Chapter 2

We could thus treat Johannine missiology through the lens of some other texts, such as John 3:16; but we will subsume that text under our larger discussion outlined in John 20:21-22. As with the other lectures/articles in this series, I am using a single passage, here John 20, to provide a structure for addressing the themes of the entire book or body of literature in which they appear. When John’s first audience finally reached chapter 20, they would be hearing it in the light of all that had gone before.

When the risen Christ appears to the disciples, he commissions them to carry on his work— “As the Father has sent me, in the same way I have sent you” (v. 21). Then he empowers them to do it— “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22). Thus, this passage involves three primary elements relevant to our discussion of Johannine missiology— the model of Jesus, the empowerment of the Spirit, and the mission of Jesus’s followers. The Spirit and Jesus’s followers together carry on aspects of Jesus’s mission. What then was that mission?

Jesus kept telling his disciples that he was going to go to the Father and then return to them so that they could enter the Father’s presence. Although his long-term ascension (20:17) may still remain future in our passage, Jesus has already gone to the Father by dying, preparing a place for them in the Father’s presence (14:2-6, 23). Now he has returned and commissions them to carry on his mission. He sends them kathōs—i.e., “in the same way” that the Father sent him. If we wish to understand what the text means by his followers being sent, we must first examine the explicit model for their sending in the ministry of Jesus.

The motif of “agency” (or being sent) is frequent in John’s Gospel. A text very much like this one appears in 13:20—“Whoever receives whomever I send receives me; whoever receives me receives him who sent me.” Jesus’s followers carry out his mission as he carries out the Father’s. The concept may be implicit even in John’s terms for sending, insofar as those terms reflect a special Jewish tradition about what it means to send someone. Contrary to some scholarly traditions, John’s two Greek terms for “send” are interchangeable, and he employs both for the Father sending the Son and for the Son sending the disciples.

In antiquity, those sent with a commission were authorized representatives (agents) of those who sent them, and how one treated those agents would reflect one’s attitude toward the sender. Later, rabbis even came up with specific rules regarding commissioned agents, including the formulation, “A person’s agent is as the person himself.” The agent carried the full authority of the sender to the extent that the agent accurately represented the sender’s commission. Jewish people recognized Moses and the prophets as God’s agents who were sent with his message.

Verbs for “sending” appear some sixty times in John’s Gospel. They were applicable to John the Baptist (1:6, 33; 3:28), to agents of the authorities (1:19, 22, 24; 5:33; 7:32), to the disciples (4:38; 13:20; 17:18), and to the advocate, the Spirit (14:26; 15:26; 16:7). But most often, they were applicable to Jesus as the agent of the Father (3:17, 34; 4:34; 5:23-24, 30, 36-38; 6:29, 38-39, 44, 57; 7:16, 28-29, 33; 8:16, 18, 26, 29, 42; 9:4; 10:36; 11:42; 12:44-45, 49; 13:20; 14:24; 15:21; 16:5; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25). In these passages, Jesus consistently defers all honor for his mission to his sender (cf. 7:18). He recognizes that an agent (like a servant) is never greater than the sender (Jn 13:16). Thus, full submission to the Father’s purpose and deferring all honor to him are two ways that Jesus models what it means to be divinely commissioned.

Jesus came to reveal the Father’s heart. As he says in 12:45, “Whoever beholds me beholds the one who sent me.” John has been sharing this message since the opening of his Gospel, which climaxes in the announcement that Jesus has revealed God to us (1:18). John’s prologue is framed with the twin claims that Jesus is deity and that he is in absolute intimacy with the Father (1:1-2, 18). Unlike Jesus, we are not deity, but Jesus’s invitation to abide in him is an invitation to intimacy with him as the basis for our mission (15:4-5).

Also in the Gospel’s prologue, Jesus so accurately reflects the Father that he is the Father’s logos (normally translated “Word”). John draws here on a range of rich Greek and Jewish concepts, but most fundamentally the term for Jewish hearers would evoke God’s revelation of himself in Scripture (especially in the law) as God’s Word. Yet Jesus is a fuller, deeper revelation than was available in the law. In the climax of his prologue, John compares Jesus with the Torah (hence Jesus’s first witnesses with Moses) as the following chart illustrates:

The glory that Moses beheld only in part, the disciples discovered fully in Jesus, although in a hidden way. The glory at his first coming did not look outwardly like the glory on Mount Sinai, but in terms of revealing God’s character and heart, it went beyond Sinai. What does this glory look like in John’s Gospel?

If we trace the terminology of “glory” throughout his Gospel, we see that Jesus’s glory and character were revealed in his various kind works (e.g., 2:11), but that the ultimate expression of his glory appears in 12:23-24—Jesus will be glorified by laying down his life. The ultimate expression of God’s grace and truth, too glorious even for Moses to see, emerged where the world’s hatred for God also came to its ultimate expression. As we pounded the nails into the hands of God’s own Son, he was crying, “I love you! I love you! I love you!” In the incarnation (and ultimately in the cross), Jesus revealed God’s heart to us.

There are some ways, of course, in which the Father’s sending of the Son is unique. Jesus is the monogenēs (1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 Jn 4:9), the specially beloved and unique Son. (The traditional English translation, “only-begotten,” reads too much etymology into the term). We are not divine; so although the world is to see God among us (13:34-35; 17:21, 23), we are not his revealers in the unique way that Jesus was. While we may lay down our lives for one another (1 Jn 3:16), we do not carry away the sin of the world (John 1:29). John declares that the Father sent the Son not to condemn the world but to save it (3:17). Jesus’s agents do not save the world, but instead, like John the Baptist in the prologue (1:7), are sent to bear witness concerning the light (e.g., 15:27).

Still, John shows that the role as Jesus’s agents is indispensable, because others would believe through their message (17:20) and, as we shall soon propose, the Holy Spirit would “prosecute” the world through their witness for him (16:7-11). Even the context of our primary text (20:21-22) emphasizes that Jesus’s agents are stewards of God’s forgiveness (20:23), presumably by accurately representing him (cf. 16:7-11).

Nevertheless, provided that we allow for Jesus’s unique role and status, John’s Gospel also presents him as a model for mission and demonstrates that those he sends come to participate in that mission. In 1:43-45, Jesus called Philip to follow him, and he followed Jesus’s example by testifying to Nathanael from his experience understood through Scripture. But it’s the encounter with Jesus himself that converts—for example, Philip invites Nathanael to “Come and see” (1:46), and Nathanael believes as a result of meeting Jesus, who knows his life (1:46-51).

Similarly, in 4:26, Jesus reveals his identity to a Samaritan woman, who, in turn, invites her entire town to “Come, see” the one who knew her life (4:29). Afterward, although they initially accept the woman’s testimony (4:39), more Samaritans believe more fully once they meet Jesus themselves (4:41-42). As in Nathanael’s case, it is experiencing Jesus personally that converts them—all of which confirms that the honor cannot go to the witnesses. We are Jesus’s agents; but as Jesus honored the Father, we are to honor the Son. It is as we introduce people to his living presence that they become most fully confronted by his truth, whether that makes them more hostile or more receptive.

