the Father has granted me to accomplish.” They testify that he is the One Sent by the Father (5:36). In this gospel his works are designated “signs.” At the end of the gospel the narrator tells us that Jesus performed “many signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (20:30 – 31). The testimony of the signs, it is argued, should be sufficient to produce faith and life. Throughout the gospel there are reports of people who believed on account of the signs, but also of those who failed to see the sign value of the works of Jesus. This, it would seem, makes the testimony of his works ambiguous.
Appeal is then made to the most important One who also bears witness: “the One who sent me, the Father.” God’s testimony should prove irrefutable. The problem is that those who demand proofs of authenticity for Jesus’ claims “have never heard God’s voice or seen God’s appearance” (5:37). This is the tragic condition of those who do not see the Father in the person of the One Sent by the Father (5:38). Thus, the testimony that should be incontrovertible is beyond the reach of those who ask for it.
The situation becomes even worst when those seeking eternal life look for it in the wrong place. Instead of coming to Jesus to obtain it, they misguidedly search the Scriptures hoping to find it there. The function of Scripture is not to give life. It is to bear witness to Jesus (5:38). Once again a testimony that should be effective is wasted by those who misunderstand the purpose of the Scriptures. Their real problem, actually, is that due to their pride in the Scriptures they lack the love of God (5:42-44).
Chapter 5 ends in a way similar to that of chapter 9. The irony of the situation is, again, on the surface. Those seeking eternal life in the Scriptures are not condemned by the One Sent by the Father, who was sent with the specific purpose of giving life, and also has the authority to judge. They consider Moses to be the great mediator between God and the people. On the basis of Deut. 18:15 – 18, they are waiting for the appearance of the prophet “like Moses.” “The Jews” will suffer a great disappointment, however. Having “placed their hope” in Moses, they are actually being condemned by Moses, not realizing that the Scriptures, instead of being the source of life, are witness to the validity of his claim to be one with the Father. As is said laconically in the prologue, the law was given through Moses, grace and truth are alive in Jesus Christ (1:17). It is indeed a great tragedy when people reject the One Who is God’s Grace and Truth incarnate because they have placed their hopes on the one who met God at the top of Mt. Sinai. By judging Jesus’ claim to be blasphemy on the basis of the Scriptures, “the Jews” are under the power of the Scriptures to condemn.
No doubt the Johannine Christians who made the absolute claim that the Logos is God, but who also saw the need to establish some parameters to that claim, had a great sense of irony. Their ironic frame of mind and the subtlety with which they nuance the relationship of the Father and the Son as one tell us that the Johannine community had a sophisticated literary sense. It is quite amazing to see how the world of village life exhibited in the oral traditions of Jesus’ sayings, where shepherds chase after sheep, women bake bread and plowmen work their fields, in just a few years became a highly literary language where arguments are built according to philosophical models and ironic double meanings take the stage. Early Christians soon learned how to express their faith in language that was understandable and appealing to different publics, and felt quite free to do so. It was only because of these skills that they could make and sustain their claim that the incarnate Son was equal with God.
3. He Who Follows Me … Will Have the Light of Life
The prologue of According to John concludes by presenting a rationale for the gospel: “No one has ever seen God” (1:18). The Old Testament tells us that Adam and Eve saw and conversed with God in Eden, and Ex. 24:9 – 11 says that Moses, Nadab, Abihu and seventy Israelites saw and ate with God on the top of Mount Sinai. But here these reports are set aside, and a new solution to this problem is advanced. The situation now is different because the means for seeing and knowing God are now available: “the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made Him known.” The mission of the Logos on earth is not necessarily to die in order to redeem humanity. His purpose is to reveal the God no one has ever seen.
The prologue has already told us that “in him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not apprehended it” (1:4 – 5). Here we have the plot of this gospel in a nutshell, and the first of its many double entendres. In Greek just one verb says both to comprehend and to apprehend. Whether the thing is grabbed by the mind or by the hand is to be determined by the context.
It is a physical reality that the light of the weakest of matches triumphs over the darkness surrounding it. It is impossible for darkness to eradicate the light of a single match. Light always triumphs over darkness. What is true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual world. Those who are of the darkness neither comprehend nor apprehend the Logos. This is the drama of the Fourth Gospel. Several times we read that his listeners do not comprehend what Jesus says to them (10:6, 39; 16:18), and when the authorities send their agents to apprehend him, they return empty handed (7:44; 8:20; 10:31; 11:57). At the garden on the other side of the Kidron brook the soldiers who come to take him prisoner fall back to their backs to the ground when Jesus takes the initiative and identifies himself saying, “I am he.” Judas has no chance to give him a treasonous kiss (18:1 – 8). On one occasion, when all those around him wish to kill him and pick up stones to do so, Jesus simply walks through them and leaves the city, and no one throws a single stone (8:59). As the light, he cannot be snatched by the forces of darkness.
Finding a man who was born blind, Jesus declares: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Nothing can prevent the effectiveness of the presence of the Light. The Light reveals the God no one has ever seen, but to see Him it is necessary to believe. To see and to believe in the Johannine language are synonyms. Thus, as the prologue has already announced, the benefit of the Light to those who believe is to receive the life in it. In other words, the revelation of God made possible by the incarnation does not bring to the world information about God or the future of the world. It brings something incommensurably more valuable: eternal life. The light of the Son does not make possible knowledge; it transmits life.
The Jesus of According to John at times appears obtuse demanding faith without providing the information that would support faith. His proclamation consists of “I am …” Among these sayings we find: “I am the light of the world” (8:12). The Light enlightens those who believe God is in Jesus and imparts life to them. To believe the Light, to be children of Light (12:36), is to recognize the One Sent by the Father. Said in a different way, to believe in him is to believe in “The One Who Sent Me.”
Those confronted by the Light find themselves in an inevitable crisis. They must make a judgment about the Light. Those who see and believe that the Light is the One Sent by the Father receive eternal life. Those who do not see the connection between the One Sent and the One Sending are immediately condemned. The coming of the Light to the world divides those confronted by the Light into believers and unbelievers (9:16).
In Greek, nouns are characterized by their endings. Changing the ending of a verbal root changes its meaning. In this case, the root kri may take the ending sis and mean “the act of judging, the carrying out of a judgment.” If it is given the ending ma it means “the result of a judgment, a sentence,” implying that the sentence is negative, a condemnation. Having to judge, having to make a decision creates an internal crisis.
Those who come face to face with the Light find themselves in a crisis. They have to decide whether Jesus is God or a blasphemer. On more than one occasion Jesus explains that he did not come to condemn, but to save the world. No doubt, that was his purpose. But the reality is that his very presence in the world results in the judgment of the world. While some are benefiting from the Light, seeing, believing and receiving eternal life, others do not see, do not believe
