4. The Christ of God
WITH US “CHRIST” HAS BECOME A PROPER NAME. We often refer to our Savior simply as “Christ”, and even if we use the fuller name “Jesus Christ” we still employ the term as no more than a name and we do not see the meaning as “Jesus the Christ”. This way of using the term is, of course, derived from the early Christians, and there is no difficulty in finding places in the New Testament where it is used in this way. But it is not the only way and it is not the original way. We could perhaps put it this way: Jesus was called “Christ” because he fulfilled all that the title signifies and in due course his title was employed so often that it came to be used as a name with no particular emphasis on its meaning. But when John tells us that he wrote “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ” (20:31), he is using the title with all the meaning it can convey. If we are to understand what John is saying throughout his Gospel, we must be clear on what “Christ” meant to first-century Christians.
The term is, of course, basically a Hebrew term. We start with the Hebrew word māšîaḥ, the participle of the verb meaning “to anoint”. Thus the word basically means “anointed”. If we transliterate this into English we get “Messiah”, and if we translate it into Greek it becomes Christos, which we transliterate as “Christ”. Thus we get the equation “Christ” = “Messiah” = “anointed”. The basic question accordingly concerns the meaning of anointing.
It turns out that more than one answer could be given to this. The Hebrew verb signifies either a smearing or a pouring. We see the former meaning when it is used of putting oil on a shield (Isa. 21:5) or paint on a house (Jer. 22:14). Most agree that when it is used of persons it means pouring over them, as when oil is poured on a priest (Exod. 28:41) or a king (1 Sam. 16:13) or a prophet (1 Kings 19:16). Anointing was part of ordinary life, and more than one verb was used for it. Ruth was instructed to anoint herself before going to Boaz’s threshing floor (Ruth 3:3), and Amos complains of people who “anoint themselves with the finest oils” (Amos 6:6). This was clearly a use more or less like that of perfume in modern times. Anointing might be used in times of festivity and be a sign of joy (Ps. 45:7); therefore it does not surprise us that it was not used in a time of mourning (2 Sam. 14:2; Dan. 10:2–3), and apparently not when fasting (2 Sam. 12:20; Matt. 6:17). Guests might expect to be anointed by their host, and Jesus pointed out the discourtesy when this was not done (Luke 7:46). Plainly anointing was widely carried out in Bible times and people then were much more familiar with the practice than we are. But these anointings in everyday life are not the significant ones for our purpose; our concern is with specifically religious anointings.
Interestingly “Messiah”, “anointed one”, in the sense of God’s chosen one, turns out to be an infrequent Old Testament term. It does occur (Dan. 9:25, 26),1 but not often. In the Old Testament it is not the precise term but the concept of anointing that is important. The first example of the practice in our Old Testament is at the consecration of Aaron and his sons. God tells Moses that he is to “anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them” (Exod. 28:41), which makes it plain that the anointing was a solemn religious ceremony with far-reaching significance. It was part of the process by which a priest was set apart for his office. When he was ordained to his ministry he was consecrated to the service of God, and his anointing symbolized this. Precise directions were given as to the composition of the oil that was to be used on such occasions (Exod. 30:22–25), and it was expressly laid down that this “holy anointing oil” was not to be used at any other time. Anyone who offended by a profane use of this oil was to be cut off from his people (Exod. 30:32–33). So significant was the act of anointing that the priest could be called “the anointed priest” (Lev. 4:3). Anointing was extended to the altar (Exod. 29:36) and to a variety of objects used in worship (Exod. 30:26–28).
In Old Testament usage, while the anointing of priests was clearly very important, it was the anointing of leaders, and especially of kings, that was most often mentioned. Thus Saul was to be anointed “to be prince over my people Israel” (1 Sam. 9:16), as was David (1 Sam. 16:12–13). Israel’s king is frequently called “the Lord’s anointed” (e.g., 1 Sam. 26:16; 2 Sam. 1:14, 16; cf. Ps. 2:2, etc.).2 Indeed, sometimes Yahweh is said to do the anointing, though of course he does it through an agent (2 Kings 9:3, 6; cf. 2 Sam. 12:7). Apparently anointing was the decisive act in making someone king, for we read such things as “they had anointed him king in place of his father” (1 Kings 5:1); “I anoint you king over Israel” (2 Kings 9:3).3
These are the two figures who are most spoken of in connection with anointing, the priest and the king. Occasionally there is an anointing of a prophet (1 Kings 19:16), and this, of course, may have taken place on unrecorded occasions. But as far as our records go, this was not frequent.4 The concept may be used metaphorically, and other servants of God are sometimes described as anointed. Thus the heathen king Cyrus is spoken of in this way (Isa. 45:1), and the prophet speaks of being anointed “to bring good tidings to the afflicted” (Isa. 61:1). Ezekiel speaks of “an anointed cherub” (Ezek. 28:14), a mysterious figure, but clearly one who is specially chosen by God to render significant service.5 Zechariah speaks of “the two anointed who stand by the LORD of the whole earth” (Zech. 4:14).
That the king is the Lord’s anointed gives him a special place in the Israelite understanding of things. It meant among other things that it is Yahweh who is supreme; the earthly sovereign over the people of God rules in the name of God and is answerable to God. As they looked into the future, the prophets of Israel saw a time when Yahweh would rule over all the earth. It was the rule of Yahweh that mattered, but sometimes it was held that there would be a special place for a “son of David”, the king who would reign in the last days. This figure could be understood as the Messiah, and there were times when many looked for his coming. He would not be important in himself, but Yahweh would work in him to accomplish his will and it was this that gave him importance.6 Some sections of Judaism found little or no place for the Messiah (e.g., the apocrypha, the Mishnah, Philo), though others emphasized his place. The men of Qumran thought that there would be two Messiahs, one kingly and the other priestly, and they held that the priestly Messiah would take the first rank.
Sometimes messiahship was understood in terms of the Davidic king, but there was also the Son of man in Daniel 7 to serve as the model. It cannot be said that there was anything approaching a uniform expectation, but there was enough messianic speculation and sufficient variety in the way it was understood to make this an important category for the New Testament writers. For John in particular it was highly significant, and he has a good deal to say about the Messiah and his relationship to the heavenly Father.
It is a teasing question whether John is making an allusion to messiahship in his story of Mary’s anointing of Jesus (12:1–8). Nobody says anything about messiahship, but there is no doubt that John is describing an anointing. It is also a fact that Jesus interprets the anointing in terms of his death (12:7), the heart of his messianic activity. Probably we should take the incident as no more than a social happening of an unusually interesting kind. But at least we can say that the Messiah received an unusual anointing.
Messianic Titles
In his opening chapter John makes use of a considerable number of titles with which to refer to Jesus. Some of them are recognized messianic titles, such as “Messiah” itself, which is then explained as “Christ” (1:41). John also writes of “the Son of God” (1:34, 49), “the King of Israel” (1:49),7 and “the Son of man” (1:51). To them we must add a number of other titles which are not strictly messianic, but coming as they do so freely in this first part of this Gospel, they reinforce the point John is making, that they refer to one who is certainly the Messiah but who is much more than the Messiah of traditional expectation. The Messiah of whom John writes is called “the Word” (1:1), “God” (1:1), “the light of men” (1:4), “the true light” (1:9), “the only-begotten from the Father” (1:14), a greater than John the Baptist (1:15, 26–27, 30), “only-begotten God” (1:18), “the Lord” (1:23), “the Lamb of God” (1:29, 36), “he who baptizes in Holy Spirit” (1:33), probably “God’s chosen one” (1:34), “Rabbi” (1:38, 49), “he of whom Moses and the prophets wrote” (1:45).8
As the Gospel unfolds, other titles make their appearance, such as “the Holy One of God” (6:69)9 and “he who comes in the name of the Lord” (12:13; perhaps we should take the title here as simply “the Coming One”).10 It is plain that with his mass of titles John is drawing attention to Jesus’ uniqueness. The person who could fulfil all that all these titles mean was no ordinary person. He was not even an ordinary Messiah, if I may put it that way. John is not speaking of the kind of Messiah that the ordinary person in first-century Palestine might have expected or even the kind of Messiah that pious and devout servants of God might look for. He is the Messiah indeed, but the Christians gave the term a new content. We cannot look at Jewish expectation and say, “That is what John thought Jesus to be.” Jesus fulfilled all that to which Jewish expectation pointed, but more, much more. And sometimes John corrects Jewish misapprehensions about the Messiah. Many of the Jewish people had profound misunderstandings of who the Messiah would be and what the Messiah would do. It was part of John’s aim to correct such misunderstandings so that his readers would understand what messiahship means and how it was manifested in Jesus.
Some commentators reject the idea that Jesus was in fact recognized as the Christ as early as in Andrew’s words to Peter (1:41). They point out that the Synoptic Gospels make clear that it was a long time before the followers of Jesus came to anything like an adequate understanding of his Person. But this is probably not a valid objection. It is not so much the use of the term “Messiah” as the content put into it that counts. It was one thing to say that Jesus was the Messiah and quite another to comprehend what Jesus understood the term to mean. Andrew would not have understood this so early, but that does not mean that he did not use the term. There must have been some reason for people like Andrew to associate themselves with Jesus, and a conviction that he was the Messiah, however that term was understood, would account for it.
Nathanael’s greeting of Jesus as “the King of Israel” (1:49) is noteworthy. Outside this Gospel the term is used twice only in the New Testament. It is used in mockery when scoffers invite Jesus to come down from the cross (Matt. 27:42), and again in Mark where the corresponding invitation is to “the Christ, the King of Israel” (Mark 15:32). While those who used the term were not serious, it is perhaps worth noting that they use the correct term for the ruler over the people of God, whereas “the King of the Jews” used by the Magi (Matt. 2:2), Pilate, and the Roman soldiers (Mark 15:2, 18, etc.) is natural enough for Gentiles, but not the term informed Jews would use. It does not bring out the people of God idea, and this was important for Nathanael (and for John). William Temple brings out another point with his comment, “Note the strongly Hebraic mentality for which it is in the order of climax to pass from Son of God to King of Israel.”11 In recording this encounter thus early in his Gospel John is making it clear from the beginning that Jesus did indeed fulfil all that is implied in the term “Christ”.