In 20:21, Jesus does not specify to whom he is sent, but this object is clear from earlier passages in the Gospel. It repeatedly emphasizes that the Father sent Jesus “to the world” (3:17; 10:36; 17:18; cf. 8:26; 17:21, 23), a theme repeated in 1 John 4:9, 14. The stated purpose of this sending is that the world might be saved (Jn 3:17; 1 Jn 4:14; cf. Jn 6:33, 51; 1 Jn 4:9).

John 3:16-17 states God’s motive in sending Jesus to the world— God loved the world. In contrast to some attempts to distinguish the meanings of the two Greek words (phileō and agapaō) used for “love,” John employs them interchangeably for literary variation, as was common in his day. Both verbs apply to Jesus’s love for the Father, the Father’s love for Jesus, and virtually every other category of love in the Gospel. What tells us about the character of divine love is not whether John uses phileō or agapaō, but how he defines this love in the context. “So” (houtōs) here does not say that God loved the world so much, but rather that this is how God loved the world—He gave his Son.

While a good human father loves his sons, we should understand that God the Father loves his Son infinitely, no less than himself. Yet he and the Son together sacrificed this Son so that the world might have life. This means that God loves the world (or those who would become his own out of the world) no less infinitely. As Jesus later says to the disciples, his followers’ unity would reveal divine love to the world, so that the world would recognize that God loved the disciples, even as he loved Jesus (17:23).

God’s love is no mere abstraction, no empty words. Rather, he demonstrated that love in an act. The act in which God “loved” the world was that he “gave” his Son. The aorist verb tense for both loved and gave might point to this single act, which the context indicates as being the cross (3:14-15). Just as Paul emphasized decades before John’s Gospel, God demonstrated his love for us through the death of his Son while we were his enemies (Rom 5:8-10).

The necessary condition God requires for eternal life is stated as “trust.” The rest of John’s Gospel and possibly the verb tense indicate that this trust requires persevering faith (Jn 8:31; 15:6), in contrast to the inadequate faith earlier in this context (2:23-25). The rest of John’s Gospel also defines the object of faith, which ultimately recognizes Jesus as our Lord and God (20:28). Here then we have the motivation, the method, and the message for our mission—i.e., motivated by God’s love (cf. 2 Cor 5:14), we lay down our lives to invite people to trust (depend on, entrust themselves to, declare loyalty to) God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Especially note here the object of God’s love—“the world.” In John’s Gospel, the world often represents humanity hostile toward God (1:10; 3:19; 7:7; 8:23; 12:25, 31; 14:17, 19, 22, 30; 15:18-19; 16:11, 20, 33; 17:14, 25); yet it is out of that hostile world that he saves those who trust in him (13:1; 17:6, 9, 11, 14-16, 25). After this passage, the next mention of “the world” comes in 4:42, where Samaritans recognize Jesus as savior of the world. Jesus crossed multiple barriers, most obviously the ethnic and cultural ones (4:9), to bring eternal life to the Samaritan woman at the well, who, in turn, brought her people to Jesus. While John’s ‘narrative world’ does not venture directly beyond the Samaritans, it does imply the world beyond them. For Jesus has “other sheep who are not of this fold” (10:16; cf. 7:35),—i.e., those who will believe in him through his disciples’ message (17:20). John’s mention of the “world,” then, is as much a summons to reach all peoples as Matthew’s or Luke’s call to the “nations.” Isaiah’s light to the nations (42:6; 49:6; cf. 60:2-3) is in John’s Gospel the light of the world (8:12; 9:5; 11:9; 12:46).

In this Gospel, not only are Jesus and his disciples “sent,” but so is the Holy Spirit, who comes to represent and carry on Jesus’s work. In 14:26, the Spirit is sent in Jesus’s name, and in 15:26, he is sent to bear witness to Jesus. Thus, we are able to carry on Jesus’s mission only because God himself lives and works in us. No sooner does Jesus give the disciples the commission than he breathes on them and commands them to “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). Just as in 15:26-27 and 16:7, the Spirit is closely connected with the disciples’ witness.

What is the significance of Jesus breathing on them? Most scholars see an allusion to Genesis 2:7. As God breathed into the first human the breath of life, so now Jesus imparts new life to his followers. Greek and Hebrew could employ terms for “breath” or “wind” for God’s Spirit. Jesus earlier depicted eternal life initiated by the new birth not only in terms of water, but also in terms of wind (3:8), perhaps evoking the resurrection life of God’s breath or Spirit in Ezekiel 37:9-14. (That is, as John 3:5-6 probably alludes to Ezekiel 36:25-27, so John 3:8 probably alludes to Ezekiel 37.) It is God’s breath that brings life to the new creation, as it did to the old.

As a matter of interest, we may pause to ask (as scholars often do) about the relationship between this passage and Pentecost in Acts 2. Some scholars see this passage as a lesser Pentecost, while others see it as John’s replacement for or equivalent to Luke’s Pentecost. Perhaps on the historical level, we may think of these two events as two levels of impartation, as some scholars argue. On the theological level, however, this is the passage that ties together Jesus’s various promises surrounding the Spirit earlier in the Fourth Gospel—Jesus coming to them (14:18), resurrection life (14:19), joy (15:11; 20:20), peace (14:27; 20:21), the Spirit’s new birth and indwelling (3:5; 14:17; 20:22), and being sent as witnesses (15:26-27; 20:21). John is not continuing his narrative as late chronologically as Pentecost. At least on the narrative level, this passage must carry the symbolic weight of John’s entire theology of the Spirit. What then is his theology of the Holy Spirit?

First, the Spirit purifies God’s people and in a manner that mere ceremonial washings cannot. The image of Jesus breathing new life into his followers in chapter 20 indicates that this emphasis in John’s theology of the Spirit continues here. Some ancient Jewish sources (especially among the Essenes) recognized in Ezekiel 36:25-26 that at the end-time the Spirit would purify God’s people morally. John develops this emphasis especially through an ongoing contrast with merely natural water, often that used for ritual purification.

The contrast appears regularly in John’s Gospel (especially in what is often called its “signs section”). Jesus’s baptism in the Spirit is greater than John the Baptist’s baptism in water (1:31, 33). Jesus disregards the ritual consecration of six waterpots when he turns water in them into wine (2:6-10). Whereas some Jewish people may have expected Gentile converts to become like newborn babies after being immersed in water, Jesus summons Nicodemus to a true proselyte baptism in the water of the Spirit (3:5).

In 4:14, Jesus offers “living water” that’s greater than the water of Jacob’s well, a site holy to the Samaritans. In fact, John’s geographic interest is not in holy sites, such as Jerusalem’s temple or the Samaritans’ Mount Gerizim, but rather the proper sphere of worship, namely in the Spirit of truth (4:20-24). In 5:1-9, the water of a pool associated with healings leaves a man infirm, but Jesus heals him; in 9:1-7 another man is healed in connection with a sacred pool, but only because Jesus sends him there. Jesus himself later takes the role of a servant as he washes his disciples’ feet in a scene interspersed with announcement of the coming betrayal (Jn 13).

