In accordance with my New Year’s Resolution, this post will officially begin my devotional commentary on the Gospel of John. But we’re not going to dive into the chapters just yet. Consider this a “prequel,” or better stated, an introduction. I believe it is appropriate to go over the background information to set the scene. Yeah, it’s not absolutely necessary to know all these facts, but to quote the title of a Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart book on Bible Hermeneutics, if we really want to read the Bible for all its worth, the background information can really open up our eyes to smaller details we may not have noticed. We can learn a lot more about our God and apply the Scriptures for a deeper use then.
When I would teach Bible class, I would tell my students to discover the background information, we must be like good reporters and ask the right questions. You know what I’m talking about. Those question words, like, who, whom, what, where, when, why and how. You might have noticed I included in another word: whom. And technically, the difference between “who” and “whom” is the subject and the object. But the difference is important. Let me make it short and simple for you
WHO = AUTHOR of the book
WHOM = AUDIENCE, the original one, the first readers of the book
WHEN = THE DATE the book was written
WHERE = THE LOCATION of where the book was written and where it takes place
WHAT = HISTORICAL OCCASION, or what happened to cause the author to write
WHY = THE PURPOSE of the author writing to the audience
HOW = THE STRUCTURE, which could be an outline or writing methods
All 7 pieces are key to understanding the basic background information for any book of the Bible. For the Gospels, there needs to be another key aspect to look at. There’s no question word that would cover it, but if there is a non-question word, it would be PORTRAYAL, which is how the Gospel book portrays the character of Jesus. It could technically be a combination of the purpose and the structure, for the portrayal will be seen in both of them. We’ll talk more about it when we get to it. So which one shall we start off with? Well, if you remember your elementary English/Literature class, the setting of the story is where and when it happened. So let’s start with the setting, since the setting will place the characters in context.
THE LOCATION WHERE the Gospel of John was written was most likely Ephesus, but other scholars have suggested Alexandria and Antioch. But what’s more important than where the book was written is where the stories in the book take place. Most of the synoptic books simply show a steady path from Galilee to Samaria, to Judea, and then more specifically Jerusalem for the Passion Week. But John’s Gospel is not as simple as that. John has Jesus all over the place. For example, on top of having Jesus in Galilee, Samaria and Judea, he has Jesus in areas east of the Jordan River, such as Perea and Decapolis. And sometimes he’ll even be more specific on locations than the other Gospel writers are. Where Matthew, Mark, or Luke will just say what region Jesus is in, John will give the specific town. John will also spend more time in some regions that the other Gospel writers have. Whereas the synoptic gospel writers show Jesus mostly in Galilee, John has Jesus mostly in Judea, or more specifically, Jerusalem.
THE DATE WHEN the Gospel of John was written was between 85 to 95 A.D. Some scholars have tried to place the Gospel of John before 70 A.D. because one would assume that John would mention the Destruction of the Temple or the Fall of Jerusalem if the book was written after these events. While John does not explicitly mention these events, it doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t happen. Someone could argue that they did happen because John does focus a lot on the time that Jesus and His Disciples were in Jerusalem, and John also includes much dialogue about the temple. John may not explicitly record, “And this was in fulfillment of the prophecy that the temple would be destroyed and the city would fall,” but mentioning both the city and the temple implicitly gives almost a spooky irony to its fate. So it has to be after 70 A.D. It can’t be later than 95 A.D. because John is believed to have died in 98 A.D. But let’s not linger any more on the debate of the date, but instead accept 85-95 AD as the date, and discuss its importance.
The date does have great significance. Being written in the late 80s or early 90s, the Gospel of John is the last Gospel to be written. It is safe to say that Matthew and Luke have been written for at least 5 years and Mark for at least 20 years. Each of those gospels have been floating around to several churches in the Roman Empire. So John is well aware that the Christians in these churches know well the more famous stories of Jesus, like the feeding of the 5,000 and the calming of the storm. So instead of repeating them in synoptic gospel like Matthew, Mark and Luke did, John will write a supplemental gospel. What is a supplemental gospel? For that, we must talk about how John structured his Gospel book. But we don’t have quite enough information yet. The structure won’t make any sense until we know whom the audience was, what was the historical occasion that caused John to write was, or why John chose the purpose He did. But before we get to that, let’s talk about this John man whose name I keep throwing around.
