is the most candid statement of purpose by any author in the New Testament. John is not writing biography for its own sake. He is not writing devotional reflection. He is writing evidence — selected, ordered, designed to bring a reader to a verdict. That you may believe. And the result of believing is not a religion; it is life in His name.

Here is a question that still finds the heart of every reader of John: What does this Gospel mean to you? Not to a scholar. Not to a theologian. To you. And the honest answer is that you cannot read John honestly and walk away with neutral feelings. You can read Matthew and become a better citizen. You can read Mark and become a better servant. You can read Luke and become a better friend. But you cannot read John without becoming a worshipper. John does not leave you on the fence. John leaves you on your knees with Thomas, calling Jesus what Thomas called Him: my Lord and my God. John is the Gospel to put first into the hands of any seeker — because it was written precisely for the seeker. "These are written that you may believe." The whole book is an arrow aimed at the human heart.

Press on, my friend, into the rest of the New Testament with the same Logos who spoke the worlds into being, who walked through dusty villages with His disciples, who finished the work on the cross, who rose on the third day with the keys of death and Hades in His hand, and who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is your Lord. He is your God. Amen.

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