Volume IV
The Gospel According to Saint John.
With John Brown’s marginal references, notes and reflections · Vol. IV, p. 204
John, the writer of this Gospel, and of three short epistles, was originally a fisherman; who, being called to be one of Christ's disciples, became his peculiar favourite. Living long after the other apostles, when the church was first plagued with the denial of our Saviour's essential Deity, he aims more expressly to establish that fundamental article of the Christian religion, and to manifest the inexcusableness of the Jews in rejecting him. What he relates in his Gospel is generally new, and related by none of the other evangelists: viz. John Baptist's directing his disciples to Christ, ch. i.; Christ turning water into wine; purging the temple of fraudulent merchants, ch. ii.; healing the nobleman's son, ch. iv.; and the infirm man at the pool of Bethesda, ch. v.; the blind man at the pool of Siloam, ch. ix.; and his raising Lazarus from the dead, ch. xi. But he especially sets before us his divine discourses—with Nicodemus, touching the new birth, ch. iii.; with the Samaritan woman and his disciples, ch. iv.; with the Pharisees, concerning his equality with the Father in Godhead, working, and worship, ch. 5. 18, 21, 23; with the Capernaumites, concerning himself as the bread of life, ch. vi.; with the Jews, touching his power over the Sabbath-day, and to save sinners, ch. vii.; and his being the Light of the world, the Son of the Father, and teacher of that truth which alone could render them free from the bondage of Satan, sin, and death, ch. viii.; and the chief and divine Shepherd of God's chosen people, ch. x.; and with his disciples, for their direction and comfort, at his last supper, ch. xiii.-xvi.; and his prayer to his Father, ch. xvii., &c.
[According to all antiquity this Gospel was written after the other three, and several years after the war with the Romans, that had terminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews. It is remarkable that he alone records the name of the disciple who smote Malchus with the sword; for Peter was now beyond the reach of his enemies, and that as Lazarus had, most probably, now also returned to his rest, he alone records his resurrection, which the others had omitted for fear of incensing the Jews, who had purposed to put him to death. It is also remarkable that the other evangelists record our Lord's predictions, and that John omits them; most likely because most, if not all, of them had been already fulfilled; for Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus; and John was not banished to Patmos till the 15th of Domitian his successor, A.D. 95, and was recalled from exile upon the accession of Nerva, A.D. 96, when he returned to Ephesus, where he wrote his Gospel and epistles, and survived till the third year of the emperor Trajan, when he died in the hundredth year of his age. C.
John's Gospel is in many respects different from the others. The source and nature of its leading characteristics will be best developed by a brief notice of the author. His father was Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, apparently of some wealth, since he had hired servants. His son, therefore, would receive a superior education. John must have been thoughtful from boyhood, and the errors of the Jewish religion as then developed in ritual and tradition must have attracted his attention. He was a very young man when he attached himself to the Baptist, and he did not long remain under his elementary tuition. The Baptist's testimony to Jesus produced such an effect on John that he followed him. A deep attachment was formed, arising, as it appears, not merely from intellectual conviction of the truth of Christ's doctrines, but from ardent love for his person, and profound admiration of his character. John was one of the three whom Jesus admitted into the sanctuary of his inner life. They alone witnessed the transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. And while the three were favoured above others, John's intense
love and devotion seems to have gained for him a still closer intimacy. He lay on Christ's bosom at supper; he followed him to the judgment-hall and the cross; he received from him, as the highest token of confidence and affection, the charge of Mary his mother. John had opportunities of witnessing Christ's power and glory, of seeing the depths of his love, of learning the mysteries of his nature, of observing the results of his work, such as were enjoyed by no other man. It is to this intimate communion of the beloved disciple with the loving Saviour we owe the development of those sublime truths set forth in this Gospel. It is to his profound veneration for, and appreciation of, every word that fell from Christ's lips, we are indebted for those long discourses which this Gospel alone contains. While the other disciples were attracted by his miracles, parables, and prophecies, John's philosophic mind was impressed by the mystery of his deity; by the depths of his wondrous love in assuming our nature and bearing our sin; by the triumphs of his work, in giving light to a dark, and life to a dead world; by the glories of the union established between him and his church, by the promise of the Comforter.
Such was John's training. From the moment he turned away from the Baptist, he seems never to have left the Messiah's side. He took supreme delight in the contemplation of his person and nature. He hung on every word that fell from his lips. He tried to fathom every truth embodied in his discourses. After Christ's death, too, John doubtless heard from Mary many of those displays of wisdom, power, and grace divine which the holy child had displayed from infancy to manhood, and which, as we are told, she 'treasured up in her heart.' John was taught as never man was taught.
The object of the other evangelists was mainly to give a history of our Lord; John's object was mainly to develop his theological system. The synoptists enunciated doctrines, but they did so from a historical point of view; John, on the other hand, narrated incidents, but he did so from a doctrinal point of view. The discourses of our Lord which he reports are all developments of the most sublime and profound doctrines. In this Gospel there is no biography of Jesus, properly so called; 'but there is, in historical form, a representation of the Christian faith, in relation to the person of Christ as its central point; and in this representation there is a picture, on the one hand, of the antagonism of the world to the truth revealed in him; and on the other, of the spiritual blessedness of the few who yield themselves to him as the Light of life.' P.]