That You May Believe
Introduction
Thesis Statements
This morning, we are beginning our journey into the Gospel of John. We’re going to cover this slowly in smaller sections. There’s just no reason to rush, in my opinion. I anticipate, just so you can know how we’re going here, I imagine that we’ll finish John somewhere around the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025.
Anyway, we’re starting John and when you start something new it’s always best to start where? At the...
Wrong! We’re starting at the end. You can turn in your Bibles to John 20. John 20 is on page 617 of the white pew Bible.
And you might be asking yourself, why in the world are we starting at the end? Because, that’s where John’s thesis statement is. At the end of John 20, the Beloved Disciple writes a clear expression of exactly why he took the time to sit down and write about the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. And it is to that thesis statement that we will turn today.
I trust you are in John 20, let me read verses 30 and 31:
John 20:30–31 CSB
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.
31 But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Verse 31 is John’s aim in writing this entire account of Jesus: that we may believe that the Messiah is Jesus in believing may have eternal life in His name.
Because that is John’s thesis statement — that’s his big idea — that needs to be ours as we journey through this gospel: these recollections are meant to show those who are not yet disciples of Jesus the way to him. And they are meant to bolster and shore up the belief of those who already follow him.
And today, as I unpack this thesis, I’m essentially going to try and preach the entire gospel of John in one sitting. This whole book is designed for this sentence, and so in looking at this sentence, we’re going to weigh the entire book.
But these are written, verse 31 says, so that you may believe…whether that is believing for the first time or continuing in the faith with a renewed belief, John wants us to believe. This is a gospel of both evangelism and encouragement in the faith.
With John’s goal in mind — that we, his readers, may believe — our text this morning, and in it the entire gospel of John, provides us with the opportunity to answer three questions:
What does it mean to believe?
What do we need to believe?
Why do we need to believe?
Let’s go to our first question:
What Does it Mean to Believe?
We talk about belief all the time.
“I believe it’s going to rain tomorrow.” I mean, of course we can never really know, but I want it to be true, so I will choose to believe it. We use it in that sense.
“I believe that the Milky Way galaxy is made up of over 100 billion stars.” Factually true, so it’s easy to believe, but it doesn’t really affect me all that much, honestly.
But those aren’t the kinds of beliefs that John is calling us to here. Believing, in John, is neither a detached admission of a set of facts nor is it a vague hope that isn’t based on any real truth. No, John wants something more for us:
What does it mean to believe? When John says believe, he means 2 things. First:
To Believe is to Receive
Turn to John 1, I want to read verse 12 for us; just a few pages back to the first chapter of John. In verse 31 of chapter 20, John says that by believing we may have eternal life; that is, salvation comes through belief.
Now, look at how he describes it in chapter 1:
John 1:12 CSB
But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name,
Grammatically, we can move the order of the sentence and see what he’s doing. To all who did receive him, that is, to all who believe, he gave the right to be children of God. To receive is to believe and to believe is to receive.
God gives, we receive.
Notice that it doesn’t say that we buy. It doesn’t say that we earn. It doesn’t even say that we take or accept. It doesn’t say that we do anything beyond receive. It’s passive. We do nothing., God does everything.
When you receive a package in the mail, what do you do at the moment of receiving it? At the moment of reception, what are you doing? Nothing. The mail carrier simply puts it into your possession, you have received it.
We have heard too often that salvation requires something of us.
“Come back to church and come to Jesus.”
“Give that up and come to Jesus.”
“Stop doing that and come to Jesus.”
The gospel says, receive the gift. That's it. Right now, simply receive.
You do not have to clean yourself up to receive. Just receive. You do not have to beat yourself up to receive. Just receive.
You do not have to conquer your doubt. Just receive. You do not have to account for every sin. Just receive.
Many reject him, but to those who receive him, to those who believe on his name, he gives the right to be called children of God.
To believe is to receive the gift of God’s grace, mercy, and salvation in Jesus.
Secondly, when John calls us to believe he means that
To Believe is to Trust
This is what it means when you hear someone say to put one’s faith in Christ. Having received the gift of God in Jesus, we then trust that He is who he says He is and He has done what he was sent to accomplish.
We trust that God's grace in Christ is enough and that we don’t need to work for it. We trust that nothing else is necessary, but that all was completed by and in Christ.
Again, it is more than just adherence to a set of facts about Jesus; it is trusting with our whole selves in Jesus.