THE AUTHOR WHO wrote the book was John, just like the title of the book tells us. But there are quite a few Johns. No, this is not John, also known as Mark. If you read the post I made in December, we already talked about him. No, this is not John, the father of Peter. No, this is not the John in Acts 4:8 who is in the family of the high priests. And this is definitely not John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah, the second cousin of Jesus. This is John, the son of Zebedee, the first cousin of Jesus. And with that last statement, you got two facts about his family history. Let me throw in a third: his brother was James (and there’s 4 men named James in the Bible, but that’s a different discussion for a different day). John started out his life in the family trade of fishing with his father Zebedee and his brother James. Everyone knows John and James were disciples of Jesus, but not everyone remembers that John and James were first disciples of John the Baptist. Being disciples of John the Baptist, they were probably baptized by John the Baptist and they probably listened carefully to his preaching about repentance and the coming Messiah. Yet their following wasn’t too serious, as it seems like they followed him on the side and stayed focus on their job trade. This seems also true of being disciples to Jesus. When John points the two of them out to Jesus Christ in John 1, they follow him a bit and even acknowledged Jesus as a Rabbi, but then they went back to fishing. It wasn’t until Matthew 4 that Jesus needs to call them to follow to get through their thick skulls to stay with him longer. John, along with his brother James and Peter, were among the 3 disciples in the inner circle of disciples, who were the closest of Jesus, perhaps because they were the first ones called to be disciples. They got to see special events, like the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the transfiguration, and they got to be closer to Jesus in Gethsemane. John seems to go a bit further in and say he was the closest of even the three of them, calling himself in his Gospel book, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” A lot of people have brought criticism towards John and the inspiration of this book, claiming it’s falsely representing Jesus showing favoritism. But all 4 Gospels clearly show Jesus had the inner group of Peter, James and John, and no one criticizes those books for that. Instead, I like to say that really shows us the humanity side of the inspiration of the Scriptures. Remember, the Scriptures were written by men just as much as they were written by God, and it can be seen through the different books and different authors. The title is merely showing John’s flavor in his writing. We’ll talk more about that “flavor” in the structure, but let’s go back to the inner circle of 3. This inner circle of 3 will stay tight until the end. When we see John in Acts, he’ll always be with Peter. From Acts, John will go on to write this Gospel book, 3 epistles, and he’ll write the apocalyptic book of Revelation when he exiled to Patmos. There are other small details I could go through, but we’ll hit them when we actually read through the book.
THE AUDIENCE WHOM John originally intended was Christians. Yes, Christians. Not a certain gender, race, ethnic group, culture or religion, but Christians This is interesting because John is considered a evangelistic book, or a good book to use to evangelize, or share the gospel message. While I do believe this is true, I do believe this book is more intended for discipleship reasons. Many of the reasons I will talk about in the structure, but one reason I will hit on I already mentioned in the date. This Gospel book was one of the last Gospel books written. John assumes that the reader has already read or heard about the stories of Jesus from that book. So John also assumes (and some would say this is a big assumption) that through reading or hearing those stories, you have made a decision to follow Jesus and have become a Christian (seriously, John believes the gospel message is so powerful it will do that). Once again, John knows the reader knows the popular stories. So he will leave most of them out (unless they pertain to his message) and put in new stories, which will only be beneficial for someone who wants to continue and advance his or her faith. Now if you remember, Matthew is written to Jews, Mark is written to Romans, and Luke is written to Greeks. John is well aware that the converts to Christianity are not only Jews, but Roman, Greek and other Gentiles. So John is going to reach out to those 3 main groups in the same way the synoptic authors did. We’ll talk more about that in the structure, but first you have to wonder, “Why would John write a Gospel for Christians if they already know the stories of Jesus, the gospel message, and they are already saved?” That will be answered next, in the historical occasion.
