Salvation in John's Gospel

(Note: The following is a paper that I wrote for my Johannine Theology class.)  

"Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your family." -Acts 16:31 (Paul, to the Philippian jailer).  

I recently had a conversation with an officer who works on our block at the prison.  When I told him that I was writing a paper on soteriology—salvation—he immediately posed me this question:

“What is salvation?” 

Just as quickly, he answered his own question with a question. 

“Do you think salvation means to ‘salvage’ something?  When I hear that word, I think of someone’s life being salvaged…”

I’ve never heard it put that way, but the thought intrigued me.  The human race has indeed, like the prophet Jonah, gotten shipwrecked while running away from God.  When we awaken to the reality that we are alone in the universe, trapped, and doomed to die in our sins, that is often when we are most likely to cry out to God for help. 

Can God salvage the human race through Jesus Christ? 

Romans 8:28 says that “All things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”  And in the very next verse, he defines that “good” end to which all things work: “For whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.   Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called; whom he called, these He also justified and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”

God predestined us all to be like Christ—who “committed no sin, neither was any deceit found in His mouth” (1 Pet. 1:22).  Yet when we went our own way, Jesus called us back.  He made a way for us to be made right with God despite our past, and to be glorified in the future. 

I believe that He did save us, that He does “salvage” us in this sense, and that those who put their trust in him will not be put to shame.  

But now, let’s see what John has to say about salvation. 

                Who is eligible for salvation?    

The New Testament is clear and consistent on the eligibility of all humankind for salvation.

But John brings a unique perspective to his writings.  Writing at the end of the first century, and having seen the development of the early Church, through persecutions, heresies, and the fall of Jerusalem, he wrote his gospel with an audience in mind.  That particular audience had been exposed to a false teaching that elevated some—the most “spiritual” above the common, “carnal” Christian.  The Church also struggled against falling back to Judaism with its elevation of the self through outward performance, as we see in Hebrews, and in the letter to the church in Smyrna (Rev. 2:8-11). 

Therefore, John makes it clear both in his gospel and his other writings that salvation is NOT for everyone. 

Salvation, first, is not for the righteous—that is, for those who believe they are self-sufficient. 

This idea first emerges in the early chapters of John’s gospel.  In chapters 3 and 4, John shares two contrasting stories in which a person came to Jesus in search of spiritual answers.  The first, Nicodemus the Pharisee, is confounded by Jesus’ explanation of the new birth, a top-down transformation requiring not acts of man’s righteousness, but a dependency of God’s righteousness.  The second is the woman at the well.  Unlike Nicodemus, she is aware of her sin and, because of the conviction in her heart, believes in Jesus, rejoicing in His grace.  

In John’s writings, the idea of repentance occurs, but it is not the call to repentance that defines salvation.  Rather, repentance is very clearly the effect—the first effect—of God’s work in a believer’s heart. 

Salvation is not for those who think they have life in themselves, but rather for those who know they are sick, dying, and in need of help.   

In John chapter 5, Jesus went up to a holy feast in Jerusalem, in which the highlight of His trip might have been rubbing shoulders with the rest of the clean, sanctified world that sat in preparation to partake with all good Jews on this Sabbath day.  Instead, he stopped to look kindly upon a middle-aged man, crippled, probably unwashed and sickly from muscular atrophy, staring helplessly into the glassy water by the Sheep Gate.  Immediately, He healed him with a word. 

The Son, He explained to his shocked witnesses, has life in Himself.  Not only does this life give Him the power to heal lame beggars, but also to raise the dead.  The death He is talking about is not only the physical death of the body, but spiritual death—that dual death first prophesied over Adam and Eve at Eden (Gen. 2:17).  In Revelation, this idea of being dead while seeming to live resurfaces:

“To the angel of the church in Sardis write… I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.”  (3:1). 

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea, write… you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.” (3:17). 

In my experience, I have come to realize that Jesus Christ always calls to Himself the “worst of the worst.”  It is not by accident that the twelfth apostle selected by the Holy Spirit turned out to be, not Matthias to whom the lot fell, but Saul of Tarsus—an avid persecutor and murderer of Christians.  Paul later writes that “Jesus Christ came into the world save sinners… of whom I am chief!” (I Tim. 1:15). 

I am reminded of Sergei Kourdakov, a KGB thug whose job it was to break into believers’ houses and kill, maim, rape, or imprison those caught in secret meetings.  In a miraculous turnaround, he himself became a believer due to the silent testimony of a young woman who loved not her life unto death, and to the faith of an elderly woman whom he was about to deal a death blow, before she began to pray… for him. 

I am reminded of Nicky Cruz, a troubled and violent teen immersed in the gangs of Brooklyn, New York… until a country preacher was moved to pray for him, even to stalk him with the message that “God loves you, Nicky.”  In the movie, “The Cross and the Switchblade,” Nicky, touched and frightened by the sudden attention of God in his life, plaintively asks one of his fellow gang members: “Why does he have to pick on me?” 

“Cause you’re the worst,” Israel says to him with a shrug.  “If he can reach you, he can reach anybody.”

I am reminded of my own clients, drug addicts, violent offenders, some having done time for murder charges.  Often I feel the burden to pray for one of them without ceasing, that that person might come into the kingdom of God.  It is rarely someone particularly likeable or virtuous.  Rather, the mark of Christ seems to settle on those who seem the most hopelessly imprisoned by drugs or an evil lifestyle.  I have in my time seen heroin addicts transformed into ambassadors for Christ, violent gang members given hope to rise above their circumstances and be changed by the Holy Spirit. 

It is in the greatest darkness the God’s light shines brightest. 

On the other hand, those who believe themselves to be righteous will not inherit salvation.  John actually calls these people, people who “live a lie and do not practice the truth” (I John 1:6).  In John 8:31-59, Jesus confronts the religious leaders of His day with the statement, “The Truth shall set you free.”  But sadly, the Pharisees insist that they are already free and don’t need Jesus’ help.  In reality, they live in darkness, in blindness.  They are unable to see Immanuel right before their eyes.  They are unable to realize the sickness of their own hearts, that they would expel from the synagogues a man born blind, whom God had healed, in order to preserve their own financial and political agenda.  And yet they believed that they merited salvation based on their own works! 

John 1 says, “He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him.” 

I John 1 urges us to “walk in the light,” because he who denies his sins makes God a liar and walks in darkness.  He who confesses his sins has them taken away. 

I John 2 further clarifies what it means to walk in darkness—he who hates or fails to love his brother is the one who abides in darkness. 

John 3:19 says that “This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, but men loved darkness because their deeds are evil.” 

The only person ineligible for salvation is the one who will not acknowledge his need and receive it. 

 

How Does One Appropriate Salvation? / What are the obstacles? 

 

In John’s gospel, we see the contemporary issues of faith being played out through Jesus’ interactions and teachings. 

In the earlier gospels, the message leaned toward repentance from sins.  And rightly so!  Repentance is necessary in order to live the holy life to which God has called us, through the cleansing blood of His Son and the work of His Spirit. 

But that is not the issue at stake here in John’s day.  It is not that people don’t need to repent any more; it is the fact that, in straying away to believe in Jesus as a good teacher, they risk losing the possibility of salvation entirely.  Instead, they reduce the gospel to another doctrine of works, of a Sermon-on-the-Mount lifestyle, but without the possibility of Divine transformation so that we may walk in Christ’s steps. 

Without faith in the Son of God, new birth is impossible. 

From John 3:16 to the Book of Life in Revelation, John highlights faith—belief, trust, confidence—in God the Son as the only way to salvation.

John is highlighting a particular aspect of salvation throughout his writings, not teaching the ‘four spiritual laws.’  His gospel and epistles all serve to highlight the deity of Christ, describe His uniqueness, and to draw others to faith in Him.

 

The Present Aspect or Content of Saving Faith, According to John

 

John is very specific about what we must believe in order to be saved.  During the days of the early gospels, it was almost implicit—believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved.  Very well, because the audience knew exactly what Jesus taught and what they were to believe without any arguments for the point.  However, in John’s day, what with the rise of false teachers and heresies, it became necessary for him to compile Jesus’ clearest statements about His work and His deity. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” John begins his gospel.  “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.  And we beheld His glory, glory as of the μονογενης of God, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14.)  Right away we know that this is a story about the unique Son of God, the Word who was God, who became a man and walked the earth. 