The point is made in another way in some words of John the Baptist. When the delegation came from Jerusalem to look into his teaching, they asked him, “Who are you?” to which he replied, “I am not the Christ” (1:19–20). Now nobody had said that he was, or even raised the Christ question at all. But his I is emphatic; it is as though the Baptist is saying, “It is not I who am the Christ.” That this is seen as important is clear from a dispute at a later time between the followers of John and a Jew about purification (3:25). For some reason the fact that Jesus was having greater success than John was brought into the discussion. John expressed satisfaction with this, and among other things he called his followers to witness that he had said, “I am not the Christ” (3:28). Again there is the emphatic pronoun and the implication that there was a Christ, though it was not the Baptist.12
The Samaritans and the Christ
The fact that Jesus is the Christ is brought out in the story of the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus talked by Jacob’s well. The woman tried a number of ways to avoid the challenge with which Jesus was confronting her, the last being her statement: “I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called ‘Christ’; when that one comes, he will declare everything to us” (4:25). This leads Jesus to say, “I AM he, I who am talking to you” (4:26). A little later the woman puts it more tentatively when she speaks to the men of her town, asking “Can this be the Christ?” (4:29).
Unfortunately there is little information about Samaritan ideas in New Testament times. Since the Samaritans accepted the Pentateuch as sacred Scripture they recognized that the Messiah would come in due course, but their rejection of the rest of the Old Testament meant that they had little information about him. It is generally agreed that they used the term Taheb rather than Messiah and that they saw him primarily as a teacher.13 He would restore their worship and be a priest. This meant that their concept of messiahship lacked the nationalistic features that mattered so much to the Jews, and this may be the reason why Jesus accepted the term in talking with a Samaritan lady of no influence. It is clear from all four Gospels that he did not make use of the term among the Jews in general. The Jewish expectation was so frequently identified with armies and empire, with combat and conquest, that it would be misleading for Jesus to speak of himself as Messiah before the Jewish public. But among these rural Samaritans it was quite another matter.
For John it was another opportunity to bring out one of his central tenets. He is not concerned to say in what way the Samaritan concept of messiahship agreed with and differed from the Jewish view. He is concerned with the fact that all that is meant in messiahship found its fulfilment in Jesus. Let his readers know that on one occasion Jesus had been confronted with what the Messiah would do and he had made the claim that he was that Messiah.
In doing this he reports that Jesus used the emphatic “I AM”, speech in the very style of deity. In Greek it is, of course, not necessary to use the personal pronoun as the subject of a verb, because the form of the verb shows what the subject is (e.g., “am” can have as its subject only “I”, so the Greeks saw no need to say “I”; the verb was sufficient). But if the subject is to be emphasized (“I am” rather than “I am”), the pronoun is used. When, however, the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the translators evidently reasoned that a specially emphatic style was appropriate to deity and they habitually put in the pronouns. It is this kind of speech that we have here. It is too much to say that Jesus is claiming to be God by speaking in this way, but it is plain enough that he is employing unusual and solemn language.14 Ethelbert Stauffer puts a good deal of emphasis on this formula. He thinks that the woman would not have understood the full significance of what Jesus was saying but that “Jesus chooses intentionally the veiled formula of self-revelation from Isa. 52.6, without taking account of the messianist terminology of the Samaritans. His saying of self-revelation is a mystery.…”15 But he goes on to affirm that John records the expression “to imply that Jesus pronounced the first significant, but as yet half-veiled, words concerning the secret of his person not in Judea or Galilee, but on that occasion in Samaria.”16 Clearly John regarded what Jesus said as highly significant for an understanding of who and what he was. And equally clearly he was linking Jesus in his essential being with God rather than with created beings.
The woman was the means of getting the men of her town to come and listen to Jesus. In the end they were led to say that they believed in Jesus, not because of anything she had said but because they had heard him for themselves and they had come to know him as “truly the Savior of the world” (4:42). This unusual expression is found again in the New Testament only in 1 John 4:14. The word “Savior” points to the truth that people cannot save themselves. We are all sinners and we need help. John is telling his readers that that help is available.17 Jesus came as Savior. He was a teacher and a leader as well, but importantly John sees him as one who saves, a note that he strikes several times (3:17; 5:34; 10:9; 12:47). “Savior” is a general word and does not tell us in itself from what we are saved or by what means. For that we must look at the rest of the Gospel. But that Jesus is our Savior is what receives the emphasis at this point.