THE HISTORICAL OCCASION is WHAT was happening in that setting that caused the author (John) to write his book. The best way to explain this is to use Family Guy (who would ever think Family Guy could be used in a commentary, devotional or Bible introduction?) In an episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin invents his own religion of Happy Days-ism, where the Fonz is worshipped. The rest of the Griffin family tries to get Peter to stop, but only the dog Brian is successful. How is he successful? To loosely quote him, he tells Peter, “Whenever a new religion becomes popular, copycats always follow,” and he brings in copycats to take Peter’s congregation away (for example, Brian brings in Gavin McCloud to lead the parishioners to Love Boat-ism). Well, it was true 2000 years earlier. Even though Christianity was still a minority and still facing persecution, it was growing in popularity. With growth like that, copycats jumped on board to make Christian-like cults to get people to join. The biggest one was Gnosticism, a cult which name comes from the Greek word gnosko, which means “to know.” Gnosticism combined two popular beliefs systems of the day: Christianity and Greek philosophy. The popular Greek philosophy of the day was that the body was bad, but the spirit/soul was good. Let me simplify that for you. Body = Bad, Soul/Spirit = Good. So the goal in Gnosticism was to free your soul from your body. Your first reaction might be, “Well, that’s easy, just commit suicide!” which might be followed by your second reaction, “Well, that’s stupid, a religion that convinces you to commit suicide.” But it’s not that easy, and they thought up a way that wasn’t stupid to them. You had to find a way to free your soul from your body while your body was alive. You couldn’t just commit suicide, for if you died before you figured out how to free your soul, your soul would be eternally stuck in your body. After all, a dead body is useless for anything, so there’s no way your spirit could find a way out. So how do you free your soul from your body? By learning a secret knowledge (hence the name Gnosticism). This where the Christianity side of Gnosticism steps in. The Gnostics believed that Jesus knew this secret knowledge. Jesus learned this secret knowledge and taught His disciples this secret knowledge. Now, of course, if you ask them, Jesus taught the secret knowledge, well, in secret, to his disciples. And the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke only record the public teachings of Jesus. So if you want to use those books to learn the secret knowledge, you have read into the text deeper. You have to take everything Jesus says as a metaphor, with some kind of symbolic meaning (in Bible hermeneutics, we call this the allegorical approach to the Scriptures). Some Gnostics were even going as far writing their own gospels, claiming that they were from people close to Jesus, like Thomas, Judas and Mary, who heard this secret knowledge being taught by Jesus when they were in secret meetings. But the real kicker is what they claimed about Jesus and His being. To be the ultimate example to humans on how to use this secret knowledge to free your soul from your body, Jesus was only human. They believed that Jesus was not God at all, but just a human. Furthermore, they believe when Jesus died on the cross, He freed his soul from his body. Therefore, they believe it was only in spirit Jesus raised from the dead. You can already see two big contradictions from true Christianity. Christianity believes Jesus is fully God and fully man, while Gnosticism believes Jesus was only a man who ultimately achieved perfection by being a body-less spirit on earth. Christianity believes Christ’s resurrection was a bodily one, but Gnosticism says it was only a spirit resurrection. The differences are huge, and they are confusing the people. Some Christians are having doubts, while other Christians are going to Gnosticism, believing it’s the true faith. A Christian’s faith is not meant to be an unsteady one. John doesn’t want Christians to convert to Gnosticism. In fact, he wants Christians to avoid Gnosticism. John doesn’t want Christians to be shaky or unsteady in their beliefs. He doesn’t want them to doubt or question their faith. He wants to believe. After all, the word “believe” appears 98 times in the book. John has to take down Gnosticism.
THE PURPOSE is WHY John wrote the book. You’re probably thinking, “He just explained it! John had to take down Gnosticism. That’s why he wrote it.” Yes, John did have to take down Gnosticism, and he did use this book to do it, but last time I checked, I’m pretty sure Gnosticism doesn’t exist anymore, and if does, it’s a very small minority that has no power in the world (although some people still insist on reading the Bible allegorically, as they did). So what’s the purpose for the Gospel of John today? When an author writes a book of the Bible, he’s not only thinking about his immediate audience, but also thinking about a bigger, grander audience. So he needs to express a truth that’s meaningful to them, too. So what truth is John going to teach us that will applicable everywhere for all time, and will also take down Gnosticism?
