The Gospel writer gives us a clear and distinct thesis in John 20:30-31: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (NIV).

We can summarize John’s thesis in one word: believe. He says, “I’ve written this book, including these particular accounts, so that you might believe.” John witnessed nearly three years of stories, sermons, and conversations, but he didn’t include them all. He selected certain ones—the ones that would help us believe.

—Matt Carter and Josh Wredberg

Source: Carter, Matt and Josh Wredberg. Edited by David Platt and Dr. Daniel Akin. Exalting Jesus in John. Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2017.

The purpose of this fourth Gospel is to show that the One who was born in a manger and afterward died on the Cross had higher glories than those of King, that he who humbled himself to take the Servant place was, previously, “equal with God,” that the One who became the Son of Man was none other than, and ever remains the Only Begotten of the Father.

Each book of the Bible has a prominent and dominant theme which is peculiar to itself. Just as each member in the human body has its own particular function, so every book in the Bible has its own special purpose and mission. The theme of John’s Gospel is the Deity of the Savior. Here, as nowhere else in Scripture so fully, the Godhead of Christ is presented to our view. That which is outstanding in this fourth Gospel is the Divine Sonship of the Lord Jesus. In this Book we are shown that the One who was heralded by the angels to the Bethlehem shepherds, who walked this earth for thirty-three years, who was crucified at Calvary, who rose in triumph from the grave, and who forty days later departed from these scenes, was none other than the Lord of Glory. The evidence for this is overwhelming, and the proofs almost without number, and the effect of contemplating them must be to bow our hearts in worship before “the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13) 

. . . 

In these days of wide-spread departure from the faith, it cannot be insisted upon too strongly or too frequently that the Lord Jesus is none other than the Second Person of the blessed Trinity, co-eternal and co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

—A. W. Pink

Source: Pink, A.W. Exposition of the Gospel of John. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1968.

These opening paragraphs of John’s Gospel announce good news. Note that these first 18 verses contain not a single command to obey, but simply news to believe. Consistent with the overarching story line of the Bible, this Gospel begins with gospel—with the good news that God has taken on flesh to rescue sinners living in a dark world. This is the resounding theme of John: good news. Jesus has come so that we, the undeserving, might receive “grace upon grace” (John 1:16 ESV).

—Justin Buzzard

Source: Content taken from John: A 12-Week Study © 2013 by Justin Buzzard. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

John’s Gospel does not merely present ideas about God, salvation, or a set of ethical principles. To be sure, Christianity does produce a philosophy and a worldview. But unlike every other religion, its truth is grounded in certain facts of history. The word gospel means “good news,” reminding us that Christians have good tidings to tell the world—God’s actions in history to save lost sinners. Something wonderful happened in the coming of Jesus Christ that we want the world to know. The purpose of John’s Gospel, as with the whole New Testament, is to proclaim this good news and tell people how to be saved through faith in Jesus. 

. . . 

As human beings, we are alienated from God because of our sin. God is holy, and the guilt of our sin has placed us under his just condemnation. Meanwhile, the power of sin works evil in and through our lives, so that John could say in his first epistle that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19 ESV). If these are our great problems—God’s condemning judgment and the insidious effects of sin—the answer is the Savior whom God sent as a light to this dark world. John’s most famous verse says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV). The true answer to the world’s true problems is Jesus Christ, an answer we receive through belief in him.

—Richard D. Phillips

Source: Richard D. Phillips in Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John, Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2007. 

We find many unique features in John’s Gospel that do not appear in the other records of Jesus’ life. For instance, John’s Gospel gives us the most extensive revelation from the lips of Jesus of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, information that is found in the upper room discourse that took place on Maundy Thursday, the day before Jesus’ crucifixion.

—R. C. Sproul

Source: John: An Expositional Commentary by R.C. Sproul © Ligonier Ministries 2019. Used by permission of Ligonier Ministries. All rights reserved.

This opening passage of John sets the stage for the rest of the Gospel. John opens with the words “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1 ESV). From his very first sentence, John proclaims that Jesus is the eternal, preexistent Word—the one-of-a-kind Son of the Father, the Son who is himself God. Yet this eternal Word has now become incarnate in history (John 1:11–18). In this prologue, John introduces many of the major themes developed later in the Gospel, such as Jesus as the life, the light, and the truth; believers as God’s children; and the world’s rejection of Jesus. These first 18 verses are the grand entryway into John’s breathtaking account of Jesus Christ.

—Justin Buzzard

Source: Content taken from John: A 12-Week Study © 2013 by Justin Buzzard. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

The Gospel of John plays a unique and influential role in the Christian Bible. In this account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we learn that Jesus is the Son of God, sent by God the Father to give eternal life to all who believe in him. Jesus repeatedly shatters people’s assumptions, teaching that salvation is not earned but rather is a free gift received through a miracle of grace—being born again. John’s Gospel also sounds a constant theme of mission. Just as the Father sent Jesus to earth, Jesus sends his followers to continue his mis­sion by testifying that Jesus is the Son of God so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).

—Justin Buzzard

Source: Content taken from John: A 12-Week Study © 2013 by Justin Buzzard. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Many biographies start a generation or two back with the subject’s parents or grandparents. The aim is to build a picture of the kind of family and conditions a child was born into. Not John’s Gospel. As John settles down to write the story of a man called Jesus, he thinks of his earthly parents, and of their fathers and forefathers. But the clock keeps spinning backwards until he draws breath and slowly writes, “In the beginning.” Immediately we understand that this is not an ordinary story of an ordinary person. John’s “in the beginning” is not the start of one person’s life. This is the start and source of all life. This is the story of creation. The words echo the opening words of the opening book of the Bible. Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (NIV). 

. . . 

John wants us to realize that, unlike the story of any other human being, the story of Jesus does not begin with his human conception. It’s true that Jesus was born as a human being in our world. But that’s not when his story begins. His story goes back to the beginning. Indeed the story of Jesus doesn’t even start “in the beginning.” For, as John will go on to say, Jesus already “was” in the beginning. His story has no beginning for he “was” in eternity. He has been for ever.

—Tim Chester

Source: The One True Light: Daily Advent Readings in the Gospel of John by Tim Chester, Copyright 2016, by The Good Book Company, used by kind permission.

The life we need—spiritual, eternal life, delivered from the judgment of hell—comes through belief in Jesus Christ (20:31). But life does not come to us like a UPS package. It’s not a transaction in which we believe in Jesus, then he hands us our life at the front door and walks away. The life he gives us is life “in him”…Life in Christ is not an exchange; it’s being drawn into an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ.

—Matt Carter and Josh Wredberg

Source: Carter, Matt and Josh Wredberg. Edited by David Platt and Dr. Daniel Akin. Exalting Jesus in John. Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2017.

Coming into this marvelous life is a matter of incredible simplicity. Becoming one of God’s own comes by receiving Jesus, which verse 12 explains by saying, “all who did receive him, who believed in his name” (ESV), which means believing on who Jesus is and receiving him as our own. In the language of John 1, the cosmic Christ, the eternal Creator who became one of us, took our sins upon himself and paid for them, was resurrected and now sits at the Father’s right hand. Do you truly believe in his name, in him? That is the question. There is nothing to join, nothing to sign. Simply believe. Oh, the greatness of Christ and his love. Receive it now if you have not done so before.

—R. Kent Hughes

Source: Content taken from John: That You May Believe © 2014 by R. Kent Hughes. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Our religion is one of four letters instead of two. Other religions say “Do.” Our religion says “Done.” Our Savior has done all on the cross. He took on our sins; and when he gave up his life, he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30 ESV). This was the shout of a conqueror. He had finished humanity’s redemption. Nothing was left for people to do. Has the work been done in your heart?  

—Henrietta Mears

Source: This content is from What the Bible Is All About, written by Henrietta Mears. Copyright © 1953, 2011 by Gospel Light. Copyright assigned to Tyndale House Publishers, 2015. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The word believe translates the Greek word pisteuo, which means “to trust” or “to put one’s faith into something or someone.” To believe in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God requires more than mere intellectual adherence to a set of facts about the life of Christ. It requires trusting one’s whole self into who Christ said he was and what he was sent to accomplish.

Imagine you are on a hike through a beautiful mountain pass, approaching the edge of a cliff that drops a thousand feet to the canyon floor. The only way to continue is to walk across a bridge from one side of the cliff to the other. It’s one thing to say, “I believe the bridge can hold my weight as I walk across this great chasm.” It’s something altogether different to actually start walking across the bridge. The former is a kind of belief based on intellectual adherence to a possible outcome. The latter is placing one’s trust in the bridge. John did not write his Gospel just so we could know facts about Jesus’s life. He wrote his Gospel so we would know facts about who Jesus is and what he was sent to do and in response trust in him completely.

—Matt Carter and Josh Wredberg

Source: Carter, Matt and Josh Wredberg. Edited by David Platt and Dr. Daniel Akin. Exalting Jesus in John. Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2017.