ANNOUNCER: If you are a free-gracer, so to speak, you will understand the importance of John’s Gospel as an evangelistic book. How many verses would you say in John’s Gospel are evangelistic? While our discussion leaders are going to talk about that today and we look forward to it, stay tuned. We are delighted that you’re with us. This is the Grace Evangelical Society’s podcast and broadcast ministry called Grace in Focus. Our website is faithalone.org. We want you to go there and become more familiar with us, especially our upcoming national annual conference, May the 18th through the 21st. It’ll be a great time of free grace fellowship and learning, recreation, and VBS for the kids. Our topic this year, “Believe Christ For Life,” and for the kids, their topic will be crowns. Get all the information you need. Get registered today at faithalone.org.
And now with today’s question and answer discussion here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates.
KEN: Bob, you recently heard someone say that in the gospel of John that there’s only, what did he say, seven verses that are evangelistic?
BOB: I think the exact quote was about seven verses are evangelistic. I think it was a podcast. That got me to writing a blog on this, which you can check out at our website, faithalone.org under blogs [see here]. And I thought we might talk about that here because there are 879 verses, if I remember correctly, in the Gospel of John, and in my blog, I said that there are 879 verses that are evangelistic.
KEN: Now, if I’m going to play devil’s advocate, and I’m the guy that you heard speak, I would say something like, yes, okay, I’ll go along with that, that the Gospel of John is evangelistic, so we could say if we’re going to be very picky about it, that all 879 verses have that purpose. But I think what he would say is, but surely we wouldn’t say, for example, I’m just looking at one right now, John 1:19. Now, this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? A person could not be saved by reading verse 19.
BOB: No, but if you go on and read what follows, he goes on to say, I’m not the Christ, and he goes on to say, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and he has two disciples, and he sends them over to Jesus, and you have people coming to faith in John 1, and all of that is evangelistic.
So, I mean, yeah, the first three words in the beginning. Can you be born again by hearing the just those three words? No, but in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, that is evangelistic. It’s designing people to recognize that God the Father sent God the Son, and as the book unfolds, you realize he sent the Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but has everlasting life. And the opening verses in the first 14 verses, the prologue, are very tantalizing. He calls him the Word. He calls him the Light. He calls him the Life. And it is very evangelistic, even though it’s unlikely that anyone would come to faith in Christ just from the prologue. I mean, they could, because he even says that, you know, John was telling people to believe in the one coming after him.
KEN: Well, even verse 12, but as many as received Him to them, he gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name.
BOB: That’s a verse, a lot of people cite. Right. And it could be used as long as we’re not using it to say, you need to receive Him, that is, invite Him into your heart or invite Him into your life. No, receiving is defined there as believing in His name. And what we know from the whole book is we’re believing in Him for everlasting life, but we even know it from 12 and 13 because verse 13 says, born of God. Well, that’s born again.
KEN: And I think a person could conceivably, particularly with the leading of the Holy Spirit or the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that if I’m a child of God, then I belong to Him. And I’m going to live with him forever. I mean, you could, you could deduce that from that.
BOB: Okay. Here’s another thing. And we’ve talked about the evangelistic purpose of John in some previous shows, but one of the things we haven’t gotten into is John 20:30-31 says that he’s recorded these signs that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in His name or by believing you may have life in His name. And some people say it’s just the signs that are designed to lead people to faith, not the whole book, just the signs. Now, some people say they’re seven signs in the Gospel of John, but more recently, people have started saying they’re eight. And you know what the eighth sign is?
KEN: His own resurrection.
BOB: Yeah. Because in John chapter two, He says, destroy this temple, they said, what sign will you show us? And He says, destroy this temple. And in three days, I will raise it up. And they think He’s standing in the temple when He says this and they think He’s talking about the Jewish temple. And He was talking about his own body. And He’s saying, I’ll raise My own body up in three days if you kill Me, which is exactly what happened.
KEN: And there’s a sign.
BOB: And that’s the eighth sign. Well, guess where that appears in John’s gospel? That’s John 18, John 19, John 20. So you can’t argue that the signs end with chapter 12, which a lot of commentators do. They call chapters 1 through 12, the “Book of Signs.”
KEN: After Lazarus’s resurrection.
BOB: Yeah. But what you also have is the sign of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection in 18, 19 and 20 and even 21 for that matter, because 21 are some more of his post-resurrection appearances when they’re fishing and He sends them out and challenges Peter. So I would argue every verse in the book is evangelistic.
