I said before that I'd talk about the intended audience of John's gospel, and in fact we have been studying this in New Testament class.
It all revolves the purpose statement in John 20:31 – "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (NIV)
Now, the NIV has a footnote at "may believe", saying that some manuscripts have "may continue to believe". In fact, there only a handful, but they include those two or three that are regarded as being the most important. Most manuscripts have the aorist pisteusēte; these have the present tense pisteuēte. Sometimes the aorist has the sense of being a once-off occurrence, while the present implies continuous activity. Some scholars, therefore, argue that the present tense implies that the gospel is written to Christians – John is writing to help them persevere in the faith. But perhaps the difference between the present and aorist tense here isn't so great after all, and in both cases could have been written to unbelievers, whom John wishes to come to faith.
Post-modernist that I am, I'm comfortable with this ambiguity. We have two variant readings – perhaps we can adopt both. Perhaps we can consider this Gospel as being for both Christians and non-Christians. It has a pastoral purpose as well as an evangelistic purpose. After all, the message about what Jesus said and did is relevant to all people everywhere.
So this book is appropriate for evangelistic Bible studies, as well as for personal devotional reading. It is simple, and can instruct someone who is completely ignorant of the faith; and yet it is profound, and provides to the greatest scholar boundless food for thought. It can bring us to faith in Jesus, and it can strengthen and develop that faith.
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