“Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25 NLT)

Happy New Year! We’re going to begin 2025 with a monthlong journey through the Gospel of John.

This Gospel was written by one of Jesus’ closest friends. In fact, John refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Like the other 11 disciples, John was a regular guy. He wasn’t a religious scholar. He wasn’t part of the Jewish elite in Israel. He was a fisherman, a blue-collar man.

He was also a brash, ambitious hothead. He once rebuked a man for casting out demons in Jesus’ name because the man didn’t belong to John’s group of disciples (see Mark 9:38). He asked Jesus for a place of honor in His kingdom (see Mark 10:37). And when a Samaritan village refused to show hospitality to Jesus and the disciples, John asked Jesus if they could call down fire from Heaven to destroy the entire population (see Luke 9:54). It’s no wonder Jesus nicknamed John and his brother James the “sons of thunder.”

Yet John was Jesus’ choice to be His disciple. That meant he had a front-row seat to three years that changed the world. He listened to Jesus’ teachings. He witnessed His miracles. He saw Jesus interact with devoted followers, scheming enemies, and everyone in between.

John saw what very few others were privileged to see: Jesus, up close and personal, day in and day out. And based on everything he saw, John believed. He believed Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

And he wrote his Gospel so that we might see and believe too.

After Jesus ascended to Heaven, John continued His ministry. He preached the Good News. He helped found the church in Jerusalem and ministered to its members. He faced threats, persecution, and imprisonment because of his faith. But he refused to be silenced.

According to church tradition, John was the only disciple who wasn’t martyred. And when he wrote his Gospel, he was “the last man standing”—the only one of Jesus’ inner circle left to tell the story. He likely wrote it sometime around AD 90, some 60 years after the events occurred. But they were still fresh in his memory.

John lived long enough to witness the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish worship (not to be confused with the church in Jerusalem). The destruction had a profound effect on Jewish people throughout the Roman Empire. With their place of worship gone, they had to make other arrangements for their sacrifices and festivals.

In his Gospel, John presents Jesus as the answer to their spiritual vacuum. He shows how Jesus fulfilled everything the Jewish sacrifices and festivals were intended to accomplish.

John minced no words in writing about the need to believe in Jesus. John 3:16 may be the best-known verse in the entire Bible. It’s also the core of Christian outreach: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (NLT)

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