Digital Logos Edition
The vision for this series is to provide for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and lay people a clear and compelling exposition of texts of the Bible in the context of the Bible’s Story, and to provide discussion and instantiations of how the Bible’s Story is lived today. The purpose of the Story of God Bible Commentary Series is to explain and illuminate Scripture as God’s Story, with each text examined as embedded in its canonical and historical setting, in order to foster discernment in living the Story faithfully and creatively with and for the Church in the 21st century.
“In 1:5 a message is introduced: ‘God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.’2” (Page 35)
“All of this has been leading to what is arguably the ultimate concern of John’s theology: fellowship with God. The centrality of Jesus is for fellowship with the Father and the Son; that is the goal of John’s proclamation.5 Since God is love, he is all about relationship.” (Page 3)
“It would not be claiming too much to say that, for John, the ultimate goal of believers’ existence is fellowship with God. In him true life is found. In him we are beloved children. In him we have passed from death to life. Being in him is what it is all about in the end.” (Pages 12–13)
“Putting all this together suggests that option (1) is stronger than the other two. The water and blood signify Jesus’s baptism and death.12 Through these events, Jesus comes—he enters his ministry through baptism and he enters his role as Savior through death. He not only ministered (water), but came through baptism and death (blood). The water and blood testify that Jesus came to serve and die for humanity, while the Spirit testifies that he is God’s divine Son.” (Page 158)
“On the spiritual front, we see that Jesus’s ministry, death, and resurrection are for the purpose of fellowship” (Page 25)