The key text with reference to John’s water motif (key because it offers an explicit explanation) is 7:37-39, where Jesus, on the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles, promises “rivers of living water” (7:2, 37). On this last day of the festival, priests poured water from the Pool of Siloam at the base of the altar to symbolize an expectation stemming from Ezekiel 47 and Zechariah 14. Priests read these passages on the same day. Both of these texts spoke of rivers of living water flowing from the temple and from Jerusalem in the eschatological time. Thus, on the day that they were being read, Jesus announces to the people, “Whoever thirsts, let them come to me; let them drink, whoever believes in me. As the Scripture has said, ‘From his belly will flow rivers of living water.’” Jewish people thought of Jerusalem as the “navel” of the earth, but Jesus here depicts himself as the foundation of God’s new temple, the source of living water. John explains that once Jesus would be glorified, those who believe in him would receive from him this living water—the Spirit (7:39).

Lest we forget his point, John also takes time to narrate an event at the crucifixion not included in the other extant Gospels. When the soldier pierced Jesus’s side with his spear, not only blood but also water came forth (19:34). Historically, the spear may have punctured the pericardial sac around the heart, releasing a watery substance along with the blood. But why does John bother to record this event and even underline it emphatically by noting that he was an eyewitness (19:35)? I suspect he does so because it forms a climactic illustration of Jesus’s point. Lifted up and glorified, crowned king of the Jews, Jesus by his death provided living water for his people. The Book of Revelation expresses John’s point well—“Let the one who thirsts come and drink freely from the water of the river of life” (Rev 22:17). John’s Gospel deals with the water of the Spirit, of which traditional ritual purification is at best a symbol.

Second, and of primary importance for our discussion of John’s missiology, the Spirit involves prophetic power. Whereas some Jewish texts stressed the Spirit’s purifying role, most stressed the Spirit’s prophetic role. Jesus’s closing discourses to his disciples emphasized this aspect of the Spirit’s work, including comments about sending the Spirit. The Father sends the Spirit in Jesus’s name both to teach them and to help them recall his teachings (14:26). Likewise, Jesus sends the Spirit to bear witness concerning him (15:26), which the disciples will also do (15:27).

The prophets of old both heard God and proclaimed what they heard, and we find both elements in this Gospel. In 10:3-5, 16, 27, Jesus talks about his sheep (true disciples) hearing his voice; and they “know” him just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father (10:14-15). This bespeaks of the depth of relationship with Jesus that God has made available to us, the context for this being the following incident recorded in chapter 9:

A blind man healed by Jesus becomes his follower and, as a consequence, is expelled from the synagogue by Israel’s supposed ‘guardians’. Jesus compares these hostile guardians to strangers, thieves, and wolves who exploit the sheep (10:1, 5, 8, 10, 12); they resemble the false shepherds of Israel in Ezekiel 34:2-10. By contrast, Jesus is the “good shepherd” (10:11, 14), who would lay down his life for the sheep to protect them from the thieves. Jesus is using biblical imagery—the chief shepherd of Israel in the Hebrew scriptures was God (Ezek 34:11-16), whose role Jesus appropriately fills here. Meanwhile, this formerly blind man, although now excluded from Israel’s religious community by its leaders, is embraced by Jesus as truly one of God’s people, who were often compared with God’s sheep in Scripture (e.g., Ps 100:3; Ezek 34:2). This man, who heeded Jesus, becomes an example of the sheep who heed his voice, which Israel failed to do (Ps 95:7-11). Jesus’s disciples are another example of those hearing his voice. He called them “friends” because whatever he heard from the Father he shared with them (15:15).

John is very clear that hearing Jesus’s voice is an experience that should continue among the community of believers. Just as he did not speak from himself (12:49; 14:10), neither would the Spirit speak from himself (16:13). And just as Jesus told his “friends” that whatever he heard from the Father he would tell them, he explains now that whatever the Spirit hears from him, the Spirit will speak to them (16:13). Further, just as Jesus came to glorify not himself but the Father, the Spirit comes to reveal and glorify Jesus (16:13-15). This means that disciples today at least potentially are able to hear Jesus as clearly as did the first disciples, except now with the advantage of a retrospective understanding of Jesus’s identity and mission.

Likewise, disciples who hear from Jesus will also reveal him to the world, in connection with the Spirit (15:26-27). Whereas the Father sent Jesus into the world and Jesus sends the disciples into the world (17:18), John does not tell us that the Spirit is sent to the world. Rather, Jesus says, “If I go, I will send Him to you” (16:7; cf. 15:26). After Jesus promises to send the advocate to them, he says that the Spirit will “convict” the world (16:8). In a context where the Spirit comes as witness (15:26) and perhaps as advocate (one possible translation for paraklētos in 14:16, 26; 15:26; and 16:7), we might render the Spirit’s activity here as “prosecuting” the world. He will “charge” the world regarding sin, righteousness, and judgment. These were activities of Jesus earlier in the Gospel (3:20; 8:46), and the particulars offered in 16:8-10 also involve his person or acts. The point appears to be that Jesus, who confronted the world in this Gospel, will continue to confront it, because his presence remains. Now, however, that presence is revealed through the Spirit’s ministry in and through the life and message of disciples.

The Spirit empowers us to communicate Jesus to others because, through the Spirit, Jesus’s presence remains in our midst. He sends the advocate so that “He may be with you forever” (14:16), and be “in you” (14:17); thus, the Father and Son make their “dwelling place” within us (14:23). In fact, even Jesus’s promise of many dwelling places in the Father’s house apparently communicates the same point. Against the common assumption that the Father’s house (as used here) must mean heaven, its other uses in the Gospel refer to a father’s household (8:35) or to the temple (2:16-17). Thus, only context can specify what it means here. Most essentially, we may surmise that it will involve the place of the Father’s presence.

What does Jesus mean by dwelling places (or “rooms” in some translations) that he prepares in the Father’s house in 14:2? This Greek term, monē, appears in only one other location in the entire New Testament—John 14:23, which is in this same context and deliberately clarifies its use here. In that passage, Jesus declares that he and the Father will come and make their dwelling place (monē) within believers. The cognate verb is frequent in the context, referring to the Spirit or Jesus’s message dwelling or remaining in believers, or believers dwelling or remaining in Christ (14:17; 15:4-10, 16).

What does Jesus mean in this context by, “I will come again to you” (14:3)? Later, his coming (14:18) is associated with the giving of the Spirit (14:16-17) and resurrection life (14:19). But it also involves Jesus and the Father coming to the believer and making their dwelling place there (14:23). In contrast to his second coming, the disciples would see him but the world would not (14:19). Again in a context emphasizing the coming of the Spirit (16:13-15), Jesus says he would return to reveal himself to them, the context clearly meaning after his death and resurrection (16:17-22). Jesus refers here not to his coming at the end of the age but to his coming to inaugurate eschatological life in the lives of his disciples (20:19-23).

Jesus repeatedly says, “I am going . . . ” (14:2-5, 28; 16:5, 7), referring in most of these texts to going to the Father by way of death (8:22; 13:33, 36; 16:28; cf. 16:20-22). He tells his disciples that they know where he is going and the way he will get there (14:4); but Thomas protests that they know neither the where nor the way (14:5). The first disciples did not understand 14:2-3 by itself any better than we understand these verses isolated from Jesus’s following explanation, which was that he is going to the Father and that he himself is the way (14:6). He is not telling the disciples that at his second coming they are going with him to the dwelling place prepared for them. Rather he declares that those who come to the Father through him—i.e., those who believe and abide in Jesus—are in the Father’s presence.

