Thielman: John hopes his readers will also “see” them and believe.

Something similar happens with the Samaritan woman. Jesus shows miraculous insight into her character, and she runs back to her town with the news that because Jesus told her “everything [she] ever did,” he may be the Messiah (4:28–29). John tells us that as a result of precisely this testimony to Jesus’ supernatural knowledge of the woman’s character, “many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him” (4:39).

In the same way, after Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet on the night before his crucifixion, he speaks of one of his followers who has not been chosen and who will fulfill the psalmist’s complaint that one who has shared his food will betray him (13:18; Ps. 41:9). “I am telling you now, before it happens” Jesus explains, “so that when it does happen you will believe that ‘I am’ ” (John 13:19, aut.).

This is reminiscent of Jesus own prayer, shortly before calling Lazarus forth from the grave, in which he tells his Father that he has spoken his request to raise Lazarus audibly so that the crowd standing around “may believe that you sent me” (11:42; cf. 11:15). The link between the provision of a sign and belief here receives the approval of Jesus himself.

In summary, when Jesus provides signs for people during the time of his ministry, he intends that they should see them and believe that his claims about his relationship with his Father are true. By providing a written record of these signs, John hopes his readers will also “see” them and believe.

Thielman, F. (2005). Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach (p. 163). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Comments

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

Search This Blog