No doubt, you have heard the illustration of trust in a chair. It is one thing to say, “I believe that this chair can hold me and will not fall.” It is altogether another thing to sit in the chair.
One is postulation about a possible outcome. The other is actually placing our trust in the chair. John did not write just so that we could know the facts about Jesus. He wrote so that we would know those facts and then trust in him completely in response.
To believe is to receive and to trust completely.
Now, though, there are facts about Jesus by which we are called to believe in Him.
There are truths that John says we must believe about Christ in order to trust in Him.
And that’s our second question:
What Do We Need We Believe?
Before I answer this from the Scriptures, I want to reiterate, because it’s importance cannot be overstated: believing these truths is not what saves us. Rather, we are saved only by believing in Christ about whom these truths are true.
Never confuse the two. Believing about Jesus is not believing in Jesus.
That being said, there are two things John tells us to believe about Jesus which lead us to believe in Him.
First:
Jesus is the Messiah
John says that he wrote his gospel so that we may believe that Jesus is the Messiah. That Jesus is the Christ.
Remember last week, I reminded you that Christ is not a name, but rather a title and an office. Both Christ and Messiah mean “Anointed One.” We must believe that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the one who would fulfill the saving expectations of God’s Old Testament people.
We cannot divorce the Old Testament from the New Testament, because the Old Testament points to the New Testament in Jesus.
When Jesus started his ministry, if you remember the story from Luke, he is teaching in a synagogue and it’s his turn to read. The Scripture is Isaiah 61:1-2,
Isaiah 61:1–2 CSB
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of our God’s vengeance; to comfort all who mourn,
When he was done reading, Jesus said this Scripture is fulfilled this very day in your presence. Jesus was accepting the Old Testament office of the God-anointed Messiah who would come as the Savior and grant liberty, healing, comfort, understanding, and divine favor. And John, throughout his gospel, presents Jesus as this Christ and calls us to believe on him for salvation.
Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed one.
And in his gospel, John identifies Jesus fulfilling the three anointed offices of the Old Covenant: the offices of prophet, of priest, and of King. All three of those were roles assumed through anointing — of pouring oil on one’s head — and John says Jesus is the greatest and final of each of these.
Jesus was the true Prophet who reveals God to His people. John starts his gospel by referring to Jesus as the God-revealing “Word.”
John 1:1 CSB
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
In John 3, Jesus teaches Nicodemus, who was probably one of Israel’s top legal minds as a Pharisee, that one must be born-again to see the kingdom of God.
In John 4, he teaches the Samaritan woman about God’s gift of eternal life. The woman says, I know one day a Prophet will come and teach us all these things, and Jesus responds with, I am he.
In John 14, he says to the disciples, The One who has seen me has seen the Father. He perfectly revealed God to the world by his words, his work, and his ministry.
His teaching is summed up with God’s offering salvation to sinners. Jesus is the great and final Prophet, and to see him is to see God. And John calls us to believe, to trust that Jesus is the Savior who uniquely reveals the truth of God. Jesus is the Great Prophet who reveals God to His people.
And Jesus is the Great Priest who saves God’s people. In the Old Testament, priests interceded — they went in between — on behalf of the people. And the greatest expression of this intercession was, of course, the sacrifices.
That lamb which was slain would atone for the sins of the people. And so it is no coincidence that when John the Baptist sees Jesus standing on the hill he cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
As God’s Great Priest, he cleared the temple in John 2, kicking out the people who were trying to profit on the forgiveness of the people and who were blocking the foreigners from coming to God.
It was as God’s Great Priest that he stood against the condemnation of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. He bestows upon her the grace and mercy of God. He drives away her accusers and releases her being restored to God.
It was as God’s Great Priest that Jesus would hang on the cross, making atonement for God’s people, taking their punishment and restoring them to God through the sacrifice of his own body. And John calls on us to receive the gift of salvation in Jesus and to believe on Jesus’ atoning death for the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus is the Great High Priest who saves God’s people.
And Jesus is the Great King who rules lovingly over God’s people. In the first half of John’s gospel, he includes what he calls seven signs, miraculous deeds of Jesus which were meant to point to him as the Messiah. Jesus’ miracles reveal his royal sovereignty over nature as he turns water into wine and walks on water. They reveal his royal sovereignty over sickness, blindness, and disease when he heals the officer’s son, the blind man, and the paralytic at the pool at Bethsaida. They showed his royal power when he fed five thousand with just some fish and a few loaves of bread.