And the salvation he brings about is no parochial affair. He is the Savior “of the world” (so also in 3:17; 12:47).18 Thus far John has told us a little about Jesus’ ministry among the Jews, but his addition of this narrative about what happened among the Samaritans extends the horizon beyond Judaism. The Samaritans appear to recognize something of this with their reference to “the world”, and certainly John will expect his readers to understand that this beginning points to the universality of the salvation Jesus would bring.
Jewish Misconceptions
Sometimes John sets forth his purpose by drawing attention to the way the Jews or some of them had misunderstood messiahship. We see this, for example, at the end of his story of the healing of the lame man by the pool Bethesda. The healing was followed by a discourse in which among other things Jesus upbraided his hearers for their lack of faith. He went on to say that they should not think that he will accuse them to the Father. Rather it is Moses in whom they trusted who will be their accuser, “for if you believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of me” (5:46). The word “Christ” is not used at this point, but clearly that is what is meant, for it is the coming of the Messiah that is at stake. The Jews rejected Jesus because they revered Moses above all else, and they could not reconcile what Jesus was saying with what Moses had written. They accepted Moses’ words as the law that was above all other laws. Jesus is saying that for all their nominal adherence to the teaching of the great lawgiver they had gone astray. They had misunderstood Moses, as their rejection of him shows. Really to follow Moses means that one will follow Jesus. There is no opposition between them.19
Another misunderstanding follows soon afterwards. John goes on to tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000, a miracle that made a great impression on some in the crowd. They spoke of him as “truly the prophet”, and as “he who comes into the world (6:14). “The” prophet is probably the prophet prophesied by Moses as being one like himself (Deut. 18:15),20 and it is perhaps curious that they refer to this prophet rather than the Messiah. The delegation from the authorities in Jerusalem to John the Baptist certainly differentiated the prophet from the Messiah (1:19–21). But from early days the Christians held that Christ was both this prophet and the Messiah (see Acts 3:22), as apparently the Samaritans did also. A possible explanation of the present passage is that the Galileans who saw the miracle viewed the prophet and the Messiah as identical; they did not share the opinion of the Jews at Jerusalem.
This will be the explanation also of the fact that some of them wanted to make a king out of Jesus (6:15). This accords with the widespread expectation that the Messiah would defeat the Romans and drive them out of the country. But Jesus was not a military Messiah. He had no intention of killing people. On the contrary, he would give himself up to death for them. John is telling us that Jesus was indeed King, but not the kind of king the Galileans wanted.21 There is irony in this situation. These zealots tried to make Jesus into the kind of king they wanted, one who would lead warriors and give them victory over the Romans, and in doing so they blinded themselves to the reality that Jesus was already indeed a king and they forfeited a place in the kingdom that he was offering them.
“He who comes into the world” (cf. 11:27; 12:13) appears to be another way of referring to the Messiah. He is one whose origin is not of this earth (cf. 3:31), one who is sent by God to accomplish God’s purpose. This title was not one apparently that had a wide circulation, but it does point to the fact that the Messiah would come to this earth to do God’s will. There may well have been a marked eschatological emphasis, though it is hard to know how much of this would have been appreciated by the Galileans. What is clear is that they were hailing Jesus as the one prophesied long before, one who would come into the world to do God’s will in a special way.
It is impossible to hold that the Galileans had a correct understanding of any of the three terms as they applied to Jesus. But John records what the Galileans said, for their words had fuller meanings than they knew. John evidently saw it as important that his readers should come to understand what those fuller meanings tell us about Jesus. His messiahship had many facets, and here John is making the point that Jesus was God’s prophet, God’s king, and the one that God had planned to send from of old.
In the middle of all these misconceptions, now and then the truth peeped through. John speaks of some of the Jerusalem crowd who believed in Jesus and said, “The Christ, when he comes, won’t do more signs than those that this man has done, will he?” (7:31). It cannot be said that these people were profound theologians, but at least they had discerned that the miracles were more than works of power. They saw that the miracles were “signs” that pointed to Christ. And they responded to the pointers they saw as best they knew.22
Where Does the Messiah Come from?
John records a visit of Jesus to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles and tells us that some of the Jerusalemites were very impressed by his teaching. These people were aware of a plot to kill Jesus and were astonished accordingly that he was teaching openly and unhindered. “Surely the rulers do not know truly that this man is the Christ?” they asked (7:26). The form of their question shows that they expected the answer “No”, but the interesting thing is that they felt constrained to ask it. If there was a plot to kill Jesus and if he was teaching openly, then it was to be expected that the rulers would arrest him. But they were taking no action. Why not? The Jerusalemites were puzzled, and their tentative explanation was that the rulers knew in reality (alēthōs) that Jesus was the Messiah. That would explain their failure to take action against him, but, of course, it did not explain the plot to kill him. It was all very puzzling.
