That You May Have Life

What was John thinking when he sat down to write what he knew to be the greatest story that would ever be told in all of human history? What would John - a fisherman, a radically transformed Son of Thunder, the disciple Jesus loved have to say?

John begins his Gospel by setting Jesus against the widest possible horizon. John identifies Jesus as God. He begins at the beginning with the Hero of God's story: the One he knows personally; the One who captured his heart, and radically changed his life for the good. This is the story of how God brings us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life. In Jesus, the beginning is fulfilled and the new is poured out for all.

John takes out the guesswork. He’s introducing us to Jesus, explaining why He is God, and preparing us to see and believe all that Jesus is and says and does. This is why John writes the Gospel‬: ‬‬"These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name" (20:31).