John 1:1 is probably most important statement in the gospel; it is also the most clearly worded.  The text says, “και θεος ην ο λογος.”  Two unique features of that sentence are first the fact that θεος lacks the article; and second its word order, which throws the predicate nominative, θεος, before the verb. 

When a word lacks the article, it does not mean that we should insert the indefinite article (“a,” “an”) in English.  It emphasizes that word’s essence and quality, rather than its entirety.  Here are a few other examples from John’s writings:

O θεος φως εστιν (Ι John 1:5 ).  God is light  (lit., “God light is.”)  This cannot be translated “God is a light,” or “God is the light,” because it lacks the article and therefore φως does not indicate an entire object, but rather the essence and quality of the whole. 

Ο θεος αγαπη εστιν (I John 4:8).  God is love (lit., “God love is.”)  The same rule applies—once again, the article is lacking, and the predicate comes before the verb.  This must be translated, “God is love,” not “God is a love,” or even “God is a loving being.” 

In Greek, the order of words in a sentence do not determine their grammatical function the way they do in English.  Therefore, to say “θεος ην ο λογος” does NOT say that “God was the Word.”  Rather, God constitutes what the Word is.  Another way of putting it is to say that the Word was God in substance, although the sentence does not equate the Word with God in entirety, as would be indicated by the following variation: “και ο λογος ην ο θεος.”  That would be Sabellianism, the idea that the Son is the Father.  Jesus never said “I am the Father,” but rather “I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me,” (John 14:10, italics mine) and later, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). 

Incidentally, the idea that the Son and the Father are separate Persons, but equally God was upheld and clarified by the early Church in the face of later theological challenges.  Tertullian, who died around A.D. 220, wrote in answer to Sabellians, “These three [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] are one substance, not one person; and it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’ in respect not of the singularity of number, but the unity of the substance’ (Adversus Praxaem, ix). Tertullian never contested Christ’s deity; rather, he argued for it.  Clement of Alexandria also wrote, describing Jesus as: “God in the form of man stainless, the minister of His Father's will, the Word who is God, who is in the Father, who is at the Father's right hand, and with the form of God is God” (Paedagogus, ch. 2).  And Ignatius, who died scarcely 10 years after the apostle John, frequently referred to Jesus in his writings as “Jesus Christ, our God” (Ignatius, Romans 1). 

Why all this fuss about word order and articles, and the meaning of the Word being God?  Can’t we just simply believe in Jesus as something-or-other and have done with it? 

But John is very insistent on the importance of Christ’s deity.  In fact, he writes in I John 4:2-3 that anyone that does not confess Jesus as God in flesh is antichrist!  From early on, John knew from his interactions with Jesus that you could not sit on the fence.  You were either for Him or against Him, as Jesus confirmed when He reproved John for stopping a brother from casting out demons in His name (Mark 9:38-42).  You either believed He was God, and you were a child of God, or you refused to believe and your father was the devil.  

C.S. Lewis pointed out one reason why this makes sense:

 

"A man who was merely a man [or even merely an angel!] and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse” (Lewis, 1952). 

 

What sorts of things did Jesus do or say that made no sense if He was not God?  Well, the main thing He did was to tell people that only by believing in Him as God could you be saved from sin! 

In John 8:24, Jesus says that “If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”  (In Greek, the words εγω ειμη, or “I am,” are the same as used in the Septuagint to translate the name “Yahweh.”  Jesus here claimed the Divine title from Exodus 3:14, as again was demonstrated by His statement in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, εγω ειμη!” and the Jews’ reaction to this “blasphemy” by attempting to stone Him.) 

If we do not believe He is Yahweh, we will die in our sins? 

Yes.  Because Jesus personally offered to forgive us. 

Only Yahweh God Himself can forgive sins, because it is only God we have sinned against.  In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus claimed the authority to forgive sins as well as to heal the quadruplegic.  The Pharisees murmured “blasphemy” because of His words; no man has ever rightly claimed he could forgive your sins!  No angel in the Bible appearing to men took this authority upon himself.  It was God’s prerogative alone; as David wrote, “Against You, and You alone, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4).