Could Jesus really be the Messiah? They look at the question and bring forward an objection. “This man we know,” they say, and go on that they know where he comes from, but as for the Messiah, “when he comes, no one knows where he is from” (7:27).23 As we saw earlier, many ideas about the Messiah were in circulation and there was disagreement about his origin. Some found no great mystery. For example, when King Herod asked the scribes where the Christ would be born, they were able to point to a prophecy of Micah and tell him that Bethlehem was the place (Matt. 2:4–6). Later in this chapter John tells of people who could cite Scripture to show that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem of David’s line (7:41–42). But it is beyond doubt that some among the Jews held that the origin of the Messiah was quite unknown.
One way of expressing this was to say that he would suddenly “come up out of the heart of the sea” (4 Ezra 13:3). Another way was to say that he would be “revealed”, the implication being that he was existent, but not known to people as the Messiah until the revelation took place (4 Ezra 7:28; 13:32; 2 Bar. 29:3). This idea is found among the Rabbis, as when we read a saying of R. Zera: “Three come unawares: Messiah, a found article and a scorpion” (Sanh. 97a). The idea persisted, and in the second century Justin gives expression to it in some words of Trypho: “But Christ—if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere—is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all.”24 The Jewish passages cited do not say expressly that Messiah’s origin is unknown, but they presume that he will exist as a man in this world, quite unknown as Messiah until the time comes when God would have him commence his work. This idea may well have been derived from some Old Testament passages. Thus we read: “Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal. 3:1–2; cf. Dan. 9:25).
The idea that the origin of the Messiah is quite unknown was clearly the concept of messiahship that this section of the crowd had grasped. They say that they know where Jesus comes from (7:27), and therefore he is disqualified from being the Messiah. It is another piece of Johannine irony that if they really had known where Jesus came from, they would have known that he was indeed the Messiah. But their confident knowledge of his earthly family blinds them to the reality of his relationship to the heavenly Father.
Jesus uses this statement of the Jerusalemites to introduce some teaching about his origin. He starts from their claim: “So you know me, and you know where I am from!” (7:28). He does not dispute their claim, which in one sense was true: they knew that he came from Nazareth. But more important was the fact that they did not know that he came from God, they did not know that he was not on some self-chosen mission but had been sent by the heavenly Father. An important point throughout this Gospel is that Jesus had been sent,25 and sent, as Jesus now says, by him who is true, “whom you do not know” (7:28). Being Messiah means (among other things) being sent by God.
A little later this question of origin comes up again. Some of the people were impressed by Jesus’ teaching and thought he must be “the prophet” (i.e., the prophet of Deut. 18:15), which provoked others to say that he was the Christ (7:40–41). This was immediately rejected on the grounds that Jesus came from Galilee, whereas the Christ comes “of the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the town where David was” (7:42). They say, “the Scripture said”, which usually denotes a definite passage in Scripture, but there is none that records the words they actually use. It seems that they are trying to give the general tenor of scriptural teaching. And since their Bible located the Messiah in Bethlehem, they held that it ruled out any possibility of a Galilean Christ.
Once again we have an example of John’s irony. Had they but known it, their very objection was an attestation of Jesus’ messiahship, for he was in fact born in Bethlehem. The irony may in fact go deeper, for the place of birth of God’s Messiah here on earth is not nearly as important as the fact that his origin is in heaven and that it is the heavenly Father who has sent him on his mission.26
Opposition
In the discussions among the crowds in Jerusalem at which we have just been looking, it becomes clear that there were differing opinions about the Messiah. Some people felt that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and some held that there were insuperable difficulties in the way of holding such an opinion. It seems that among the rulers opinion was hardening since they declined to give credence to what Jesus was teaching. This comes out clearly in the story of the man blind from birth to whom Jesus gave sight. The miracle provoked spirited discussion, and the cured man put up a surprisingly strong argument when he was confronted by the Pharisees who wanted to condemn Jesus. At one point in the discussion “the Jews” (evidently the Jewish authorities) summoned the man’s parents to ask how he had received his sight. They testified to the fact that the healed man was their son and that he had been born blind, but they would say nothing about how he had received his sight. John explains that they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had agreed “that if anyone confessed him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue” (9:22).
The term I have translated “put out of the synagogue” (aposynagōgos) is not explained, but it is generally agreed that it means something like excommunication. The problem is that, while excommunication in some form is certainly ancient (cf. Ezra 10:8), there is very little information about what it involved and how it was carried out in New Testament times. The Mishnah says that Simeon b. Shetah spoke of pronouncing a ban against Onias the Circle-maker (Taan. 3:8), and since that Rabbi is dated c. 80 B.C. it is clear that the practice antedates New Testament times. At a later time there were two kinds of excommunication, nidduy, which lasted for 30 days, and ḥērem, a lifetime ban. Both cut the banned off from all normal dealings with the Jewish community, though apparently they could still join in worship (Midd. 2:2). The ban could be lifted if the elders thought it proper to do so.
