Sierra View Presbyterian Church

An ancient theologian named Gregory once commented of the Gospel of John, “And infant can paddle in it…and an elephant can swim in it.” Gregory is right, here the simplest of minds can encounter the majesty of Christ, and the most learned theologian can occupy himself with the mystery and riches of divine revelation. Here, an infant can paddle, and an elephant can swim.

New Testament scholarship uniformly agrees that the Gospel of John is to be set apart from the other gospels, collectively called the Synoptic Gospels. The uniqueness of John accounts for the separation. John, often simply referred to as “The Fourth Gospel,” is in a category unto itself. That doesn’t mean, however, that it is superior to the other gospels, or to the rest of revelation. Only that John concentrates on different material, presents Jesus Christ in different categories, and records different events in the ministry of Christ than do the Synoptics. For example, only John records the miracle at the wedding in Cana, where Jesus turned the water into the wine. Likewise, the famous parable of the sower and the soils is found in all three of the Synoptics, but not in John.

It has been rightly noted by theologians throughout history that each of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, presents Jesus Christ through a particular framework, or that each gospel tends to emphasize a particular aspect of Son of God. Matthew emphasizes Jesus’ Kingship, Mark emphasizes His Servanthood, Luke holds out to us Jesus’ humanness, and John shows us Jesus’ deity. It is the deity, or “God-hood” of Christ that runs all through the gospel of John.
John, likely the longest living disciple of the 12, leaves us no doubt as to the purpose of his book: “But these things I have written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, you may have life in His Name.” (John 20:31)

We expect to give the entirety of 2006 to a study of the Gospel of John. We’ll be delighted to have you study with us as we attend to holy things and encounter the Almighty One as He is held out to us in the Gospel.