When it comes to 4 Gospels, we need to look out for an important piece that we wouldn’t look at with other books of the Bible. Have you ever wondered, “Why do we have 4 Gospel accounts? Wouldn’t it just be better with 1? After all, if there are 4 Gospel accounts, we have to worry about contradictions. If there was only 1 Gospel account, we wouldn’t have to worry about this.” The reason there are 4 Gospel accounts is to show 4 perspectives of Jesus. Each Gospel has a different perspective, and each perspective is a perspective for a different people group. Matthew is a perspective for Jews, Mark is a perspective for Romans, and Luke is a perspective for Greeks. Each different perspective gives us a different portrayal of Jesus, yet each portrayal is a true one. Matthew portrays Jesus as the Messiah for the Jews. Luke portrays Jesus as the Perfect [Son of] Man for the Greeks. Mark portrays Jesus as a suffering servant to show the upside kingdom to the Romans. So what’s John going to portray Jesus as? For the portrayal is an important part of the purpose. Lucky for us, John gives us a verse we can call a “theme verse” for our purpose and our portrayal of Jesus. It’s John 20:31.
John 20:31-
“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Ah, there it is. It doesn’t get any more explicit than that. While in I do strongly believe in the inspiration of the Bible, I don’t think we should simply say, “Well, the Bible says that’s the purpose, and since the Bible is God’s Word, God is saying that’s the purpose. End of discussion.” Let’s look into why it’s right in saying this is the purpose. Some key words and key phrases I see in this verse is “Believe,” “Christ” and “Son of God.” Let’s start with the last one and go backwards.
As we talked about in the historical occasion, it was of the utmost importance John portrays Jesus as the Son of God. The Gnostic’s powerful voice was claiming Jesus was not God, and it was throwing true followers of Jesus into confusion, causing some to doubt and even lose faith. John had to stop this destruction the Gnostic doctrine was causing. I may have listed this key phrase last, but it’s definitely not least. Actually, I think it’s the most important. Why? Tell me, what do you think of when you hear the phrase “Son of God”? I bet you pay more attention to the word “son” than the word “God.” You might think this is nitpicky, but it’s not. When the Bible says Jesus is the Son of God, it’s also saying Jesus is God the Son. That’s not just a re-ordering of the words, but it has a big implication, in both the ancient context and the modern context. Let’s start with the older context, the ancient context. In the polytheistic religions of the ancient world, gods could indeed have children. They could have children either with goddesses or human women. If the god had a child with a human woman, the son would still be considered a god (or daughter a goddess), but it was a demigod, or half-god, half-human. This god was considered 50% divine and 50% human. All its strengths would be credited to its divinity, but all its weaknesses would be blamed on its humanity. I wouldn’t be surprised if at first people were claiming Jesus was 50% god and 50% man, and the apostles had to go around correcting that, teaching that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. A god could also have a child through a goddess, and in that case, it would be considered 100% god, but still it would be considered a lesser god, or a minor god, nowhere near the glory and majesty of his parents. I think that’s the one that modern day people would struggle with the most. This past Christmas season, I was in church and we singing the famous Christmas carol “Come All Ye Faithful.” While singing, I noticed the line, “Son of God, begotten, not created.” At first chuckled a bit, thinking to myself, “Way to make sure you’re theologically covered on all sides,” but after thinking more, I realized we don’t always realize this. We do sometimes think Jesus was birthed from God. This is theological mess. First, it says that Jesus is not as eternal as God the Father, which means he does have a beginning, and would ultimately deny Him His deity. But Jesus is eternal, both eternally past and eternally future. Second, if Jesus was just God’s offspring and not God himself, it would mean God the creator has not been on earth since the creation. It would almost sound like God thought of Himself as so holy that he did not want to deal with sinful man. So God sent down the next best thing: His Son Jesus. No, that’s not true either. Jesus was God incarnate, walking on earth, among the people He created, no matter how sinful. Jesus was not a lesser God, or a minor God, but was God just as much as His Father. We have to remember that when we see “Son of God” we must also see “God the Son.” Simply put: Son of God = God the Son. Maybe another way to put it is the relationship between Yahweh and Jesus was the same relationship between a Father and Son. But both are the same God, the One God, the Only God. (John 1:14,18).