All this makes it very curious that so many scholars assume that John is making an anachronistic statement here and reading back the practice of his own time into the time of Jesus.27 The fact is that we have no more real knowledge of the way excommunication was practised at the time this Gospel was written (and for that matter, no real knowledge of the date of the Gospel) than of what was done in Jesus’ day. Specifically, while a general curse on heretics was included in the prayers towards the end of the first century and Christians may well have been included in this, we have no information about any formal excommunication of Christians until after any feasible date for this Gospel. There was certainly no automatic exclusion of Christians from the synagogue during the New Testament period, for in Acts we see them constantly at worship in the synagogues, and Paul, for example, seems to have made a practice of going to the synagogue first when he came to a new centre. But excommunication did exist, and opposition to Jesus did exist. We have no real reason for denying what John says;28 our best understanding is that the Jerusalem authorities imposed some form of ban arising out of their hostility to Jesus, but that this was not yet a formal and lasting policy.
What John is telling us, then, is that some people were saying that Jesus was the Christ and that the Jerusalem authorities were imposing some form of punishment on anyone who did this. Again he is emphasizing the centrality of Jesus’ messiahship and suggesting that it was important to hold to it even though it might mean suffering.
Perplexity about the Christ
What has been clear in the references to Jesus’ messiahship we have looked at so far is that Jesus understood the term in a way very different from that held by most of his contemporaries. He did not often use the term, and it would seem that to a large extent this was because it would have given his hearers a wrong impression. They would have thought of him in terms of armies and battles and the overthrow of oppressors like the Romans. He was concerned with alienation from God, with the salvation of people from their sinful and self-centred lives, with the importance of love and lowly service rather than the selfish pursuit of one’s own ends.
This was bound to bring him into conflict with some of his hearers. John tells us of an incident at the time of the Feast of the Dedication when Jesus was walking in Solomon’s colonnade. Some Jews crowded round him and asked a question whose meaning is not completely clear. Most translations agree with RSV, “How long will you keep us in suspense?” (10:24).29 If this is the way the words are to be taken, the Jews are accusing Jesus of obscurity; he had not made his claims plain and they did not know whether he was saying that he was the Messiah or not. It is somewhat surprising that so many translations give this rendering since the Greek does not usually have this kind of meaning elsewhere.
An alternative is to understand the words as signifying something like, “Why do you take away our life?” This can be supported by the fact that no farther away than verse 18 we have an example of this verb with the meaning “No one takes it (i.e., my life) from me”. If this is the way it is to be understood, then the Jews are discerning that the general thrust of Jesus’ teaching meant the end of Judaism as they knew it (cf. the chief priests and the Pharisees in 11:48). He has told them that they will die in their sins unless they put their trust in him (8:21, 24), and the sheep not of this fold (10:16) seems to mean that he will have followers outside the fold of Judaism. The kind of Judaism with which they were familiar with all its exclusiveness and its contempt for the Gentiles is not compatible with such a program.
They realize that at the heart of it all is the question of Jesus’ messiahship. If he really is the Messiah, that is one thing; if he is a false claimant, then it is quite another. As we have seen in our study of earlier passages, there is quite a bit in Jesus’ teaching that makes it clear that he is indeed the Messiah, but his concept of messiahship is very different from that of the Jews in general. He will never be recognized as Messiah by people who are set in the old ways and cannot conceive of the Messiah as anything other than a conquering general. He can be recognized only by those who are really his sheep (10:26).
So when they say to him, “If you are you the Christ, tell us plainly” (10:24), they are asking for something impossible. They did not understand what the Messiah would be like, so how could he give a plain reply to their demand? To answer either “Yes, I am” or “No, I am not” would be misleading. What Jesus does accordingly is to say, “I told you and you do not believe”, and then to go on, “the works that I do in the name of my Father, these bear witness about me” (10:25). This can scarcely mean that Jesus has said anything like “I am the Messiah”, for he has not done this (other than exceptionally to the woman of Samaria, 4:26, and the man born blind, 9:35–38). He is saying that “the works” are important. If his questioners had paid attention to what Jesus actually did instead of looking for him to tell them whether he fitted their specifications of the Messiah or not, they would have had the answer to their question. His deeds showed plainly enough that he had come from God to do God’s will. His whole manner of life shows who he is.
“But”, Jesus says, using the strong adversative, “you (emphatic) do not believe, because you are not of my sheep” (10:26). In recording these words John is making it clear that Jesus’ messiahship is such that it is not visible to unbelievers. Those who set their face against the witness God provides will never see Jesus as Messiah. That does not mean that he is not the Messiah. He is. But being Messiah means doing the works that God has given him to do, and Jesus has done that.
Lifting Up the Messiah
In the chapter in which he concludes his account of the public ministry of Jesus, John tells us that the Master said to the people, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”, to which he adds this explanation, “This he spoke signifying by what death he would die” (12:32–33). This elicits a surprising response. The crowd sets itself in opposition to Jesus with some emphatic pronouns: “We have heard … how do you say …?” (12:34). They are not going along with what he has said but recognizing opposing points of view. They say that they have heard from the law “that the Christ abides for ever”—which leads us to wonder where they got this from. While the sentiment is unobjectionable, it is not easy to see this teaching in the law and they cite no reference. They go on to ask, “How do you say that the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?” Apparently they recognize that being “lifted up” means dying, and they cannot reconcile this with their understanding of Scripture.