That is to say (regarding 20:19-23), Jesus’s coming to give his disciples the Spirit inaugurates his presence in their lives in a new dimension. Now we can do God’s work because God’s Spirit lives in us.

Jesus sends the disciples into the world just as the Father sent him into the world (17:18). Some may object that such passages apply only to the first disciples in John’s narrative world. This objection, however, misunderstands the function of his narrative. Just as John the Baptist functions as a paradigmatic witness in the opening of John’s Gospel, so do Jesus’s disciples function as paradigmatic for the community of believers. John is interested in those who believe through their proclamation (17:20). It is not only the first disciples that are fruit-bearing branches on Jesus the vine (15:1-8) who must abide and bear fruit (15:2-5, 8), persevere (15:6), and love one another (15:12). In his epistles, John does not limit the Spirit to the Twelve (who received the promises of the advocate in chapters 14-16); rather, he makes clear that those promises are for all true believers (1 Jn 2:20, 27; 3:24; 4:2, 13). Not all believers in the community have the same role as the first disciples, but the community as a whole shares their same mission and purpose—i.e., to make Christ known.

A central part of this mission is to proclaim Jesus’s identity. In John’s Gospel, among the models of preaching Jesus already noted are Philip and the Samaritan woman. Yet John himself offers us a model by how he himself, inspired by the Spirit, preaches Jesus. One may compare the following various christological confessions he records in the Gospel:

• Nathanael declares, “Rabbi, You are God’s Son! You are the king of Israel!” (1:49)

• The Samaritans acknowledge, “This one is truly the world’s savior!” (4:42).

• Peter confesses, “You are God’s holy one!” (6:69).

• Thomas makes this climactic confession of faith—“My Lord and my God!” (20:28).

Jesus affirms as true Thomas’ confession, yet he praises those who can have such faith without a resurrection appearance (20:29). It is here that John explains this is why he wrote his Gospel—so those who have not seen may nevertheless believe Jesus’s identity (20:30-31).

Let us add to these confessions in John Gospel Jesus’s own declarations of his identity:

• “I am the light of the world” (8:12; 95) to enlighten us.

• “I am the door” (10:7, 9) to welcome us.

• “I am the good shepherd” (10:11, 14) to protect and care for us.

• “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25) to raise us.

• “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6) to bring us to the Father.

• “I am the true vine” (15:1) to nourish us with continuous life.

• “I am” (8:58)—the greatest declaration of all—as the God of the patriarchs and prophets.

Such declarations are a fitting focus for a Gospel whose prologue is framed by confessions of Jesus’s deity (1:1, 18). Indeed, so is the body of John’s Gospel if we connect the prologue’s claim with Thomas’ confession in 20:28. Ancient biographies were supposed to focus on their protagonists; John naturally focuses on Jesus in this Gospel, proclaiming Jesus’s identity to his audience “so that you may believe” (20:31) as the Spirit brings the hearers into real encounters with Christ (16:7-15).

We who are sent to preach Jesus present him not only through our words, but (like Jesus himself) through our works. Believers will do the kinds of works Jesus did (14:10-12), many of which were miraculous signs (5:20; 7:3, 21; 9:3-4; 10:25, 32, 37-38; 15:24). But his “work” also summarizes his entire mission (4:34; 17:4). Presumably John (like Luke and other New Testament writers) does expect continuing miracles among Jesus’s followers. However, there is another kind of “sign” John specifies that reveals God’s character and light in a dark world. In 15:1-11, Jesus says that disciples, as branches bearing the fruit natural to the vine, should love one another. By loving others we show the world more of God’s heart.

In 17:21, Jesus prayed that we his followers would be one so “that the world may believe that you sent me.” In 17:23, he went on to pray that we would be perfected in unity so “that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them even as you loved me.” Thus, part of our greatest witness is the supernatural testimony of Jesus’s reality by the divine love that believers demonstrate to one another— at least when we are truly depending on and imitating our Lord.

In 13:4-10, assuming the posture of a servant, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, in the context of his impending passion (13:1-3, 11). Although disciples did almost anything for their teachers that servants would do, the one exception was apparently the demeaning work of dealing with the feet (e.g., washing them, carrying sandals). Yet Jesus adopts this servile posture and summons his disciples to follow his example, doing the same for one another (13:12-15). In 13:34-35, he commands us, “Love one another, even as I have loved you. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Jesus titles this injunction a “new commandment,” not because it involves love (which was already commanded in Leviticus 19:18), but because of a new standard—that being, “as I have loved you.” That is, to love one another as he loves us is to love to the extent that we lay down our lives for one another (cf. 1 Jn 3:16). This is the greatest sign of Jesus’s reality and character that he has given to his people. The God of grace and truth, who revealed his glory in the cross, makes that message believable to the world when the world sees the church believing and living the heart of God.

Compare John 1:18 (“No one has beheld God at any time; but the only God, who is in the Father’s bosom, has made him known”) with 1 John 4:12 (“No one has beheld God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us”). How will the world see God’s heart now? Not only through our words preaching Christ, but also through our lives following his example.

Jesus is the model in this Gospel for what it means to be “sent”— “As the Father sent me, even so I send you.” The object of this mission, as in the case of Jesus, must be the world— “For God in this way loved the world.” The Spirit, who comes to testify about Jesus, enables this mission by continuing to make him (the Word) present in his followers’ word—“Receive the Holy Spirit” entails our empowerment for prophetic witness. Lastly, we as Jesus’s followers must present the living Lord both by our words and by our works—i.e., by our witness and by our love.

Our mission is to present Christ in prophetic power, Jesus speaking in us to bring people to experience him for themselves; and to be a community of such divine love that outsiders can see and be drawn to God’s heart for the world.

As has been long and widely noted, e.g., Wayne A. Meeks, “‘Am I a Jew?'— Johannine Christianity and Judaism,” 1:163-186 in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (4 vols.; ed. Jacob Neusner; SJLA 12; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 1:163; D. Moody Smith, “What Have I Learned about the Gospel of John?” 217-35 in "What Is John?" Readers and Readings of the Fourth Gospel (ed. Fernando F. Segovia; SBL Symposium Series 3; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 218-22; James H. Charlesworth, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel According to John,” 65-97 in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith; ed. R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996); J. Louis Martyn, “Source Criticism and Religionsgeschichte in the Fourth Gospel (1970),” 99-121 in The Interpretation of John (ed. John Ashton; Issues in Religion and Theology 9; Philadelphia: Fortress; London: S.P.C.K., 1986); John A. T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 82; W. D. Davies, “Reflections on Aspects of the Jewish Background of the Gospel of John,” 43-64 in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith; David Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, Hebrew University, 1988), 23-24.

I treat this approach of reading each part in light of the whole on a very basic level in Craig Keener, Biblical Interpretation (Springfield, MO: Africa Theological Training Service, 2005), 45-66.

See discussion (and a survey of alternatives) in Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (2 vols.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 1192-95 (also discussing the function of narrative predictions in ancient literature).

Roughly 17.3% of this adverb’s NT appearances are in John’s Gospel, whereas this Gospel constitutes only 11% of the NT text, so John uses the adverb roughly 36.4% more than average. The Johannine epistles account for 7% of NT uses, though they constitute only about 1.7% of the NT text; thus they use it over 400% more than average (though these letters’ sample size is too small to draw firm stylistic conclusions).

See discussion in Keener, John, 310-17, here especially 315-17.

This same language appears in different words in Matt 10:40 (probably “Q” material; see Lk 10:16); cf. Mk 9:37.

See Diodorus Siculus 4.10.3-4; Josephus Ant. 8.220-21; more fully, Keener, John, 313-14.

See m. Ber. 5:5; t. Taan. 3:2; b. Naz. 12b. For the Jewish custom as relevant to the NT, see especially Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, Apostolate and Ministry (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1969); on Johannine and rabbinic “sending,” H. S. Friend, “Like Father, Like Son. A Discussion of the Concept of Agency in Halakah and John,” Ashland Theological Journal 21 (1990): 18-28. Despite detractors, most scholars today accept the connection (noted also by W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew [ICC; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988-1997], 2:153); some church fathers also recognized the connection (see J. B. Lightfoot, St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians [3d ed.; London: Macmillan & Company, 1869], 93-94; Gregory Dix, The Apostolic Ministry [ed. Kenneth E. Kirk; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947], 228). It might be better to view rabbinic and Johannine agency as particular cases of a larger ancient Mediterranean conception.

On agents being backed by the sender’s authority, see e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus 6.88.2; Diodorus Siculus 40.1.1; Josephus Life 65, 72-73, 196-98; 2 Macc 1:20.

E.g., Exod 3:10, 13-15; 4:28; 7:16; Deut 34:11; Sipra Behuq. pq. 13.277.1.13-14; ’Ab. R. Nat. 1 A, most MSS.

E.g., 2 Sam 12:1; 2 Kgs 17:13; 2 Chron 24:19; 25:15; 36:15; Jer 7:25; 24:4; 26:5; 28:9; 35:15; 44:4; Bar 1:21; Mek. Pisha 1.87; ’Ab. R. Nat. 37, §95 B.

On the Son’s submission as the Father’s agent, see e.g., Craig S. Keener, “Is Subordination Within the Trinity Really Heresy? A Study of John 5:18 in Context,” Trinity Journal 20 NS, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 39-51, here 45-47.

Marie-Emile Boismard, St. John’s Prologue (trans. Carisbrooke Dominicans; London: Blackfriars Publications, 1957), 76-77.

See the survey of Greek conceptions in Keener, John, 341-43; for Philo, ibid., 343-47; and for more traditional Jewish conceptions, ibid., 347-63.

Keener, John, 359-63; Eldon Jay Epp, “Wisdom, Torah, Word: The Johannine Prologue and the Purpose of the Fourth Gospel,” 128-46 in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation: Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney Presented by his Former Students (ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975); in the Gospel more generally, see Dan Lidy, Jesus as Torah in John 1–12 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2007).

With many, e.g., Boismard, Prologue, 135-45, especially 136-39; Jacob J. Enz, “The Book of Exodus as a Literary Type for the Gospel of John,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76 (1957): 208-15, here 212; Peder Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), 150-51; Anthony Hanson, “John I.14-18 and Exodus XXXIV,” New Testament Studies 23, no. 1 (Oct. 1976): 90-101; Everett F. Harrison, “A Study of John 1:14,” 23-36 in Unity and Diversity in NT Theology: Essays in Honor of G. E. Ladd (ed. Robert A. Guelich; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 29; Henry Mowvley, “John 1.14-18 in the Light of Exodus 33.7-34.35,” Expository Times 95, no. 5 (Feb. 1984): 135-37.

With e.g., Gary M. Burge, The Anointed Community: The Holy Spirit in the Johannine Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 132-33; David Earl Holwerda, The Holy Spirit and Eschatology in the Gospel of John: A Critique of Rudolf Bultmann’s Present Eschatology (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1959), 5-8; F. F. Bruce, The Message of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 105; W. Nicol, “The History of Johannine Research during the Past Century,” Neotestamentica 6 (1972): 8-18, here 16.

See R. L. Roberts, “The Rendering ‘Only Begotten’ in John 3:16,” Restoration Quarterly 16 (1973): 2-22, here 4; I. J. Du Plessis, “Christ as the ‘Only Begotten,’” Neotestamentica 2 (1968): 22-31; G. Pendrick, “Monogenēs,” New Testament Studies 41, no. 4 (1995): 587-600; Harrison, “John 1:14,” 32.

Cf. e.g., James I. Cook, “John 20:19-23, An Exegesis,” Reformed Review 21, no. 4 (Dec. 1967): 2-10, here 7-8.

Despite the typical prejudice against women’s testimony in Mediterranean antiquity; see e.g., Josephus Ant. 4.219; m. Yeb. 15:1, 8-10; 16:7; Ket. 1:6-9; t. Yeb. 14:10; Sipra VDDeho. pq. 7.45.1.1; Hesiod W.D. 375; Livy 6.34.6-7; Babrius 16.10; Phaedrus 4.15; Avianus Fables 15-16; Justinian Inst. 2.10.6.

Although Jesus came not with the purpose of condemning the world (3:17; 12:47), his coming does precipitate judgment (9:39; 16:8, 11).

On divine love originating the sending in John’s theology, see M. Waldstein, “Die Sendung Jesu und der Jünger im Johannesevangelium,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift/Communio 19, no. 3 (1990): 203-21. For God’s love focused especially on the righteous or Israel, see e.g., CD 8.17; ’Ab. R. Nat. 36, §94B; Sipra Deut. 97.2; further discussion in Keener, John, 568-69.

With most scholars today: e.g., John Painter, John: Witness and Theologian (foreword by C. K. Barrett; London: S. P. C. K., 1975), 62, 92; F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John: Introduction, Exposition and Notes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 404; Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (BNTC; Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005), 517-18; Charles H. Talbert, Reading John: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Fourth Gospel and the Johannine Epistles (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 261; R. H. Lightfoot, St. John’s Gospel: A Commentary (ed. C. F. Evans; London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 343; Anthony C. Thiselton, “Semantics and New Testament Interpretation,” 75-104 in New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods (ed. I. Howard Marshall; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 93; R. Alan Culpepper, The Gospel and Letters of John (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 248; Herman N. Ridderbos, The Gospel according to John: A Theological Commentary (trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 665-66. For the commonness of literary variation in antiquity, see e.g., Cicero Orator 46.156-57; Fam. 13.27.1; Aulus Gellius 1.4; R. Dean Anderson, Jr., Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms Connected to Methods of Argumentation, Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to Quintilian (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 53-54, 114.

With Robert H. Gundry and Russell W. Howell, “The Sense and Syntax of John 3:14-17 with Special Reference to the Use of houtōs . . . hōste in John 3:16,” Novum Testamentum 41, no. 1 (1999): 24-39.