The second word is “Christ.” I’m not going to dwell on this one too long because I’ll talk more about it in the structure (yeah, I know I keep saying that, but I seriously am!). All you have to know is John was a Jew, so John knew how to communicate to Jews. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of Christians at this point in time were Jews, so it would make sense that John is trying to connect to a majority of Christians. This will be helpful to remember when critics will claim that John is being anti-Semitic in calling out the Jews as the enemies of Jesus. Why would a Jew who is writing to Jews call Jews evil? Another thing I will note is that I believe a careful inspection of Old Testament prophecies will reveal that the Messiah, or the Christ, was to be divine in nature. So proving Jesus is the Christ is also proving Jesus is the Son of God.
And then there’s the word “believe.” In that verse alone, 2 forms of the root word “believe” appears twice: “believe” and “believing.” If we were to count up all the times the noun “belief” and the verb “believe” are used in the 21 chapters of John, we’d have 98 occurrences. Obviously we can see the action John is calling us to: believe. If you’re still following me so far, you’re probably wondering, “How can you call this a discipleship book and not an evangelistic book? Aren’t Christians already believing?” Well, I’m not denying that this book can be used as an evangelistic tool. In fact, by the end of this, I’ll show you how to use it as an evangelistic tool. But I don’t think it’s any more evangelistic that the other Gospel accounts. As you were thinking, I’ll repeat it again. We clearly established Christians as the audience. And you’re right, Christians do already believe. But I learned something while reading the Holman Concise Bible Commentary. According to the Holman Concise Bible Commentary, the first Greek form most commonly translated, “you may believe” can also be translated “you may continue to believe.” I do believe this would make sense in light of the historical occasion. Many Christians, although they still believe Jesus was the perfect man who died for their sins and rose again, are giving up believing on a divine Jesus being God. John clearly is presenting evidence to show that it is logical and rational to believe Jesus is God. So the Christians can continue believing Jesus is God. They don’t have to doubt. With that in mind, we can write out a purpose with all the information above in one statement.
John wrote the book of John to persuade Christians to continue believing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
THE STRUCTURE is HOW John wrote the book to get his message or his purpose across. Short review: The message or the purpose John is trying to get across is that Christians need to believe that Jesus is the Son God AKA God the Son.
Let’s start with what I promised you first all the way back at the date. John is supplemental Gospel, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are synoptic Gospel. What’s the difference? The difference is in the name. The word synoptic is the adjective forms of synopsis, which is a synonym of the word summary. The Gospel books of Matthew, Mark and Luke simply summarize the stories of Jesus, which are picked and chosen based on how they will answer the purpose of the Gospel book. Through these summaries, the author assumes the reader will be able to pick up the message the author is trying to convey. John’s Gospel is not like this. John’s Gospel is a supplemental Gospel. You might know the word supplemental if you have ever had a book with supplemental pages in it. You might know that the supplemental pages give extra information or extra detail to the book. Well, that’s exactly what John is trying to do. Remember when we talked about the date and the audience, I told you John assumes that the reader has already read the other Gospel accounts and is well acquainted with the stories, especially the popular ones, like Jesus feeding the 5,000 or Jesus calming the storm. So first, John will leave at many stories that the synoptic Gospels have in them. For example, John leaves out many important stories, such as the birth, baptism, temptation, and transfiguration of Jesus. Another good example is John only has 7 miracles, and from the other gospel accounts (and John 20:30!), we know Jesus performed more than 7 miracles (it also could be noted that none of these 7 miracles are casting out demons). Second, John will use the space he made omitting stories to put in new stories. In fact, 85% of John is unique and cannot be found in any other Gospel narrative. Third, in both new stories and old stories, John will give more details. For example, John will not only tell us about the Feeding of 5,000, but will tell you what resulted after the feeding of the 5,000. Another good example is the Lord’s Supper. Each synoptic Gospel author will only have 1 chapter on that Maundy Thursday, and it mostly talks about the Passover meal. John will spend 5 chapters in the Upper Room where the Last Supper is taking place, making sure to carefully record every word of Christ’s last instructions before He dies.