It is surely this that John has in mind. For the Jews the “lifting up” of Jesus on the cross, the sign of the curse of God (Deut. 21:22–23), showed that he could not possibly be the Messiah. For John, being lifted up on the cross was the heart of messiahship. Once again this Evangelist is making it clear that Jesus is the Messiah but that the character of his messiahship is all too readily misunderstood by many of his hearers. Being Messiah, as John was conveying the thought to his readers, was not a matter of a victorious military campaign followed by a reign in splendid earthly magnificence. It was a death on a cross.
The truth about messiahship could be recognized, and John has given an example in the case of Martha. When her brother died and Jesus came to the sisters, he said that the person who lives and believes in him will never die, and asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” She replied, “Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who comes into the world” (11:26–27). The words match up with those John uses when he writes of the purpose of his Gospel (20:30–31). They show that there were people who could understand something of his messiahship and enter into life by believing in him.30
That true messiahship meant something very different from messiahship as it was currently understood among the Jews is made clear by some words in the great prayer recorded in chapter 17, where we read, “And this is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (17:3). Here messiahship is linked with eternal life, and this life is understood as the knowledge of God and of Jesus the Messiah. We are a long way from armies and battles and politics and all the paraphernalia of Jewish messianism. This is the case also when John tells us that the reason for writing his book is “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”, and adds, “and that believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). It is important that the readers of this book understand what “Messiah” means because it is only by seeing what “Messiah” really means and seeing also that Jesus was that Messiah that they will believe in him and so will enter into life. Small wonder that throughout his book John has given such close attention to the importance of understanding what Messiah signifies. He has sometimes done this by drawing attention to things that Jesus said and did, and sometimes he has preferred to bring out the true meaning of Messiah by citing the erroneous views of the Jews of the day and letting his readers appreciate the falsity of such views. But throughout he has made it clear that Jesus was indeed the Messiah of Jewish expectation and that in him all the messianic hopes and promises find their fulfilment.
1. Since there is no article, most translations agree with RSV, “an anointed one”. Eric Heaton reminds us that “the title the Messiah never occurs in the OT”, and he sees here a reference to the high priest (The Book of Daniel, London, 1964, p. 214).
2. F. Hesse finds this use 30 (29) times. He adds that the high priest is given the title six times (TDNT, IX, p. 502).
3. The Old Testament never says why anointing was used in the making of kings, but S. Szikszai may be right when he says, “it was of decisive importance, for it conveyed the power for the exercise of royal authority” (IDB, I, p. 139).
4. Ps. 105:15 records God as saying: “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!” on which A. F. Kirkpatrick comments, “The patriarchs were not actually anointed, but the term is applied to them as bearing the seal of a Divine consecration in virtue of which their persons were sacred and inviolable. Abraham is called a prophet in Gen. xx.7 as an intercessor, and the term is applied to the patriarchs generally as the recipients of Divine revelation” (The Book of Psalms, Cambridge, 1910, p. 618).
5. Assuming that RSV is correct, John W. Wevers holds that “The word ‘anointed’ is a later commentary on the word, but an incorrect one” (Ezekiel, Grand Rapids, 1982, p. 157). Herbert G. May says that “anointed guardian cherub” is “as difficult to understand as to translate”, but he raises no question of its originality (IB, VI, p. 221).
6. Cf. E. Jenni, “we must understand clearly that in OT expectations of the future the Messiah plays only a subordinate role”; the Messiah is not an independent figure but “the representative and instrument of Yahweh” (IDB, III, p. 362).
7. R. Schnackenburg points out that Nathanael did not recognize all that “Son of God” (which precedes “King of Israel”) implies; otherwise Jesus would not have promised a fuller revelation (1:50–51). He goes on, “The titles used by Nathanael are meant as Messianic, but provide the reader with the possibility of a deeper understanding” (The Gospel according to St John, I, New York, 1968, p. 319).
8. R. H. Lightfoot comments on the titles in this opening chapter: “In the course of this gospel we shall learn that some of these titles, although they played an important, even an essential, part in enlightening those who came to know the Lord at first through them, soon proved inadequate to describe His Person. It seems as though, in these introductory verses, St. John enumerates these titles at the outset, in order that, while not allowing them to be forgotten … he may pass beyond them and impart to his readers, in the chapters which describe the ministry, the deeper and fuller understanding, which he wishes them to have of the Lord and of His work” (St. John’s Gospel, London, 1956, pp. 99–100).
9. Vincent Taylor says of “the Holy One of God” that “It describes a man set apart and consecrated to the service of God. In some early Christian communities it may have been used for a time as a Messianic name”, though he does not consider it “an accepted Messianic title” (The Names of Jesus, London, 1953, p. 80).