John emphasizes that the Son laid down his life voluntarily (Jn 6:51; 10:11, 15, 17-18; cf. 15:13), inviting his followers to do the same (1 Jn 3:16).

Cf. also e.g., Ernest Evans, “The Verb agapan in the Fourth Gospel,” 64-71 in Studies in the Fourth Gospel (ed. F. L. Cross; London: A. R. Mowbray & Company, 1957), 68; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (2 vols.; Anchor Bible 29 and 29A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1966-1970), 1:133.

Just as only a Samaritan (4:9) and a Gentile (18:35) acknowledge Jesus as a Jew, it is especially the most hostile representatives of “the world” who recognize that “the world” (much of humanity) goes after Jesus (11:48; 12:19). John thus mitigates his portrayal of the “world’s” hostility on a personal level: the world may come to know about God, i.e., so some will be saved (14:31; 17:21, 23; 13:35); Jesus’s death invites “all people” (12:32); the Judean crowds are divided in their responses to Jesus (7:43; 9:16; 10:19); Jesus invites the world (18:36-37).

On the implied ethnic universalism, see e.g., Francis J. Moloney, Belief in the Word; Reading the Fourth Gospel, John 1-4 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 14.

See Keener, John, 585; idem, “Some New Testament Invitations to Ethnic Reconciliation,” Evangelical Quarterly 75, no. 3 (July 2003): 195-213, here 195-202.

Some take these other sheep in 10:16 as Diaspora Jews (John A. T. Robinson, “The Destination and Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” New Testament 6, no. 2 [Jan. 1960]: 117-31, here 127-28; J. Louis Martyn, “Glimpses into the History of the Johannine Community,” 149-76 in L’Évangile de Jean: Sources, rédaction, théologie [ed. M. De Jonge; Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 45; Gembloux: J. Duculot; Leuven: University Press, 1977], 174) or Samaritans (cf. John Bowman, “Samaritan Studies,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40, no. 2 [1958]: 298-327; Edwin D. Freed, “Samaritan Influence in the Gospel of John,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30, no. 4 [Oct. 1968]: 580-87; Charles H. H. Scobie, “The Origins and Development of Samaritan Christianity,” New Testament Studies 19, no. 4 [July 1973]: 390-414, here 407), but most see them as Gentile believers (e.g., J. H. Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John [2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928], 2:361; J. Ramsey Michaels, John [Good News Commentaries; San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984], 169). Against some, normal usage suggests that “Greeks” (7:35; 12:20) are Gentiles (discussion in Keener, John, 721).

E.g., Ernst Haenchen, A Commentary on the Gospel of John (2 vols.; trans. Robert W. Funk; ed. Robert W. Funk with Ulrich Busse; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 2:211; J. N. Sanders, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John (ed. B. A. Mastin; HNTC; New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), 433; Max Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts in the New Testament Church and Today (rev. ed.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), 90-92; Keener, John, 1204-5; James D. G. Dunn, “Spirit. NT,” 3:693-707 in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (ed. Colin Brown; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 703; Peter F. Ellis, The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1984), 293; M. Wojciechowski, “Le Don de L’Esprit Saint dans Jean 20.22 selon Tg. Gn. 2.7,” New Testament Studies 33, no. 2 (1987): 289-92 (though reading too much from the Targumim, which is then used to connect John 20 with Pentecost); Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” 9:491-865 in The New Interpreter’s Bible (12 vols.; ed. Leander E. Keck; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 846; Jan A. du Rand, “‘n Ellips skeppingsgebeure in die Evangelieverhaal volgens Johannes,” Skrif en Kerk 21, no. 2 (2000): 243-59. For imagery of a new creation, e.g., Cook, “Exegesis,” 8; John P. Meier, “John 20:19-23,” Mid-Stream 35, no. 4 (1996): 395-98.

Cf. e.g., Max-Alain Chevallier, Ancien Testament, Hellénisme et Judaïsme, La tradition synoptique, L’oeuvre de Luc (vol. 1 in Souffle de Dieu: le Saint-Esprit dans le Nouveau Testament; Le Point Théologique 26; Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1978), 23; D. W. B. Robinson, “Born of Water and Spirit: Does John 3:5 Refer to Baptism?” The Reformed Theological Review 25, no. 1 (Jan. 1966): 15-23, here 17.

See discussion (from various perspectives) in e.g., Robert P. Menzies, “John’s Place in the Development of Early Christian Pneumatology,” 41-52 in The Spirit and Spirituality: Essays in Honor of Russell P. Spittler (ed. Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies; JPTSup 24; London, New York: T&T Clark International, 2004); Keener, John, 1196-1200; Turner, Gifts, 94-97; idem, “The Concept of Receiving the Spirit in John’s Gospel,” VE 10 (1976): 24-42; Max-Alain Chevallier, “‘Pentecôtes’ lucaniennes et ‘Pentecôtes’ johanniques,” RSR 69, no. 2 (Apr. 1981): 301-13; Donald A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 648-55; Joost van Rossum, “The ‘Johannine Pentecost’: John 20:22 in Modern Exegesis and in Orthodox Theology,” SVTQ 35, nos 2-3 (1991): 149-67; Philippe H. Menoud, “La Pentecôte lucanienne et l’histoire,” RHPR 42, nos 2-3 (1962): 141-47; Stanley M. Horton, What the Bible Says About the Holy Spirit (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1976), 127-33; W. Bartlett, “The Coming of the Holy Ghost according to the Fourth Gospel,” ExpT 37 (1925-26): 72-75, here 73; Francis Wright Beare, “The Risen Jesus Bestows the Spirit: A Study of John 20:19-23,” CJT 4, no. 2 (Apr. 1958): 95-100, here 96; Burge, Community, 148.

See 1QS 3.7; 4.21; 1QH 8.30; 16; 4Q255 frg. 2.1; 4Q257 3.10; Craig S. Keener, “The Function of Johannine Pneumatology in the Context of Late First-Century Judaism” (Ph.D. dissertation, New Testament and Christian Origins, Duke University, 1991), 65-69; idem, The Spirit in the Gospels and Acts: Divine Purity and Power (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997), 146-51, 162; F. F. Bruce, “Holy Spirit in the Qumran Texts,” ALUOS 6 (1966): 49-55, here 52-54; J. Coppens, “Le Don de l’Esprit d’après les textes de Qumrân et le Quatriême Évangile,” 209-23 in L’Évangile de Jean: Études et Problèmes (Recherches Bibliques 3; Louvain: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958), 211-12, 222; Émile Puech, “L’Esprit saint à Qumrân,” SBFLA 49 (1999): 283-97; George Johnston, “‘Spirit’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ in the Qumran Literature,” 27-42 in New Testament Sidelights: Essays in honor of Alexander Converse Purdy (ed. Harvey K. McArthur; Hartford: Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1960), 40; Max-Alain Chevallier, “Le souffle de Dieu dans le Judaïsme, aux abords de l'ère chrétienne,” FoiVie 80, no. 1 (Jan. 1981): 33-46, here 40.

See discussion in Keener, John, 509-13.