Likewise, the only adequate sacrifice had to be the wronged party—God Himself.  Animal sacrifices were only a symbolic gesture, looking forward to the ultimate sacrifice.  Creating another being as a “son” to be sacrificed would be just as useless as killing an innocent lamb.  Think about it in legal terms.  If one person murders someone, but another, innocent suspect is tried and executed… what happens when, years later, a DNA test identifies the real killer?  There is nothing to prevent the law from bringing him to justice.  Likewise, a crowd that lynches a scapegoat in place of their true enemy will just as voraciously kill the guilty party once he appears.  Substitute sacrifices do not protect us from judgment! 

“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the White Witch, characterizing Satan in C.S. Lewis’s allegory, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

“Well,” said Aslan [the Christ-figure]. “His offense was not against you.”

“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch…. “You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill!” (Lewis, 1950). 

For every “human traitor,” our adversary, the Devil, has a right to kill.  The wages of sin is death.  Unless God Himself died for your sins, thereby taking away the devil’s right to kill you… prepare to die for them yourself.

If Jesus Christ is not Yahweh God come in the flesh, then no matter what substance He is, He is either a lunatic, a megalomaniac, or despicably evil as only a liar who would toy with your eternal salvation is. 

John concludes his gospel with the words: “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you might have life in His name” (20:31).  And in Acts 4:12, it says that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which you might be saved.”  Yet the Old Testament is clear that “All who call upon the name of the LORD [Heb., YHWH] shall be saved” (Ps. 116:13).  And Hosea 13:4 says that “I am the LORD [YHWH], your God, who brought you out of Egypt.  You shall acknowledge no God but Me, no savior but Me.” 

How do we explain this salvation through His, except that Jesus is, in fact, Yahweh, the only God and Savior of the world?

 

The Future Aspect of Salvation Available to All Believers

 

Just before killing Aslan, the Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis’s allegory, the White Witch taunts him with these words:

 

"And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was, and so the Deep Magic will be appeased.  But when you are dead, what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die!" (Lewis, 1950).

 

If Jesus’ death were the end, He would not have effected salvation for anyone.  Salvation is more than our justification before God; it is also the power of God in us to righteousness.  Jesus not only conquered death in us, but also gave us life in His name.  God raised Him from the dead; and the life that is in Him also gives life to our mortal bodies.  We serve a living Savior, not a dead prophet or idealist whose tomb we may visit in season and remember what He once offered in life.  Jesus Christ offers us present and future benefits of salvation, because He is alive and able to make good on His offer.  “If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile,” Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:17. 

In Revelation 1:17-18, John records the words of the risen Christ: “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. [see Is. 41:1, 44:6, 48:12].  I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.  Amen.  And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.” 

Because of His resurrection, Jesus has the right and the power to deliver us from death, both physical and spiritual.  

“He that believes in me will not perish, but will have everlasting life,” Jesus tells Nicodemus, the Pharisee.  And to the Jews who witnessed His healing of the blind man, he says:

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.  Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.  For as the Father has life in Himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man.  Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” John 5:24-29. 

Revelation 20-22 describes in detail the final judgment before the “great white throne.”  Indeed, God will judge us based on what we have done in life.  But our final destiny is determined by the content of the Lamb’s Book of Life; i.e., all those who have believed in Christ and trusted Him for their salvation. 

References

Lewis, C.S.  (1950).  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Co.

Lewis, C.S.  (1952).  Mere Christianity.  New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishing Co.

Longman, Tremper, & Garland, David. (2006)  Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 13, 199-275. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 

McDowell, Josh.  (1977).  More Than a Carpenter.  Tyndale House Publishers. 

Mounce, William D.  (2003).  Basics of Biblical Greek.  Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D. (1982) The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

The Greek New Testament, 4^th revised edition. (2001) Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

Kourdakov, Sergei.  (1973) The Persecutor.  Fleming H. Revell Company. 

Wilkerson, David.  (1962) The Cross and the Switchblade.  New York, NY: Jove Books. 

All Biblical quotations are NKJV except where otherwise specified.