10. Taylor says that this title “had only a brief and restricted currency in certain circles. It has a marked eschatological tone, and its origin is probably to be found in the proclamation of John the Baptist” (ibid., p. 79).
11. Readings in St. John’s Gospel (London, 1947), p. 31.
12. Marcus Dods gives the meaning of John’s words as “ ‘I am not the Christ,’ but another is” (The Expositor’s Greek Testament, I, Grand Rapids, 1979 reprint, p. 693).
13. Cf. T. H. Gaster, “The Taheb is not a messiah in the Jewish sense of an anointed prince. Rather is he the prophet foretold in Deut. 18:18” (IDB, IV, p. 194).
14. Sir Edmund Hoskyns commented, “Jesus is more than either Jew or Samaritan had comprehended in the word ‘Christ’. He is the answer of God to the sin of the world” (The Fourth Gospel, London, 1947, p. 238).
15. Jesus and His Story (London, 1960), p. 152.
16. Ibid., p. 153. Stauffer puts these words in italics.
17. Cf. Alan Richardson, “Man is not saved by wisdom or right knowledge (Gnosticism), nor by merit or right actions (Judaism), nor yet by mystical absorption into deity (Hellenistic mysticism), but by the act of God in the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ” (IDB, IV, p. 179).
18. H. Sasse points out that this gives a new meaning to “world”: “The kosmos is now understood as the theatre of salvation history, as the locus of revelation in Christ, and in consequence it appears in a wholly new light.… The understanding of the kosmos depends always on what is known of the sōtēr tou kosmou” (TDNT, III, p. 892).
19. Cf. F. L. Godet, “Every true disciple of Moses is on the way to becoming a Christian; every bad Jew is on that towards rejecting the Gospel” (Commentary on the Gospel of John, I, Grand Rapids reprint of 1893 edn., n.d., p. 490).
20. This prophet seems to have been of interest to John, for he refers to him in 1:21, 25; 7:40 as well as here, which is more than we might have expected for a figure who does not loom large in messianic discussions generally.
21. Cf. C. J. Wright, “They wish to make Jesus to be other than Himself. The enthusiasm of the crowd is as blind as was the antagonism of the rulers in Jerusalem.… The rulers misunderstood the claims of one who knew the Father in unique filial trust and obedience. The crowd misunderstood the nature of His Mission. His spiritual consciousness antagonised the traditional orthodoxy of the first; His spiritual Mission was hidden to the materialistic aims of the second” (Jesus the Revelation of God, London, 1950, p. 170).
22. Floyd V. Filson may perhaps be a little hard on them when he says that they believed “with a limited and querulous faith. They recognized that Jesus’ miracles were signs that God approved him, but they did not confess him to be their Christ; in fact, they spoke as if the coming of the Christ were still future. They still did not have the full faith which this Gospel was written to promote” (Saint John, London, 1963, p. 72). Granted that their faith was not yet as full as we would wish, at least John does not criticise them for having it.
23. Lesslie Newbigin puts their attitude this way: “Is he really the Messiah? No—that is impossible. It is universally accepted that the coming of the Messiah will be a mystery. His origin will be unknown. ‘The Lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his temple’ (Mal. 3:1). But there is no mystery about this man: he is Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth in Galilee” (The Light Has Come, Grand Rapids, 1982, p. 97).
24. Dialogus contra Tryphonem 8; ANF, I, p. 199. I am not aware of any other passage that speaks of Elijah as anointing the Messiah.
25. John uses apostellō 28 times and pempō 32 times, in both cases the most in any New Testament book. He uses both verbs for a variety of sendings. Thus the view that he uses one of them to denote sending on a mission and the other sending generally seems without foundation. More important is the fact that with both verbs in the majority of cases the sending by the Father is in mind (apostellō 17 times out of 28; pempō 24 times out of 32). That God has “sent” Jesus is one of the key thoughts of this Gospel. See further pp. 102–104 below.
26. Cf. Barrett, “all disputes about the birth place of the Messiah, the heavenly Man, are far wide of the point” (The Gospel according to St. John,2 Philadelphia, 1978, p. 331).
27. Cf. Barnabas Lindars, “commentators generally see here, not a reference to punishments for normal offences, but the actual situation which obtained after the expulsion of the Minim in the late eighties of the first century” (The Gospel of John, London, 1972, p. 347).
28. “It is questionable whether there is any inherent reason for declaring this to be unhistorical” (C. F. D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament, London, 1962, p. 107).
29. The Greek is heōs pote tēn psychēn hēmōn aireis; BAGD cite one passage where the expression has a meaning like RSV, but mostly in LXX tēn psychēn airō refers to lifting up the soul to God and the like (Ps. 25:1; 86:4, etc.).
30. Cf. J. C. Ryle, “Dark and dim as her views were, it was a great thing for a solitary Jewish woman to have got hold of so much truth, when within two miles, in Jerusalem, all who held such a creed as hers were excommunicated and persecuted” (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, St. John, II, London, 1957, p. 300).