John 14
I am the way, and the truth, and the life — and the promise of the Holy Spirit as another Paraclete, a helper who will come when Jesus is gone.
Summary
Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. Thomas interrupts: Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus answers I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him. Philip asks to be shown the Father; Jesus says have I been with you so long and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. He is in the Father and the Father is in him; the words he says are not his own.
Jesus promises that whatever the disciples ask in his name he will do, so the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you love me, keep my commandments. He will ask the Father, who will give them another Helper — the paraklētos, the Spirit of truth — to be with them forever. The world cannot receive him because it neither sees nor knows him; the disciples know him because he dwells with them and will be in them. Jesus will come back to them; they will see him; they will live because he lives. On that day they will know he is in the Father and they are in him and he in them. He who has his commandments and keeps them is the one who loves him; the Father will love that person, and Jesus will love him and manifest himself to him. Judas (not Iscariot) asks how he will manifest himself to them and not to the world; the answer is the commandment of love and the promise of the Spirit. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me say I am going away and coming to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.
- John 1Chapter 1 falls into two distinct movements.
- John 2Chapter 2 contains the first two incidents of the public ministry, set in very different registers.
- John 3Chapter 3 divides into a dialogue and a testimony.
- John 4Chapter 4 is built around the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the four gospels.
- John 5Chapter 5 turns on a Sabbath healing that provokes the first sustained conflict with the religious authorities and generates a major theological discourse.
- John 6Chapter 6 is the longest in the gospel and the most demanding.
- John 7Chapter 7 is one of the most dramatic scenes of the public ministry, set during the week-long Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem.
- John 8Chapter 8 opens with the pericope of the woman taken in adultery (verses 1–11), absent from the earliest manuscripts and widely understood as a later addition, but narratively powerful: whoever is without sin may cast the first stone.
- John 9Chapter 9 is the most novelistic chapter in John and a sustained piece of dramatic irony.
- John 10Chapter 10 follows directly from the expulsion of the man born blind in chapter 9 and develops two sustained metaphors.
- John 11Chapter 11 is the dramatic climax of the Book of Signs and the most fully narrated miracle in John.
- John 12Chapter 12 is the bridge between the two halves of the gospel.
- John 13Chapter 13 opens the Book of Glory and sets the scene for the Farewell Discourse that occupies chapters 14–17.
- John 14Chapter 14 is the opening movement of the Farewell Discourse and contains several of the most quoted passages in the gospel.
- John 15Chapter 15 moves through two large movements: the vine and branches discourse (verses 1–17) and the warning about the world's hostility (verses 18–27).
- John 16Chapter 16 continues the Farewell Discourse and moves through three phases.
- John 17Chapter 17 is the high-priestly prayer, unique in the New Testament: Jesus prays at length in the hearing of his disciples on the night of his arrest.
- John 18Chapter 18 covers the arrest, the hearings before Annas and Caiaphas, Peter's three denials, and the first half of the Roman trial before Pilate.
- John 19Chapter 19 covers the final stages of the trial and the crucifixion.
- John 20Chapter 20 narrates the resurrection in two stages across two distinct scenes.
- John 21Chapter 21 is often discussed as a possible appendix, since chapter 20 closes with a purpose statement that reads like an ending.