Wednesday, April 15, 2020 -
Today I got to thinking about why the gospel of John contains so much more than the other gospels from the latter days of Christ’s life prior to His crucifixion, including the washing of the disciples’ feet, and all of His teachings in chapters 14 through 16, much of which took place also in the upper room as well as the time between when they left the upper room and arriving at the Garden of Gethsemane.
I knew that the main theme, or purpose, of John’s gospel, was to show that Jesus is the Son of God, and so I tasked “W” to help me to examine chapters 14 through 17 in regards to this particular theme.
Amazingly, but not surprisingly, out of 117 verses in these four chapters, 67 of them point to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God or that Jesus and the Father are one. Every section seems to be included for this reason – Christ’s “High Priestly Prayer” (John 17) notwithstanding! That’s 57 percent! And many if not most of the verses that do not deal specifically with the Holy Spirit, Who Christ promises to leave with the disciples when He “goes away,” Or, He deals specifically with the theme of eternal life.
After reviewing this, “W” went straightway to share these verses on Christ’s deity with the Iraqi man a few doors down, a Sunni Muslim who he has been witnessing to. Christ being the Son of God is one of the biggest things Muslims argue against. But their excuse for not reading an English translation of the Bible is that it is corrupted. Pray that God does a work in his heart, along with the other Muslims who have heard the gospel in this prison.