Few books have won the hearts and transformed the minds of as many people as the Gospel of John has. There cannot be a better introduction to the Gospel of John than to listen to what some of them who have studied it have to say.
. . . the Gospel was not written for the benefit of the academic community; couched in the simplest language possible, it was written to provide the Church with an exposition of the Good News of Jesus, the Christ and Son of God, and to show inquirers into the Christian faith the way to life through him (20:30-31). the young believer finds in it an enthralling exposition of the faith that he or she has embraced; the mature Christian receives from it an illuminating revelation of the person of the Redeemer who is the subject of the book; the aged saint gains from it comfort and a glimpse of the glory of God that irradiates life's eventide; and the Christians departing from this world take with them the word of life and peace given by the Shepherd of souls. The very nature of the work as a product of preaching and teaching makes it the preacher's Gospel par excellence.
G. Beasley-Murray, John (Word Biblical Commentary, 36; Waco, Tx: Word, 1987) x.
I like the comparison of John's Gospel to a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim. It is both simple and profound. It is for the veriest beginner in the faith and for the mature Christian. Its appeal is immediate and never failing. . . There is unplumbed depths in the limpid clarity of this writing . . . years of close study of this Gospel do not leave one with a feeling of having mastered it, but rather with the conviction tha tit is still "strange, restless, and unfamiliar."
Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John, rev. ed. (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 3; citing E. C. Hoskyns, The Fourth Gospel (London: Faber and Faber, 1954) 20.
Very often on stained glass windows and the like the gospel writers are represented in symbol by the figures of the four beasts whom the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne (Rev.4:7). The emblems are variously distributed among the gospel writers, but a common allocation is that the man stands for Mark, which is the plainest, the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the lion stands for Matthew, for he specially saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the tribe of Judah; the ox stands for Luke, because it is the animal of service and sacrifice, and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and the universal sacrifice for all mankind; the eagle stands for John, because it alone of all living creatures can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled, and John has the most penetrating gaze of all the New Testament writers into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and the very mind of God. Many people find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ in John than in any other book in the world.
William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol 1 (Chapters 1-7). Rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 3-4.
. . . the Gospel penetrates more deeply into the mystery of God's revelation in his Son than the other canonical Gospels and perhaps more deeply than any other biblical book. From the majestic prologue to the probing epilogue, the evangelist's words are as carefully chosen as they must be thoughtfully pondered by every reader of his magnificent work.
Andreas J. Kostenberger, John (ECNT: Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 1.
The impact on the history of the world of John's twenty-one brief chapters is in the end incalculable. . . they comprise a moral and spiritual potency which over the centuries has transformed communities, toppled kingdoms, liberated multitudes, and remade human character on a scale without parallel in the accumulated literature of the ages. The power remains present in this gospel, and the reader, whether Christian or non-Christian, can discover it today. Simply put, in the paragraphs of John's gospel the living Lord Jesus Christ is met in his glory and grace, his majesty and tenderness, and his presence is experienced as a perceptible reality in your life. "These are written . . . that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:31). May I challenge you to test that claim - and make the incomparable discovery that it happens to be true!
Bruce Milne, The Message of John (BST; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993), 10.
The critic may range the gospel with Philo and the Alexandrian philosophers; but, and the question is important, did the poor and the ignorant, when they lay a-dying, ever ask their Rabbis to read to them out of the voluminous writings of Philo or of those like him?
E. C. Hoskyns, The Fourth Gospel (London: Faber and Faber, 1954) 20.
. . . there is a common and justifiable consciousness that in the Gospel according to John we arrive at an ultimate unveiling. Dr. Arthur T. Person once suggested that the four Gospels in the order in which we now have them, follow the line of the old Hebrew encampment. Matthew surveys the Theocracy in its entirety. In other words, the whole camp is seen surrounding the King. In Mark we find ourselves in the outer court, in the place of service and sacrifice. In Luke we have passed into the Holy Place, where stood the seven-branched candlestick of witness, and the table of shewbread, or communion. In John we enter within the veil, into the Holiest of all.
G. Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to John (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1951), 9.
The Bible is more to be admired than the Louvre Museum, and the Gospel of John is perhaps its Mona Lisa
James M. Hamilton, God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2010), 405.
The Gospel of John contains some of the profoundest truth in the New Testament, but there are no other writings which express it more simply. The imagery is clear, concise, and rather limited. The author employs a restricted vocabulary to convey his thought, but each word is filled with spiritual significance. His metaphors are frequently repeated, and some of them become technical theological terms because of their constant occurrence in his teaching.
Merrill C. Tenny, "IV. Literary Keys to the Fourth Gospel: The Imagery of John," Bibliotheca Sacra 121 (Jan 1964) 13-21.
