30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are 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.
In the final verse of John 20, he gives us the reason for writing his Gospel. “These are 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.”
The last 2 verses of chapter 20 actually close the Gospel of John, while chapter 21 is more of an epilogue, when Jesus again commissions His disciples for their work in the early days of the Christian church. One of the highlights of the final chapter of John is of course, the reinstatement of Peter, which we will come to in a couple of weeks.
James Montgomery Boice has an interesting take on chapter 21. “At first reading, the final chapter of John seems the strangest in the Gospel, most of all because it looks as if it has been added on. The verses that end chapter 20 seem to mark an end to the book as a whole, and the confession of Thomas which comes immediately before them is obviously the climactic point of John’s narrative. What can be added after Thomas falls down and worships Jesus as ‘My Lord and my God?’ The only thing that could possibly be added, according to our thinking, is an account of Christ’s final ascension to heaven. But John 21 does not contain that incident. Instead, it deals with a miraculous catch of fish in Galilee followed by some words of Jesus to His disciples on that occasion. These difficulties, as well as others, have led some scholars to suggest that this last chapter was added to the Gospel by another writer after John had already finished it. Many have accepted this, although there is not a shred of manuscript evidence in the theory’s support. The key to understanding chapter 21 is to see it as a parallel to the first part of chapter 1. John 1:1–14 is a prologue, in which the preincarnate activity of the Lord is summarised. Chapter 21, with its emphasis upon the postresurrection ministry of the Lord in which He now rules His church and directs its members in their Christian growth and service, is the epilogue to the Gospel of John.”
Thomas’ great confession of faith which we looked at last Sunday, takes us all the way back to the beginning of the Gospel of John. In the opening verse he affirmed the deity of Jesus, while chapter 20:28 brings the narrative to a climax. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. My Lord and my God.” (John 1:1, 20:28)
The person and the work of Jesus Christ has been the main point of John writing his Gospel, and in particular he has focused on what he calls the signs, the public miracles which bear witness to the truth that Jesus is God incarnate.
How many miracles did Jesus perform during His 3 years of public ministry? We just don’t have the answer to that question. The 4 Gospels often record the same miracles, with each one giving slightly different details. Not only that, but we cannot tell definitively if a particular miracle recorded in the Gospels is one miracle recorded from different perspectives or if two or more separate miracles are being written about.
John makes the point in verses 30-31, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are 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.”
“These are written” are the 7 seven signs John records, which are the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana in chapter 2, the healing of the official’s son in chapter 4, the healing of the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda in chapter 5, the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ walking on water, both in chapter 6, the healing of the blind man in chapter 9, and the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11.
Of course, it can also be said that “these things” John referred to in verse 31 include the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus as signs, and the greatest miracle of all is His sacrificial death and resurrection itself.
The actual number of Jesus’ miracles, both recorded and unrecorded are not as important as what they signify. The miracles are called signs because they point us to God’s offer of salvation in Christ. John has made it clear that he didn’t record all the signs that he could have written down, but what he has written about is enough to call us to confess Jesus, together with Thomas, as “Lord and God.”
As we look at the final 2 verses of chapter 20 today, we will be looking back over what John has taught his readers throughout the previous 20 chapters.
John reminds us that the object of saving faith is Jesus Christ Himself. We are not saved by believing that certain doctrines are true. We are saved only by responding in personal faith to the Biblical testimony of Jesus, as we trust and yield our lives to Him as our Lord and God.
Boice, in his commentary, looks back in some detail on the entire Gospel, highlighting the 7 signs of Jesus, and he begins by writing, “Here is how John’s concluding words must be taken. It is as though he is saying, ‘Look, you have been reading and studying my Gospel for some time now, and you have come to the end. Have you grasped my purpose? Can it be that you have missed it after all this time? In case you have missed it, let me spell it out, Jesus did many, many things, but I have not recorded all of them. I have recorded only a part. But I have recorded that part so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through His name.’ Have you ever thought of the Gospel of John in that light? Have you noticed that for all its deep theology, the Gospel is really nothing more than a series of testimonies to Christ?”
What John writes in verse 31 is true not only of his Gospel, but of the entire Bible. “These are 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.”
The miracles that John records point us to Jesus’ deity, because they can’t be explained or understood in any other way. He who turned water into wine must be the Lord of the harvest. Jesus said that the man we meet in chapter 9 was born blind so “that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
He said to Martha in 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life.” As bold and as impressive such a statement may be, Jesus then proved this claim to be true as He displayed His power over death when He raised Lazarus to life and called him out of the grave. And He does the same for us. Jesus calls us out of the condemnation of our sin into life in His name, and one day, we too will be raised to eternal life in Christ’s name.
We need to be clear though, that proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord, just as in John’s day, is going to set us apart from the crowd. It is more than likely that John wrote his Gospel in the city of Ephesus, around 50 years after the earthly life of Jesus. Ephesus was in modern day Turkey, a centre of worship of the Roman emperor. The streets of the city were regularly filled with processions as they proclaimed, “Caesar is Lord, Caesar is God!”