And ultimately, the revealed his sovereign power over death when he raises Lazarus form the dead and is raised from the dead himself. Jesus came in sovereign power.
But, instead of looking like the king the Jews expected, he was crowned with thorns. His royal garments were a rough purple robe draped over a broken body. His throne was a cross lifted on a hill.
But in history’s most dramatic moment of divine irony, those instruments meant for mocking became the very thing that they were mocking. The crown of thorns was the royal crown, because the King came to serve and not to be served. The purple robes were the royal garments, because He is the clothing of righteousness for his people. The cross really was a throne, because Jesus came to give his life as a ransom for many and it is through his death that he was enthroned forever. And John calls on us to receive the royal grace and submit our hearts to Jesus’ saving rule. And he says, if you have received him as the Great Prophet, the Great Priest, and the Great King, then you may know that you have gained life in his name.
Jesus i the Messiah, the Christ. He is the God-anointed prophet, priest, and king.
John also says he writes that we may believe that:
Jesus is the Son of God
We talked a little about this last week, so I won’t go so much into it today, but when John says he writes so we may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, he means that we believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, fully God, completely unified in the essence of God.
When Jesus turns the water into wine, it is to show that He is the Lord of the harvest. When he heals the blind man, it’s so that God’s powerful work might be shown. And when he is raised from the dead, He is declared to be the son of God with power over death. Jesus is the Lord of Life. Jesus is fully God.
And John’s call to us isn’t just to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity. God, and God alone, is to be the object of our worship. And so, to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, very God of very God, is to commit ourselves to worship Him alone, to the exclusion of everything else. While we go about our secular lives, we remember that our lives are sacred. We commit to the glory of Christ’s kingdom and reject the kingdoms of the world.
Jesus is the Son of God, and to believe that is to worship Him alone.
What do we need to believe as we read John’s gospel? That Jesus is the Messiah, the God-anointed prophet, priest, and king. And that Jesus is the Son of God who alone is worthy of our worship.
Finally, let’s answer our last question:
Why Do We Need to Believe?
The answer to that question is both simple and complex at the same time.
John 20:31 CSB
31 But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Why do we need to believe? John says we need to believe because we need life and life is in the name of Jesus.
Life is a continual theme in Gospel of John and life is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
John 1:4 CSB
4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
John 3:16 CSB
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 5:24 CSB
24 “Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.
John 11:25–26 CSB
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.
26 Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 14:6 CSB
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
We need life — we are dead in our trespasses and in our sin, Paul affirms, and we need life. We need spiritual renewal, we need eternal life, we need freedom from the judgment against our sin which is certain death. We need life, and life comes through belief in Jesus Christ.
And that life is “in Him.” That is such an important phrase “in Him.” More than any other descriptor in the New Testament, those who believe are said to be “in Christ.”
Christian is used once or twice, but it’s really a derogatory term, a slur, in the New Testament. Disciple is used occasionally outside the gospels. The other closest descriptor is “child of God” or “adopted,” and those get closest to the heart of what it means to be “in Christ.”
We got Cora from the hospital when she was about 48 hours old. Our adoption was official around 11 months later. When we adopted her, we got a piece of official paper that said she was ours forever.
And while that paper is important for legal reasons, the real significance of her adoption is that fact that she is in our family. She was brought into a relationship with us, and we with her. She is now part of a family and she belongs. We are in relationship with one another.
We sleep in the same house. We sit and eat together. We watch TV together. We read together. We cry together when sad things happen. We pass sickness to one another. We are together. She, and we, are part of a new life together and forever.
And that is the picture of adoption and being “in Him.” It’s being drawn into an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jesus illustrated this for his disciples in John 15 by comparing their relationship to a vine with branches. The branch doesn’t get a one-time injection of life from the vine and then separate to do it’s own thing. It gets daily nourishment from its connection to the vine, and if something were to sever the branch from the vine, the branch would die.
When we truly believe, we truly begin to live because we enter into that life-giving connection and relationship with Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God.
That, friends, is John’s purpose in writing his gospel: If you have never believed, he writes to invite you to trust Jesus Christ and be changed from death to eternal life.
If you have believed, then he writes to encourage you to trust all the more and walk in the light and life of Jesus.
There is nothing more, then, but to ask the question: Will you believe?
Let’s pray.