Later rabbis’ association of conversion with becoming like a new child is often noted, e.g., H. W. Watkins, The Gospel According to John (ed. Charles John Ellicott; 2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957), 74; Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 82 (citing b. Yeb. 22a; 48b; 62a; 97b; Bek. 47a). This view is at least as early as the seventeenth century; see John Lightfoot, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica (4 vols.; n.p.: Oxford, 1959; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 3:265.

See discussion more extensively in Keener, John, 537-55, esp. 546-50; cf. John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John (2 vols.; trans. William Pringle; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), 1:111.

A wordplay; “living” water was flowing water, the kind one would get from a spring (cf. e.g., LXX Gen 26:19; Lev 14:5-6, 50-52). But John also thinks of the “water of life” (Rev 7:17; 21:6; 22:1, 17); cf. Ps 36:9; Jer 2:13; 17:13; Oscar Cullmann, Early Christian Worship (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM, 1953), 81; Birger Olsson, Structure and Meaning in the Fourth Gospel: A Text Linguistic Analysis of John 2:1-11 and 4:1-42 (trans. Jean Gray; Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1974), 213; Brown, John, 1:cxxxv.

See discussion more fully in Keener, John, 611-19.

Scholars often note the contrast between the two passages; see especially R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 139; cf. also Jeffrey L. Staley, “Stumbling in the Dark, Reaching for the Light: Reading Character in John 5 and 9,” Semeia 53 (1991): 55-80; Dorothy A. Lee, The Symbolic Narratives of the Fourth Gospel: The Interplay of Form and Meaning (JSNTSup 95; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 105-6; Raymond F. Collins, These Things Have Been Written: Studies on the Fourth Gospel (Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs 2; Louvain: Peeters; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 23; Rainer Metzner, “Der Geheilte von Johannes 5—Repräsentant des Unglaubens,” ZNW 90, nos 3-4 (1999): 177-93.

For the footwashing, see especially John Christopher Thomas, Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine Community (JSNTSup 61; Sheffield: JSOT Press, Sheffield Academic, 1991).

See e.g., t. Suk. 3:3-10, 18. Among commentators, cf. e.g., C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 350; Archibald M. Hunter, The Gospel According to John (Cambridge Bible Commentary; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 84-85; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John (3 vols.; trans. Kevin Smyth and J. Massingberd Ford; New York: Herder & Herder, 1968; New York: Seabury, 1980-1982), 2:155; see fuller discussion in Keener, John, 722-30 (esp. 725-27).

Scholars differ on the precise syntax here, some seeing water from the believer (Gordon D. Fee, “Once More—John 7:37-39,” Expository Times 89, no. 4 [Jan. 1978]: 116-18; Joseph Blenkinsopp, “John VII.37-9: Another Note on a Notorious Crux,” New Testament Studies 6, no. 1 [Oct. 1959]: 95-98; Zane C. Hodges, “Rivers of Living Water: John 7:37-39: Part 7 of Problem Passages in the Gospel of John,” Bibliotheca Sacra 136, no. 543 [July 1979]: 239-48; Bernard, John, 1:282; Juan B. Cortés, “Yet Another Look at Jn 7,37-38,” CBQ 29, no. 1 [Jan. 1967]: 75-86) and some from Jesus (Dodd, Interpretation, 349; Brown, John, 1:321-23; James D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in relation to Pentecostalism Today [Studies in Biblical Theology, 2nd ser., 15; London: SCM, 1970], 179-80; J. Ramsey Michaels, “The Temple Discourse in John,” 200-213 in New Dimensions in New Testament Study [ed. Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenney; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974], 208-9; M. J. J. Menken, “The Origin of the Old Testament Quotation in John 7:38,” Novum Testamentum 38, no. 2 [1996]: 160-75; D. Moody Smith, John [Abingdon New Testament Commentaries; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999], 174). For our purposes here, it may suffice to note that whether the rivers flow from the believer or Jesus, Jesus is the explicit ultimate source in 7:39.

See e.g., Jub. 8:12; Sib. Or. 5:249-50; b. Yoma 54b. Cf. also James M. Scott, “Luke’s Geographical Horizon,” 483-544 in The Book of Acts in Its Graeco-Roman Setting (ed. David W. J. Gill and Conrad Gempf; vol. 2 in The Book of Acts in its First-Century Setting, 6 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1994), 526; Philip S. Alexander, “Notes on the ‘Imago Mundi’ of the Book of Jubilees,” Journal of Jewish Studies 33, nos 1-2 (1982): 197-213; Mieczyslaw Celestyn Paczkowski, “Gerusalemme – ‘ombelico del mondo’ nella tradizione cristiana antica.” SBFLA 55 (2005): 165-202.” Greeks applied the label to Delphi (e.g., Euripides Med. 667-68; Orest. 591; Pindar Pyth. 4.74; 8.59-60; 11.10).

Cf. e.g., Lloyd Gaston, No Stone On Another: Studies in the Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels (NovTSup 23; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 211; S. H. Hooke, “‘The Spirit was not yet,’” New Testament Studies 9, no. 4 (July 1963): 372-80, here 377-78; Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, A Michael Glazier Book, 2001), 132-33.

John Wilkinson, “The Incident of the Blood and Water in John 19.34,” Scottish Journal of Theology 28, no. 2 (1975): 149-72.

Although many scholars challenge this position, I have argued for the identity of the beloved disciple with the author, and that of both with the apostle John, in Keener, John, 81-139.

John selects for inclusion what he does to communicate a point (Jn 20:30-31). See e.g., Matthew Vellanickal, “Blood and Water,” Jeevadhara 8, no. 45 (1978): 218-30; James McPolin, John (New Testament Message 6; Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1979), 249; Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to Grave. A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1178-82; Craig R. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 181. Others find an allusion to water from the wilderness rock (e.g., T. Francis Glasson, Moses in the Fourth Gospel [Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, 1963], 52-53, citing church fathers).

See e.g., Robert P. Menzies, Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts (London, New York: T & T Clark International, 2004), 49-101; idem, The Development of Early Christian Pneumatology with special reference to Luke-Acts (JSNTSup 54; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 53-112; idem, “Spirit and Power in Luke-Acts: A Response to Max Turner,” JSNT 49 (1993): 11-20; Max Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 86-104; Youngmo Cho, Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile these Concepts (foreword by R. P. Menzies; Paternoster Biblical Monographs; Waynesboro, GA; Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2005), 10-51; Keener, “Pneumatology,” 69-77; idem, Spirit, 10-13, 31-33.

OT language for Israel’s covenant relationship with God (e.g., Exod 6:7; in the new covenant, Jer 24:7; 31:33-34).

Most Johannine scholars today also view him as a model for John’s primary audience; e.g., J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1968), 40; Severino Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 247-52; David Rensberger, Johannine Faith and Liberating Community (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988), 42.

Sharing rather than keeping secrets was one key element in ancient Mediterranean ideologies of friendship; see discussion in Keener, John, 1010; idem, “Friendship,” 380-88 in Dictionary of New Testament Background (ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley Porter; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 383.

On Johannine knowledge of God, see e.g., Keener, John, 234-47 (esp. 243-47); idem, “Studies in the Knowledge of God in the Fourth Gospel in Light of Its Historical Context” (M.Div. Thesis, The Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, 1986).

