Staring at the Son

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But 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.

So wrote the apostle John at the climax to his eyewitness biography of his good friend, Jesus of Nazareth. Having spent the previous three years in each other's pockets, there was far too much material to include in John's gospel. So he made the decision to pull together selected highlights of the words and deeds of the one who'd turned his life upside down.

John's famous purpose statement (above, taken from John 20:30-31) doubles up as a masterful summary of his whole book. John's intent, now as then, was that on reading his gospel, people would become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah (seen especially in chapters 1-4), the Son of God (chapters 5-10) and that by believing we might have life in his name (chapters 11-21).

In the Autumn of 2017 at Highfields Church, we studied John 1-4. In compelling and surprising ways, we were confronted with truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited, promised saviour-king of God's people, whose advent could be summarised as 'out with the old, in the with the new'.

Three and a half years later, we're picking up the story. Bracketed by two signs performed on the Sabbath (healings by the pool of Bethsaida and of the man born blind), John chapters 5-10 powerfully present Jesus saying and doing things that only God should be able to do. His divine authority flows from his divine identity. This is no ordinary saviour. And so the text forces us to answer that most pressing of questions: how will we respond after staring at the Son?

Dave Gobbett

Final service in this series: