John's Gospel Declares Jesus to be "The Son of GOD"

John 10:27-30  “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” 

Let’s zero in on the aim of God’s mission.  Why did he create the world?  What is his plan for humanity?  Why send Jesus?  

We must start with these foundational questions before exploring how God accomplishes his mission and what role the church may have in it.  

Doing so will be a safeguard for us, ensuring that our theology of mission has God as its foundation.  

And to do this, let us turn to the Gospel of John.

John’s Gospel helps us understand God’s mission because he is writing it in order to advance that mission.  John says he has “written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).  

John is writing so that men and women would be drawn into relationship with God.  How does John go about that evangelistic work?  By revealing the character, the very glory, of God. 

1 For John, revelation is the only thing that makes communion possible.

The Mission of God and the Witness of the Church takes readers on a canonical journey to examine fundamental questions about the purposes of God and his loving desire to commune with his people.

John’s prologue prepares the reader to see how God’s revelation opens the door for divine-human communion (John 1:1–18).  Jesus is the Word, the Logos, of God (John 1:1), the one who will help us understand (the logic of) God.  The very God who “in the beginning . . . created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) is now being revealed by the one who was “in the beginning with God” (John 1:2).  Jesus is the spirit Son of God and was with God, in the beginning, and He is now revealing the glory of God to the world in His incarnation.

In this way, Jesus is the true light coming to help humanity see God (John 1:4–5, 9).  We read that the Word took on flesh in such a way that men could “see His glory” (John 1:14).  It is likely that John expected his readers to know the book of Exodus, for this in-fleshed one came and “tabernacled among us” as the one who is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  

Indeed, the Father is the One True God : “And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth; keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:6).

His Son, Jesus, came to reveal the Father:  "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."  John 1:18

God's purpose in sending His Only Son Jesus, according to John’s prologue, is to reveal God the Father John 1:18, conforming that humanity needed the incarnation, not only to make possible the sacrifice of the Lamb of God but  because humanity needed to see the Father's grace and love in human form.

How can humanity come to the invisible God?  

In the Old Testament, the Lord appeared in fire in the bush and at night, in smoke behind the veil, and in lightning on the mountain.  He may even have taken on angelic or human form as the angel of the Lord (e.g., Gen. 18, Judg. 13), but he was always veiled.  

But now the Son has revealed the Father. “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), his “exact imprint” (Heb. 1:3).  In Christ, the glory of God is stamped onto humanity, the Father engraved in the person of his Son for all to read; or as D. A. Carson says, “Jesus is the exegesis of God.” 2

 "Jehovah God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His (Father's) glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He (Jesus) had made purification of sins (by the sacrifice of Himself), He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they."  Hebrews 1:1-4  

 'And again, when He (the Father) bringeth in the first begotten (His spirit Son Jesus) into the world (the incarnation), He saith, "And let all the angels of God worship him".'  Hebrews 1:6

 "yet for us there is but one God, Jehovah the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. "  1 Corinthians 8:6

Not only in John’s prologue but throughout His ministry, Jesus is disclosing God to mankind.  He does this through his teaching and ministry.  He says that he is speaking the Father’s words and wielding the Father’s authority (John 7:17–18; 8:28; 12:49–50; 14:10).  He reveals the Father through his works. “I can do nothing on my own,” says Jesus (John 5:30).  His signs reveal the glory of God (John 2:11; John 11:4, 40).  With every action Jesus is simply doing what he sees the Father doing (John 5:19).

Perhaps nowhere is the glory of God more clearly displayed than in Jesus’s journey to the cross.

He also discloses the Father through his person.  Christ’s “I AM” statements in John’s Gospel reveal that he is the one who provided food in the wilderness (John 6:22–59), light for the world (John 8:12–20; 9:5; 12:46), the God of Abraham (John 8:58), the way to God (John 10:7, 9; 14:6), the shepherd of God’s people (John 10:11, 14), the Son of God (John 10:36), the life-giving God (John 11:25), the sustainer (John 15:1–5). 

He is elsewhere revealed to be the true sacrifice for the sins of the world (John 1:29), the giver of the water of life (John 4:7–11; 7:37–39), the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, and the high and lifted-up Lord of Isaiah 6 (John 12:38–41).  Each title and metaphor corresponds to the Yahweh we see in the Old Testament, revealing the Father.

Perhaps nowhere is the glory of God more clearly displayed than in Jesus’s journey to the cross.  In his sacrificial death - in falling to the earth and dying like a grain of wheat — Jesus is the revelation of the glory of God (John 12:23–24).  While certainly Christ could have intended his resurrection, ascension, and glorification in heaven to be included in the statement “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” the immediate context suggests that his atoning death is central, as does the parallel of John 13:31–32.  

Of course, these glories do not need to compete.  Richard Bauckham argues that they complement each other.  The cross, he writes, is “the climax of the revelation of God’s glory in the flesh.”  Nevertheless, he says, “it is the degradation and the death, in the light of the resurrection, that constitute the ultimate manifestation of God’s glory to the world.” 3 

And what will be the twofold effect of this victorious sacrifice?  

First, “the judgment of this world” in which “the ruler of this world (Satan) [will] be cast out” (John 12:31).  

And, second, salvation for mankind: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself ” (John 12:32).

We would have to repeat John’s entire Gospel to chronicle all that it reveals about God.  In short, John’s Gospel reveals Jesus, for to know Jesus is to know the Father.  To see Jesus is to see the Father.  As Andreas Köstenberger has argued: “Revelation is the overarching category for John in describing the work of the Son.”4  And the design of this divine revelation is that we might believe and be saved and so experience genuine communion with God in this life, and inherit eternal life to live in perfect harmony with God and Jesus for ever more on the New Earth. 

"For this reason He (Jesus) is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance."  Hebrews 9:15

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea."  Revelation 21:1

"He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son of God shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” 

John 3:36

This article is partly adapted from The Mission of God and the Witness of the Church by Justin A. Schell. 

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