Verses 1-31
Chapter 20
20:1-10 On the
first day of the week, very early in the morning, while it was still
dark, Mary from Magdala came to the tomb; and she saw the stone taken
away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other
disciple whom Jesus loved, and she said to them: "They have taken the
Lord away from the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."
So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they set out for the
tomb. The two were running together. The other disciple ran on ahead
faster than Peter, and he was the first to come to the tomb. He stooped
down and he saw the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in.
Then Simon Peter came, following him, and he went into the tomb. He saw
the linen clothes lying there and he saw the napkin, which had been upon
Jesus' head, not lying with the rest of the linen clothes, but lying
apart from them, still in its folds, by itself. So then, the other
disciple, who had arrived first at the tomb, went in too, and he saw,
and believed. For as yet they did not realize the meaning of scripture,
that Jesus should rise from the dead. So the disciples went back to
their lodgings.
No one ever loved Jesus so much as Mary Magdalene. He had done
something for her that no one else could ever do, and she could never
forget. Tradition has always had it that Mary was a scarlet sinner, whom
Jesus reclaimed and forgave and purified. Henry Kingsley has a lovely
poem about her.
"Magdalen at Michael's gate
Tirled at the pin;
On Joseph's thorn sang the blackbird,
'Let her in! Let her in!'
'Hast thou seen the wounds?' said Michael,
'Knowest thou thy sin?'
'It is evening, evening,' sang the blackbird,
'Let her in! Let her in!'
'Yes, I have seen the wounds,
And I know my sin.'
'She knows it well, well, well,' sang the blackbird.
'Let her in! Let her in!'
'Thou bringest no offerings,' said Michael,
'Nought save sin.'
And the blackbird sang, 'She is sorry, sorry, sorry.'
'Let her in! Let her in!'
When he had sung himself to sleep,
And night did begin,
One came and opened Michael's gate,
And Magdalen went in."
Mary had sinned much and she loved much; and love was all she had to bring.
It was the custom in Palestine to visit the tomb of a loved one
for three days after the body had been laid to rest. It was believed
that for three days the spirit of the dead person hovered round the
tomb; but then it departed because the body had become unrecognizable
through decay. Jesus' friends could not come to the tomb on the Sabbath,
because to make the journey then would have been to break the law.
Sabbath is, of course, our Saturday, so it was on Sunday morning that
Mary came to the tomb. She came very early. The word used for early is
proi (Greek #4404)
which was the technical word for the last of the four watches into
which the night was divided, that which ran from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. It was
still grey dark when Mary came, because she could no longer stay away.
When she arrived at the tomb she was amazed and shocked. Tombs
in ancient times were not commonly closed by doors. In front of the
opening was a groove in the ground; and in the groove ran a stone,
circular like a cartwheel; and the stone was wheeled into position to
close the opening. Further Matthew tells us that the authorities had
actually sealed the stone to make sure that no one would move it (Matthew 27:66).
Mary was astonished to find it removed. Two things may have entered her
mind. She may have thought that the Jews had taken away Jesus' body;
that, not satisfied with killing him on a cross, they were inflicting
further indignities on him. But there were ghoulish creatures who made
it their business to rob tombs; and Mary may have thought that this had
happened here.
It was a situation Mary felt that she could not face herself; so
she returned to the city to seek out Peter and John. Mary is the
supreme instance of one who went on loving and believing even when she
could not understand; and that is the love and the belief which in the
end finds glory.
One of the illuminating things in this story is that Peter was still
the acknowledged leader of the apostolic band. It was to him that Mary
went. In spite of his denial of Jesus--and a story like that would not
be long in being broadcast--Peter was still the leader. We often talk of
Peter's weakness and instability, but there must have been something
outstanding about a man who could face his fellow-men after that
disastrous crash into cowardice; there must have been something about a
man whom others were prepared to accept as leader even after that. His
moment's weakness must never blind us to the moral strength and stature
of Peter, and to the fact that he was a born leader.
So, then, it was to Peter and John that Mary went; and they
immediately set out for the tomb. They went at a run; and John, who must
have been a younger man than Peter since he lived on until the end of
the century, outstripped Peter in this breathless race. When they came
to the tomb, John looked in but went no farther. Peter with typical
impulsiveness not only looked in, but went in. For the moment Peter was
only amazed at the empty tomb; but things began to happen in John's
mind. If someone had removed Jesus' body, if tomb-robbers had been at
work, why should they leave the grave-clothes?
Then something else struck him--the grave-clothes were not
dishevelled and disarranged. They were lying there still in their
folds--that is what the Greek means--the clothes for the body where the
body had been; the napkin where the head had lain. The whole point of
the description is that the grave-clothes did not look as if they had
been put off or taken off; they were lying there in their regular folds
as if the body of Jesus had simply evaporated out of them. The sight
suddenly penetrated to John's mind; he realized what had happened--and
he believed. It was not what he had read in scripture which convinced
him that Jesus had risen; it was what he saw with his own eyes.