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KEN: Well, even, it sounds strange to me, I mean, I didn’t hear the podcast you’re referring to, but even if you say, well, no, I’ve got to have a specific verse that says believe in Jesus, it seems like there’s more than seven in the Gospel of John. I mean, as you’re just looking at it, you know.
BOB: Well, the word believe occurs a hundred times John’s gospel, 99 in the Critical text, a hundred in the Majority text. And a lot of those are tied in with believing in Him for what He promises, which is everlasting life—scores. So well over 20, probably 40 or more specifically say, if you believe in His name or you believe in Him or if you believe in Me when He’s talking, they say, then you’ll never hunger, you’ll never thirst, you’ll never die, you’ll never perish, you’ll never be cast out. So yeah, I would say even if you’re just saying, verses that you could actually be born again with just that one verse, not the whole context, but one verse. Yeah, there’s probably 30, 40, 50 in the Gospel of John, but that doesn’t mean—take, for example, the upper room discourse or some people call it the last discourse, John 13 through 16, or you can count 17 if you count His high priestly prayer, a lot of people say that can’t be evangelistic because here He’s talking to the disciples about discipleship.
KEN: About the vine.
BOB: Abiding in Him. Right. John Claeys wrote an article for our journal and then he submitted it also for the magazine. So I cut it down and it’ll be in the March/April issue of our magazine. And he argued that the last discourse or the upper room discourse is evangelistic and the basic reasoning goes something like this: wouldn’t it be interesting for an unbeliever to know what this man, Jesus Christ, the God-man Jesus Christ, what did He do the night He knew He was going to be killed the next day, the night He knew that he was about to be arrested and He was going to be tried and beaten and spat upon and scourged and everything else? What did he do?
KEN: He was concerned about His disciples.
BOB: Yeah, He was preparing them for when He left. Wouldn’t it be important for you to know as an unbeliever that if you come to faith in Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to continue to be concerned about you. He cares about you. He loves you. And He wants the best for you. Isn’t evangelistic?
KEN: Yeah, we’re talking about the character of the One. This One who promises eternal life. Well, what kind of man was he?
BOB: Zane Hodges gave a talk at our conference on the last discourse years ago. And he compared it to, I think it was called phaedo, P-H-A-E-D-O, not F-I-D-O. But this was talking about, I believe, the death of Socrates.
KEN: And how he faced death.
BOB: It was very motivational for his disciples to see that he bravely faced death. Hodges’s point was, that’s true in spades for the upper room discourse. Jesus is not only brave. He’s approaching it.
KEN: Yes. If you’re impressed with Socrates the way he faced death, the Lord puts him to shame.
BOB: In fact, in John 12, He says, shall I shrink back from the cross but for this purpose, I was sent. I’m going there willfully.
KEN: It’s interesting in that light, comparing Jesus in John in the Garden of Gethsemane to example the Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark. In Mark, He’s beat down to the ground. But in John, He’s in complete control. Yeah. He speaks and the soldiers fall down.
BOB: So how do you explain that? It sounds like a contradiction.
KEN: Mark is emphasizing his suffering, whereas John is saying, look at this one, even as He’s facing death, He’s in control of everything. This is the character of the One. And this is who He is. This is the power of the One who says, believe in Me and I give you eternal life.
BOB: Yeah. So if you have a book that’s a holy biography and that’s what the word gospel means in terms of the four gospels, these are holy biographies. And if one of those holy biographies is written to tell you what you must believe in order to have everlasting life, well, then every word in that gospel is going to be used to support that purpose. It’s not like, okay, we can take a word out of isolation and go, okay, that word all by itself is going to lead somebody faith in Christ.
But what I like to encourage people is I like to say, look, if you lack assurance of eternal life and you’d like to be assured, step one, pray about it. Lord, please show me is it possible to be sure? Step two, is it really just by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that I’m sure that I have everlasting life that can never be lost? Step three, read a chapter of John’s Gospel every day. If you’re prayerful and open, you’re going to see that every chapter gives you the idea that by faith in Jesus, I have everlasting life.
KEN: And by the way, it’s an encouragement even for believers to go back and just read the Gospel of John, just bathe in that grace.
BOB: Now, it’s not that there aren’t truths that a believer can get some discipleship truths out of John’s gospel. We can. But that’s not why it was written. It was written to unbelievers so that the unbelievers might come to faith in Christ, John 20:31, all of the book is evangelistic. So I would say no, it’s not about seven verses that are evangelistic. It’s 879.
KEN: Well, thanks, Bob. And thanks for that podcast, but there is more than seven. And remember, keep grace in focus.
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On our next episode: John 3:16, if I believe Jesus is God’s only begotten Son, am I born again? Please join us for that. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.