I.e., not on his own authority, e.g., T. Ab. 15:8; 19:4A; Philostratus Hrk. 8.2.

Cf. Heinrich Schlier, “Zum Begriff des Geistes nach dem Johannesevangelium,” 264-271 in Besinnung auf das Neue Testament (Exegetische Aufsätze und Vorträge II; Freiburg: Herder, 1964), 269: the Spirit illumines the work of Jesus in his glory.

I discuss this more fully and in more explicitly practical terms in my Gift & Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 39-42.

Although the passage involves the first disciples who were with him “from the beginning” (cf. 2:11; 8:25; 16:4; Acts 1:21-22), but John expects his audience to understand their own experience analogously (1 Jn 2:24; 3:11; 2 Jn 6).

Cf. Henry Efferin, “The Paraclete in John 14-16,” Stulos Theological Journal 1, no. 2 (1993): 149-56; earlier, Luther Sermon on Jn 16.

With e.g., C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 90; O’Day, “John,” 771; argued in Keener, John, 1030-35.

Though argued only rarely by scholars, e.g., Holwerda, Spirit, 20, n. 52; also Calvin, John, 2:81.

Many see an allusion to the temple; e.g., H. Leonard Pass, The Glory of the Father: A Study in S. John XIII-XVII (London: A. R. Mowbray & Company, 1935), 66-68; G. H. C. MacGregor, The Gospel of John (MNTC; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1928), 305.

It appears only once in the Apostolic Fathers (in Papias), twice in Josephus (Ant. 8.350; 13.41); and never, so far as I can tell, in the LXX (though 15 times in the Philonic corpus).

Many recognize a connection between the two uses in this context; see Robert Alan Berg, “Pneumatology and the History of the Johannine community: Insights from the Farewell Discourses and the First Epistle” (Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate School of Drew University, 1988; Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1989), 107-10.

This is a favorite verb for John, though not always carrying its full theological import; it appear 40 times in the Gospel, which is about 33.9% of NT uses, though John is just 11% of the NT text (i.e., over three times the NT average). The Johannine epistles employ the verb 27 times, or 22.9% of NT uses, or 13.7 times (1370% more) than average. Together the Gospel and epistles offer about 56.8% of NT examples of this verb.

Though not at 14:2-3, I do acknowledge future eschatology in John’s Gospel (see e.g., Jn 5:28-29; 6:39-40, 44, 54; 12:48; with many, e.g., Werner Georg Kümmel, The Theology of the New Testament According to its Major Witnesses—Jesus, Paul, John [trans. John E. Steely; Nashville: Abingdon, 1973], 294-95; Barrett, John, 68-69; Burge, Community, 115). Bultmann’s forced-choice logic that requires him to excise such passages as secondary ignores the coexistence of realized and future eschatology in the Qumran scrolls or, for that matter, Jesus’s teachings and Paul’s letters.

Some texts admittedly look beyond the death and resurrection to Jesus’s longer-range presence with the Father away from the disciples (14:12; 16:10); John’s love for riddles and wordplays leaves considerable ambiguity, probably deliberately.

On Jesus as the “way” to the Father’s presence here, see e.g., Robert H. Gundry, “‘In my Father's House are many Monai’ (Joh 14:2),” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 58 (1967): 68-72, here 70.

For broader applicability of Johannine promises of the Spirit, cf. e.g., Beare, “Spirit”; D. Moody Smith, “John 16:1-15,” Interpretation 33 (1, Jan. 1979): 58-62, here 60; George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 220, 268, 296; James Montgomery Boice, Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970; Exeter: Paternoster Press, n.d.), 143-44; Horton, Spirit, 120-21.

Cf. Hooker, “Baptist,” 358; Boice, Witness, 26; Walter Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1968), 105; Collins, Written, 8-11; Harrison, “John 1:14,” 25; Mathias Rissi, “Jn 1:1-18 (The Eternal Word),” Interpretation 31 (1977): 394-401, here 398; C. H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1965), 299.

Indeed, 1 Jn 2:27 may deliberately echo Jn 14:26 (with Dunn, Baptism, 197).

These confessions need not all progress from lesser to greater (M. Baron, “La progression des confessions de foi dans les dialogues de saint Jean,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne 82 [1968]: 32-44), though 20:28 is certainly the climactic one.

The background probably involves the sacrificial lamb, with Schnackenburg, John, 1:299; G. Ashby, “The Lamb of God—II,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 25 (1978): 62-65; Bruce H. Grigsby, “The Cross as an Expiatory Sacrifice in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 15 (1982): 51-80; Lightfoot, Gospel, 97; Craig Keener, “Lamb,” 641-42 in Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Developments (ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 641. This might be combined with the servant in Isa 53:7; so Schnackenburg, John, 1:300; Brown, John, 1:60-63; George L. Carey, “The Lamb of God and Atonement Theories,” Tyndale Bulletin 32 (1981): 97-122. Cf. also the sacrificial lamb of Exod 29:38-46, in Enz, “Exodus,” 214.

The probable reading here, with e.g., Bernard, John, 1:223; Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London, New York: United Bible Societies, 1971), 215. Against some scribes’ attempts to harmonize readings, John supplies a variety of christological confessions.

Some of these evoke divine or Wisdom images in Scripture or early Judaism, but “I am” is the most explicit (Exod 3:14; Isa 41:4; 43:10; cf. Lightfoot, Gospel, 134-35; Hunter, John, 89; David Mark Bell, ‘I Am’ in John’s Gospel: Literary Function, Background and Theological Implications [JSNTSup 124; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], 258). Priests apparently used these very Isaiah texts during the festival at which Jesus declared, “I am” (Ethelbert Stauffer, Jesus and His Story [trans. Richard and Clara Winston; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960], 91).

With Boismard, Prologue, 76-77.

Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: SCM, 1959), 308. I do argue for reading Jn 21 as an original part of the Gospel (Keener, John, 1219-22; cf. also Bruce, John, 398; Paul S. Minear, “The Original Functions of John 21,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102, no. 1 [1983]: 85-98); my point here is only that it is not part of the main body of the Gospel.

On ancient biographies and the Gospels see especially Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (SNTSMS 70; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992); more recently also Craig S. Keener, Christobiography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019).

Cf. Homer Od. 19.344-48, 353-60, 376, 388-93, 505; Apollodorus Epitome 1.2; Thomas, Footwashing, 40-41, 50-55.

Jesus’s act here prefigures the passion (with R. Alan Culpepper, “The Johannine Hypodeigma: A Reading of John 13,” Semeia 53 [1991]: 133-52).

B. Ket. 96a, cited by various commentators (cf. W. D. Davies, The Sermon on the Mount [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1966], 135; Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971], 141).

Early Judaism stressed the love commandment (e.g., Jub. 36:4, 8; m. Ab. 1:12; Sipra Qed. pq. 4.200.3.7; Thomas Söding, “Feindeshass und Bruderliebe. Beobachtungen zur essenischen Ethik,” Revue de Qumran 16 [4, 1995]: 601-19; Reinhard Neudecker, “‘And You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself—I Am the Lord’ [Lev 19,18] in Jewish Interpretation,” Biblica 73, no. 4 [1992]: 496-517).