The part that love plays in this story is extraordinary. It was
Mary, who loved Jesus so much, who was first at the tomb. It was John,
the disciple whom Jesus loved and who loved Jesus, who was first to
believe in the Resurrection. That must always be John's great glory. He
was the first man to understand and to believe. Love gave him eyes to
read the signs and a mind to understand.
Here we have the great law of life. In any kind of work it is
true that we cannot really interpret the thought of another person,
unless between us and him there is a bond of sympathy. It is at once
clear, for instance, when the conductor of an orchestra is in sympathy
with the music of the composer whose work he is conducting. Love is the
great interpreter. Love can grasp the truth when intellect is left
groping and uncertain. Love can realize the meaning of a thing when
research is blind. Once a young artist brought a picture of Jesus to
Dore for his verdict. Dore was slow to give it; but at last he did so in
one sentence. "You don't love him, or you would paint him better." We
can neither understand Jesus nor help others to understand him, unless
we take our hearts to him as well as our minds.
20:11-18 But
Mary stood weeping outside at the tomb. As she wept she stooped down,
and looked into the tomb, and she saw two angels sitting there in white
robes, one at the head, and the other at the feet of the place where
Jesus' body had been lying. They said to her: "Woman, why are you
crying?" She said to them: "Because they have taken my Lord away, and I
do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she
turned round, and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was
Jesus. Jesus said to her: "Woman, why are you crying? Who are you
looking for?" She, thinking that he was the gardener, said to him: "Sir,
if you are the man who has removed him, tell me where you have laid
him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her: "Mary!" She turned,
and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" which means, "Master!" Jesus said
to her: "Do not touch me! For I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brethren, and say to them that I am going to ascend to my
Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Mary of Magdala came to
the disciples, telling them: "I have seen the Lord," and telling them
what he had said to her.
Someone has called this story the greatest recognition scene in
all literature. To Mary belongs the glory of being the first person to
see the Risen Christ. The whole story is scattered with indications of
her love. She had come back to the tomb; she had taken her message to
Peter and John, and then must have been left behind in their race to the
tomb so that by the time she got there, they were gone. So she stood
there weeping. There is no need to seek for elaborate reasons why Mary
did not know Jesus. The simple and the poignant fact is that she could
not see him through her tears.
Her whole conversation with the person she thought to be the
gardener shows her love. "If you are the man who has removed him, tell
me where you have laid him." She never mentioned the name of Jesus; she
thought everyone must know of whom she was thinking; her mind was so
full of him that there was not anyone else for her in all the world. "I
will take him away." How was her woman's strength to do that? Where was
she going to take him? She had not even thought of these problems. Her
one desire was to weep her love over Jesus' dead body. As soon as she
had answered the person she took to be the gardener, she must have
turned again to the tomb and so turned her back on Jesus. Then came his
single word, "Mary!" and her single answer, "Master!" (Rabbouni (Greek #4462) is simply an Aramaic form of Rabbi (Greek #4461); there is no difference between the words).
So we see there were two very simple and yet very profound reasons why Mary did not recognize Jesus.
(i) She could not recognize him because of her tears. They
blinded her eyes so that she could not see. When we lose a dear one,
there is always sorrow in our hearts and tears shed or unshed in our
eyes. But one thing we must always remember--at such a time our sorrow
is in essence selfish. It is of our loneliness, our loss, our
desolation, that we are thinking. We cannot be weeping for one who has
gone to be the guest of God; it is for ourselves we weep. That is
natural and inevitable. At the same time, we must never allow our tears
to blind us to the glory of heaven. Tears there must be, but through the
tears we should glimpse the glory.
(ii) She could not recognize Jesus because she insisted on
facing in the wrong direction. She could not take her eyes off the tomb
and so had her back to him. Again it is often so with us. At such a time
our eyes are upon the cold earth of the grave; but we must wrench our
eyes away from that. That is not where our loved ones are; their
worn-out bodies may be there; but the real person is in the heavenly
places in the fellowship of Jesus face to face, and in the glory of God.
When sorrow comes, we must never let tears blind our eyes to
glory; and we must never fasten our eyes upon the grave and forget the
heavens. Alan Walker in Everybody's Calvary tells of officiating at a
funeral for people to whom the service "Was only a form, and who had
neither Christian faith nor Christian connection. "When the service was
over a young woman looked into the grave, and said brokenly: 'Goodbye,
father.' It is the end for those who have no Christian hope." But for us
at such a time, it is literally "Adieu!" "To God!" and it is literally
"Until we meet again."
There is one very real difficulty in this passage. When the
recognition scene is complete, at first sight, at all events, Jesus said
to Mary: "Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to the Father."
Just a few verses later we find him inviting Thomas to touch him (John 20:27).
In Luke we read of him inviting the terrified disciples: "See my hands
and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit has
not flesh and bones, as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39). In Matthew's story we read that "they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him" (Matthew 28:9).
Even the form of John's statement is difficult. He makes Jesus say: "Do
not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father," as if to say
that he could be touched after he had ascended. No explanation of this
is fully satisfying.
