The Gospel of John: Belief that Leads to Life
The concluding sentences of the Gospel of John are, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of these were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” In two sentences, is the summary of the whole of John’s gospel. All that John has written, all that John has reported about the life and acts of Jesus has been for two reasons: the first is that people may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and the second is that by believing they may live, as Jesus said it, “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they every dreamed of” (John 10:10 The Message).
Belief and life, believing and living, faith and the experiencing of what life is really about is what John wants us to know about and what Jesus wants us to have. John wrote about six of “the signs” Jesus did so we would know where life comes from and how life comes to us. As John wrote, there wouldn’t be enough space in the world to contain all the books that would need to be written, so also there is not enough time, right now, to look at all “the signs.” However, for the next two Sundays, we will look at two of “the signs.” On June 29th we will look at the “second sign” in John 4:43-54. On July 6th we will look at “the sign” of the feeding of the five thousand in John 6:1-15.