Speaking of detail, you’ll find John, writing a supplemental gospel, will be more keen on details. He will give names that previously weren’t given. From John, we learn the man whose ear got cut off by Peter was named Malchus. On that note, it will seem that John will “pick on people” by zeroing them out in certain stories. For example, where the synoptic gospels all the disciples doubted the resurrected Jesus, John’s Gospel will point out Thomas as the doubter. Another good example is when the woman poured perfume on the feet of Jesus. The synoptic gospels that tell this story will say all the disciples will indignant about this move. Yet John only records Judas Iscariot complaining about it. This is no reason to say the Gospel accounts contradict one another. For the first example, all the disciples did doubt Jesus rose from the dead, but one by one, each disciple came to faith, and Thomas was the last one to do so. For the second example, all the disciples were indignant about the woman pouring the perfume on the feet of Jesus, but they kept their thoughts to themselves or they grumbled to one another quietly; only Judas Iscariot had to guts to speak what was on everyone’s mind. If anything, John is using a good story writing device: character development. By pinning certain action to certain people, instead of a group of people, we can see if the disciple is static or if he dynamically changes, and if he does change, does he change for the better or for the worse? And it’s not all bad. For example, in the feeding of the 5,000, Andrew is credited for finding the boy with 2 fishes and 5 loaves. And the ultimate example is when John calls himself the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Once again, this is not to show John lifting himself above the other disciples. It is merely tells us that Jesus had an inner circle of 3 disciples, and of those 3, John might have been the closest. And once again, it’s all for the purpose of character development. Reading John, we can see the relationship John had with Jesus. And if it really is John trying to lift himself above the other disciples, it’s John’s humanity in writing the Scriptures
Another note to make on the structure goes back to the audience whom John wrote his book to. Remember John wrote to Christians. Being Christian does not hold you to a certain race, nationality or ethnic group. Actually, the Christian audience is made up of people of all kinds of tribes and nations. But if I had to pick the top 3, I would say it’s probably the Jews, the Romans and the Greeks (and yes, in that order). That list of 3 should sound familiar. Oh yeah! It’s the 3 audiences the other 3 Gospels are written to. Matthew is written to Jews, Mark is written to Romans, and Luke is written to Greeks. Each of those Gospel authors knew their audience and knew how to structure their book to appease to each audience. Matthew used Old Testament Scriptures for the Jews. Mark used miracles to appease to the Romans. Luke used parables to attract the Greeks. John is well aware Christians from all 3 of these groups are reading his book. So he uses similar pieces for his Gospel. For the Jews, John uses Old Testament Scriptures. For the Romans, John remembers to include 7 miracles. When it comes to the Greeks, John does not use parables as Luke does (in fact, there are no parables in John), but uses long discourses and lectures of logic and reasoning, which would also attract the Greek thinkers. John’s Gospel appeals to Jewish Christians, Roman Christians and Greek Christians, and all of them get the message that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.
One last note on the structure. When John narrates his book, he’s not doing it from the third person, as the synoptic Gospel writers will. John will do it from his perspective. Thus, John will include his own commentary in the narration of the book. Besides the books of 1 & 2 Chronicles, this is the only God-inspired commentary we have.
Let me close by showing you how to use this Gospel book as an evangelistic tool, just as I promised, but I’m showing it to not just for the sake of showing you, but to outline how my devotional commentary will go. Here’s what you do to evangelize to someone the gospel using the book of John. First, give the person a copy of the book of John. Next, have the person read through the book of John. Then, have the person answer these 3 questions…
1. Who does Jesus claim He is?
2. Who does those pro-Jesus, or for Jesus, claim Jesus is?
3. Who does those anti-Jesus, or against Jesus, claim Jesus is?
Now as you can guess, based on what we talked about the purpose, the answer is “The Son of God.” But truthfully, there are only a couple explicit instances of where this happens. So what you would need to do is give a hint. For a hint, give them two verses from the Bible. No, not John 3:16 and John 20:31. That’s not a hint; that’s giving away the answer. Instead, give them Exodus 3:13-14.
Exodus 3:13-14-
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
Now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Why are we giving them a couple verses from Exodus? They’re not even from the same testament!” Note what God says his name is: “I AM.” In the book of John, Jesus makes 7 I AM statements. And when Jesus makes those 7 I AM statements, the Jewish audience is immediately thinking about this Exodus passage and is making the connection. Every time Jesus says “I am,” He is making the claim He is God. I hope you will join me in finding all these claims.
The Contextual Literalist 