50 pages • 1 hour read
Gospel of John
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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The first chapter of John is divided into three discrete sections (which in gospel studies are usually called pericopes): a theological introduction, John the Baptist’s statements attesting to Jesus’s identity, and an account of the first interactions between Jesus and some of the men who will become his disciples. The first section, which spans the opening 18 verses of the chapter, is a description of the divine identity of Jesus, here referred to as “the Word” (in Greek, the Logos): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (1:1-3). Calling Jesus “the Word” positions him as the active agent of creation and the pre-existent Wisdom of God (see Genesis 1:1; Proverbs 8:22-31). John also uses the imagery of light to describe Jesus throughout this opening section: “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (1:9).
The opening section introduces John the Baptist, a figure sent to bear witness to Jesus’s identity. The second section (verses 19-34) contains a set of narrative scenes in which John’s declarations about Jesus are recorded. John rejects any speculation that he himself might be the Christ, instead prophesying the advent of another figure who is soon to come. When Jesus appears the next day on the banks of the river, John recognizes him and hails him as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of world” and “the Son of God” (1:29, 34). This scene sets up the third major section of Chapter 1, in which two of John the Baptist’s disciples (Andrew and an unidentified man—possibly the gospel author, John) see Jesus and follow after him. After their interaction, Andrew is convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, and he invites his brother, Simon, to join them. Jesus welcomes the new addition, giving him the nickname Peter. The pattern is repeated once again, as Jesus calls another disciple, Philip, to follow him, and Philip introduces him to Nathanael.
Chapter 2 Summary
This chapter contains two pericopes, the first relating the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine, and the second showing Jesus clearing the temple in Jerusalem. The miracle story takes place in Cana, a village in the highlands of Galilee near Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth. Jesus and his disciples are invited to attend a wedding, but the event runs out of wine (which in that culture would have brought great embarrassment on the host family). Jesus’s mother, Mary, prevails on him to intervene, and he instructs the household servants to fill six large stone jars with water, and then to draw some water off and bring it to the master of the wedding feast. The water has been transformed into wine, and the master is astonished at its fine quality. (Chronologically, this is the first recorded miracle of Jesus, not only in the Gospel of John but in the whole New Testament.)
After the wedding, Jesus and the disciples go to Capernaum, a town by the Sea of Galilee, and then to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover festival. While in Jerusalem, Jesus finds that the temple courts are crowded with money changers and people selling animals, turning a place of worship into a place of commerce. Making a whip out of cords, Jesus drives them out of the temple precincts, turning over their tables in the process. (This episode is also recounted in the three synoptic gospels, although there it is placed later in the narrative sequence of Jesus’s ministry.) When confronted about these actions, Jesus answers with a prophecy that the disciples will later understand as an allegory of his own death and resurrection: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (2:19).
Chapter 3 Summary
Two pericopes dominate this chapter: first, an account of Jesus’s conversation with a Pharisee named Nicodemus, and then another section relating John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus. Nicodemus comes to meet with Jesus by night (likely because Jesus is a persona non grata to the Pharisees, a sect marked by rigid adherence to the Jewish religious laws). Nicodemus is interested in Jesus’s miraculous power and wants to know more about his teaching. This leads to some of the most famous passages in the Gospel of John, including the admonition to be “born again” (3:3) and his summary of the Christian message: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). Jesus’s discussion also refers to the Holy Spirit (3:8) and includes a foreshadowing of the crucifixion (3:14), both of which represent major theological foci of the gospel. The pericope ends without any account of whether these teachings convinced Nicodemus, though he appears again later in the gospel as a sympathetic figure.
The second pericope focuses on the baptisms conducted by Jesus and his disciples, which raise questions among John the Baptist’s followers about Jesus’s ministry. Rather than accept the premise that Jesus’s actions mark him as a rival to his own work, John the Baptist again testifies to Jesus’s messianic identity and the importance of his ministry: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (3:30). This is followed by an extended reflection on Jesus’s identity, which underscores his divinity and the centrality of his position in God’s plan. The interpretation of this final section is complicated by the fact that the original Greek does not specify where John the Baptist’s quotation ends, and thus the closing verses (31-36) might be part of his quotation, or they might be a commentary added by the gospel author.
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 contains two pericopes, a longer and a shorter one, concerning Jesus’s interactions with a Samaritan village and a subsequent miracle of healing he performs. While Jesus and his disciples are traveling through Samaria (a region between Galilee and Judea), they stop at a well outside a village. There Jesus speaks with a local woman who has come to draw water from the well (something of a scandalous conversation considering the religious and ethnic prejudice with which most Jews regarded Samaritans). After initiating the conversation, Jesus tells the woman that anyone drinking the water of that well will thirst again, but whoever drinks from his well—full of living water—will never thirst again. The woman initially thinks he is speaking literally and requests some of this water, but as they talk it becomes clear that Jesus is speaking about the spiritual fulfillment he can offer to those who come to him in faith. Jesus goes on to answer the woman’s questions about the nature of true worship, saying, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (4:24). He also reveals that he has knowledge about her life and family that he could only possess by supernatural means, and she becomes convinced that he is the Messiah. She rushes back to the village to tell her friends and neighbors, and Jesus stays and ministers in the village for two days.
In the second pericope, Jesus goes back to Galilee, where in the town of Capernaum he is called upon to heal an official’s son. Jesus criticizes the crowd for just wanting to see miracles, as if he were a magician, but he has compassion on the official and declares that his son will be healed. The official believes him and starts back home, and is met with the news that his son was healed at the moment Jesus proclaimed it. John notes that this is the second of Jesus’s miraculous signs (the first being his miracle of turning water into wine).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first four chapters of the Gospel of John serve as an introduction to Jesus’s identity and ministry, addressing the theology of his pre-existent status with God the Father, the calling of his disciples, and the beginnings of his public acts in both Galilee and Jerusalem—doing miracles, performing healings, and teaching the message of salvation through faith. The prologue (1:1-18) is of particular importance, as it establishes the gospel’s intention to address the thematic question of The Identity of Jesus in a more pointedly theological way than did the other three biblical gospels. While the other gospels display a similar understanding of Jesus and his work, they generally show it through recounting Jesus’s actions, whereas the Gospel of John adds both its own commentary and Jesus’s direct remarks on questions of his divinity, his precise relationship with the Father, and his pre-existence “in the beginning” (1:1). Similar to the other gospels, however, the Gospel of John presents Jesus not only as divine but as deeply human—the fulfillment of Jewish hopes and expectations for a Messiah. Within these first four chapters, there are multiple allusions to Old Testament stories, which the gospel interprets as foreshadowing Jesus’s coming, such as the story of Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven (see Genesis 28:11-12; John 1:51) and of Moses and the plague of snakes (see Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-15).
While the Gospel of John contains some stories that overlap with those in the other gospels (like the feeding of the 5,000, walking on water, clearing the temple, and Jesus’s death and resurrection), it also adds stories that Matthew, Mark, and Luke omitted, perhaps intentionally if it was (as most scholars believe) the last of the four gospels to be written. Unique to John are the stories of Jesus’s first miracle—turning water to wine at the wedding in Cana—and his interactions with Nicodemus (Chapter 3) and the Samaritan woman (Chapter 4). Both of those conversations stand out as surprising, even potentially scandalous, as they show Jesus dealing sympathetically with unsympathetic figures. The Samaritan woman represents a group that was universally reviled by pious Jews, while Nicodemus represents those who resisted and attacked Jesus, the Pharisees. In both cases, Jesus models one of the central themes of the Gospel of John, Love as the Foundational Christian Ethic. This love, Jesus implies, extends even to one’s enemies, as well as to outcasts and those ignored and despised by others. The conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman also introduce two prominent pairs of symbols, those of Light and Darkness and Water and Thirst. In each case, Jesus presents himself as the solution to the problems of human suffering—illumination for their benighted state, and satisfaction for their deepest longings.
The opening chapters also touch on another theme, that of Jesus’s Relation to God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The theological prologue serves to illustrate the principle of Jesus’s relation to the Father, asserting that as the pre-existent Word of God, Jesus has been in perfect unity with the Father since before the creation of the world. Jesus’s relationship to the Holy Spirit is also mentioned in these opening chapters. In Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, he presents the Spirit as the divine person who is directly active in bringing a person to life spiritually, enabling them to be “born again” (3:3-5). When Nicodemus inquires as to how such a thing is possible, Jesus connects this experience of new life in the Spirit with that person’s act of putting faith in Jesus. However, Jesus will not explain the precise nature of his relationship to the Spirit until later in the gospel.
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