And it was against this backdrop of pagan worship where John recalled Thomas’ profession to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”
John’s point in declaring Jesus’ deity is not simply to persuade us to agree on Christian doctrine, as important as that is, but he reminds us that to believe in Jesus is to commit ourselves to the worship of Jesus alone, to the exclusion of all others, and we need to be aware of the opposition we will face for declaring our allegiance to Christ.
The world always has and always will hate and despise the name of Jesus Christ, so we need to know just what it means when we proclaim Him as Lord and God. As Christians, we are to be committed to the glory and advancement of Christ’s kingdom instead of the glory of the kingdoms of this world. The Canadian Bible teacher Bruce Milne wrote, “Caesar worship is not dead. The false deities are still chanted in our streets, the gods of state and nation, and all the other traditional religions or their amalgam of New Age and Satanism, and selfism in its multiple forms. In the face of these false claimants we exalt in our worship the one who alone is worthy, our Lord, our God, Jesus Christ!”
When John wrote in verse 31, “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,” he was reminding us that Christ is not part of Jesus’ name but rather the title and office that He fulfils. Christos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, which means “Anointed One.” Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, foretold by the ancient prophets to God’s people in the days of the Old Testament.
When Jesus began His public ministry, He stood up in the synagogue of Nazareth and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18–19)
Luke continues in verses 20 and 21, “And He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”
Jesus was referring here to the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1–2, which teaches that the God-anointed Messiah would come as the Saviour who would bring liberty from sin, and John presents Jesus as this Christ and he calls us to believe in Him for our salvation.
In Jesus the Christ, we see the fulfilment of the three major offices God instituted in the Old Testament. Those are the offices of prophet, priest, and king, and all of these not only point us to Jesus, but they are perfectly fulfilled in Him.
The purpose of the prophets was to reveal God and what He required to the people. The priests’ role was to bring the people into God’s presence for worship and service, while the kings ruled God’s people on the Lord’s behalf. These three anointed offices find their perfect fulfilment in Jesus, and He continues to do so eternally. He fulfils these roles for the salvation of those who turn to Him in repentance and faith.
And John’s Gospel reveals Jesus as the Saviour who meets these three needs we have - our need to know God, our need to be reconciled to God, and our need to be ruled by God.
Firstly, John’s Gospel identifies Jesus as the true Prophet who reveals God to His people. As we’ve seen, in the very first verse, John refers to Jesus as the God-revealing “Word.” In chapter 3, He taught the pharisee Nicodemus who was supposed to be a teacher of Scripture but who did not even know that he needed to be born again. When Nicodemus asked in verse 9, “How can these things be?” Jesus presented Nicodemus with the truth of the Gospel. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
In chapter 4, Jesus offered God’s gift of eternal life to the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar. When she replied that a prophet would someday come to explain these things, Jesus replied, “I who speak to you am He.” (John 4:26) He revealed the prophetic truth of God not only in His words but also in His person, so that the woman went back to her village saying, “Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29)
On the night He was arrested, Jesus told His disciples, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) He was speaking about how He fulfilled the office of prophet, because as the Son of God, Jesus revealed God to the world by His words, His works, and His ministry. As He taught, He revealed God’s offer of salvation to sinners.
So to see Jesus, the great and final Prophet, is to see and know God, and to believe in Jesus as Saviour is to come to God in truth.
Secondly, John, in his Gospel, reveals Jesus in His anointed office as the saving Priest for His people. The Old Testament priests brought the people into the holiness of God’s presence by offering sacrifices to atone for sin. In John 1:29, John the Baptist identified Jesus as the true and final sacrifice for our sins, when he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” The religious elite had desecrated the temple by allowing it to be turned into a money making market, so it was as the true priest that Jesus cleared the temple in chapter 2. He drove out those who were trying to make money out of the people’s need for forgiveness.
In chapter 8 is the account of the woman caught in adultery, and Jesus stood against her condemnation as a true Priest of God’s mercy and grace. First He dealt with the hypocrisy of those who condemned her, then He offered her forgiveness of her sin, as she left restored to God and called to holy living. This is precisely what He does with each of us. The law stands in condemnation against us, but as Jesus bears our sin on the cross, He ministers His peace and grace to us, restoring us to the Father, and says the same to us as He did to that woman: “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8:11)
John presents Jesus to us as the anointed Priest of God’s mercy, as he calls us to confess our need for saving grace and to believe in Jesus’ atoning death for the forgiveness of our sins. Hebrews 4:14-16 says, “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Because of and through Jesus, our great high priest, we enter into the presence of God.
Thirdly, John presents Jesus to us as the anointed King over God’s people. Jesus’ miracles reveal His power and sovereignty over sickness, blindness, and even death. Jesus came as a King with power from heaven as He spoke and the ruler’s son was healed, as He opened up His storehouse and fed the five thousand with just a few fish and loaves, as His command gave the paralysed man at the pool at Bethesda the strength to stand up, and especially as His sovereign voice called Lazarus from the dead.
Of course, as we have seen, Jesus was not the kind of king that the Jewish people wanted. As far as they were concerned, their greatest need was a deliverer from Roman tyranny. As they welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the fact that He arrived on a humble donkey instead of a powerful warhorse should have alerted the people to the fact that things were not going to turn out as they had hoped.
Instead, Jesus would establish His kingdom by being lifted up on the throne of His cross. He was crucified under a sign written by Pontius Pilate, which read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” (John 19:19)
The challenge John presents is this: have you submitted to the kingship and Lordship of Jesus Christ?
If you have received Jesus as sovereign Ruler, as well as the prophetic revealer of God and sin-atoning Priest, then you can know that you have been forgiven and have received the gift of eternal life.
If you have yet to surrender to Him, if you are hesitant to trust Christ to save you, then John’s witness to His miraculous signs and His many acts of mercy should persuade you that Jesus is all that you need in a Saviour and more.
The 18th century revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards asked: “What are you afraid of, that you dare not venture your soul upon Christ? Are you afraid that He cannot save you, that He is not strong enough to conquer the enemies of your soul? Are you afraid that He will not be willing to stoop so low as to take any gracious notice of you? What is there that you can desire should be in a Saviour that is not in Christ? What is adorable or endearing; or, what can you think of that would be encouraging which is not to be found in the person of Christ? Was it not a great thing for Him who was God to take upon Himself human nature, to be not only God, but man thenceforward to all eternity? Would you desire that a Saviour should suffer more than Christ has suffered for sinners? What is there wanting, or what would you add if you could, to make Him more fit to be your Saviour?”
The answer to all of these questions is that John has revealed Jesus the Christ as Son of God and Saviour for all who believe in Him. Christ is sufficient for all our needs and more.
Edwards answers these questions by saying, “Therefore, let us believe in Him, committing our salvation wholly into His mighty, pierced hands, knowing that He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”
The subject and the central character of the Gospel of John is Jesus Christ, and John’s purpose for writing is that we would believe in Jesus as God’s Son and as the Christ. John writes in verse 31, “that by believing you may have life in His name.”
Eternal life in Jesus is what John emphasises throughout his Gospel, and he uses the term eternal life 17 times in 21 chapters. The word “life” appears 47 times.
The first time we see it is in 1:4. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Because we have broken God’s holy law, we stand condemned, as Romans 6:23 reminds us. “The wages of sin is death.” Paul though, gives us the good news in the same verse. “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Through faith in His name, Jesus by His death paid the debt we owe, which is what Jesus said to Nicodemus in 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
As Augustus Toplady wrote in his wonderful hymn Rock of Ages, “Thou must save, and Thou alone. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling; naked, come to Thee for dress; helpless, look to Thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Saviour, or I die.”
Our only hope is Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ. It is in His name alone that we can be forgiven through His blood shed for us. It is only through Him that we can be set free from the condemnation we deserve, and instead be declared righteous in the sight of God. Justification through faith in Christ brings eternal life, as He sets us free from the death penalty that hangs over us all because of our sin.
In John 7:37-38 Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” This is the Holy Spirit’s regenerating power in our lives. Charles Spurgeon wrote, “God the Holy Spirit is with believers, breathing into them a new, holy, heavenly life. They are dead to the world, and buried with Christ, but they live unto God, never more to be slain by sin.”
The God of grace offers you eternal life through His Son Jesus Christ.
The big question is, will you receive it?
The whole of John’s Gospel - in fact, the entire Word of God - pleads with you to believe in Jesus for your salvation. Submit yourself completely to Him. Join with Thomas and the confession of the saints down through the ages, “My Lord and my God.”
Trust Jesus, and call on Him to be your Saviour, and through faith in His name you will have eternal life.
We close with a quote by the English theologian Thomas Adam, who lived in the first half of the 18th century. He wrote extensively on the 4 Gospels, and this is what he wrote about John 20:30-31. “In the course of this Gospel we have had frequent intimations given us of the great end and use of Christ’s miracles, and we are called upon at the close of it, and especially on occasion of the crowning miracle of the resurrection, to observe it once more, namely, that Jesus, the worker of them, is the Christ, the Lord’s anointed, our king, priest, and prophet, the Son of God, Himself God, and therefore able to bear the whole weight of our salvation, by making atonement for our sins, and raising us from our dead state of sin to the feeling, and power of a new life in God. Even so, Lord Jesus! Let this be the great end and aim of all our reading and hearing of Thee, that being made alive unto God by Thee, we may rejoice in our adoption, and be always growing in grace, live in hope, die in peace, and be raised in glory.”
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 20:30-31
Although there is another chapter to the Gospel of John, 20:30-31 is really the closing statement by John.
Compare these verses with John 1:1-5.
“These are written” are the 7 signs or miracles which John records in his Gospel. (See 2:1-11, 4:43-54, 5:1-15, 6:1-13, 6:16-21, 9:1-11 and 11:38-44)
How do these signs reveal Jesus as the Christ?
There is some debate as to whether John intended to include Jesus’ resurrection and post-resurrection appearances among “these things.”
How do they complement and underline John’s purpose for writing his Gospel?
Read Isaiah 61:1-3 and Luke 4:16-21
How does Jesus fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy, in particular the three Old Testament offices of Prophet, Priest and King?