(i) The whole matter has been given a spiritual significance. It
has been argued that the only real contact with Jesus does in fact come
after his Ascension; that it is not the physical touch of hand to hand
that is important, but the contact which comes through faith with the
Risen and Ever-living Lord. That is certainly true and precious but it
does not seem to be the meaning of the passage here.
(ii) It is suggested that the Greek is really a mistranslation
of an Aramaic original. Jesus of course would speak in Aramaic, and not
in Greek; and what John gives us is a translation into Greek of what
Jesus said. It is suggested that what Jesus really said was: "Hold me
not; but before I ascend to my Father go to my brethren and say to
them..." It would be as if Jesus said: "Do not spend so long in
worshipping me in the joy of your new discovery. Go and tell the good
news to the rest of the disciples." It may well be that here we have the
explanation. The Greek imperative is a present imperative, and strictly
speaking ought to mean: "Stop touching me." It may be that Jesus was
saying to Mary: "don't go on clutching me selfishly to yourself. In a
short time I am going back to my Father. I want to meet my disciples as
often as possible before then. Go and tell them the good news that none
of the time that we and they should have together may be wasted." That
would make excellent sense, and that in fact is what Mary did.
(iii) There is one further possibility. In the other three
gospels, the fear of those who suddenly recognized Jesus is always
stressed. In Matthew 28:10 Jesus' words are: "Do not be afraid." In Mark 16:8 the story finishes: "For they were afraid." In Luke 24:5
it is said that they were "frightened." In John's story as it stands
there is no mention of this awe-stricken fear. Now, sometimes the eyes
of the scribes who copied the manuscripts made mistakes, for the
manuscripts were not easy to read. Some scholars think that what John
originally wrote was not ME (Greek #3361) HAPTOU (Greek #680), Do not touch me, but, ME (Greek #3361) PTOOU (Greek #4422), Do not be afraid. (The verb PTOEIN (Greek #4422)
means to flutter with fear.) In that case Jesus was saying to Mary:
"Don't be afraid; I haven't gone to my Father yet; I am still here with
you."
No explanation of this saying of Jesus is altogether satisfying,
but perhaps the second is the best of the three which we have
considered.
Whatever happened, Jesus sent Mary back to the disciples with
the message that what he had so often told them was now about to
happen--he was on his way to his father; and Mary came with the news, "I
have seen the Lord."
In that message of Mary there is the very essence of
Christianity, for a Christian is essentially one who can say: "I have
seen the Lord." Christianity does not mean knowing about Jesus; it means
knowing him. It does not mean arguing about him; it means meeting him.
It means the certainty of experience that Jesus is alive.
20:19-23 Late
on that day, the first day of the week, when for fear of the Jews the
doors had been locked in the place where the disciples were, Jesus came
and stood in the midst of them, and said: "Peace be to you." And when he
had said this he showed them his hands and his side. So the disciples
rejoiced because they had seen the Lord. Jesus again said to them:
"Peace to you. Even as the Father sent me, so I send you." When he had
said this, he breathed on them and said to them: "Receive the Holy
Spirit. If you remit the sins of any, they are remitted; if you retain
them they are retained."
It is most likely that the disciples continued to meet in the
upper room where the Last Supper had been held. But they met in
something very like terror. They knew the envenomed bitterness of the
Jews who had compassed the death of Jesus, and they were afraid that
their turn would come next. So they were meeting in terror, listening
fearfully for every step on the stair and for every knock at the door,
lest the emissaries of the Sanhedrin should come to arrest them too. As
they sat there, Jesus was suddenly in their midst. He gave them the
normal everyday eastern greeting: "Peace be to you." It means far more
than: "May you be saved from trouble." It means: "May God give you every
good thing." Then Jesus gave the disciples the commission which the
Church must never forget.
(i) He said that as God had sent him forth, so he sent them
forth. Here is what Westcott called "The Charter of the Church." It
means three things.
(a) It means that Jesus Christ needs the Church which is exactly
what Paul meant when he called the Church "the body of Christ" (Ephesians 1:23; 1 Corinthians 12:12).
Jesus had come with a message for all men and now he was going back to
his Father. His message could never be taken to all men, unless the
Church took it. The Church was to be a mouth to speak for Jesus, feet to
run upon his errands, hands to do his work. Therefore, the first thing
this means is that Jesus is dependent on his Church.
(b) It means that the Church needs Jesus. A person who is to be
sent out needs someone to send him; he needs a message to take; he needs
a power and an authority to back his message; he needs someone to whom
he may turn when he is in doubt and in difficulty. Without Jesus, the
Church has no message; without him she has no power; without him she has
no one to turn to when up against it; without him she has nothing to
enlighten her mind, to strengthen her arm, and to encourage her heart.
This means that the Church is dependent on Jesus.
(c) There remains still another thing. The sending out of the
Church by Jesus is parallel to the sending out of Jesus by God. But no
one can read the story of the Fourth Gospel without seeing that the
relationship between Jesus and God was continually dependent on Jesus'
perfect obedience and perfect love. Jesus could be God's messenger only
because he rendered to God that perfect obedience and love. It follows
that the Church is fit to be the messenger and the instrument of Christ
only when she perfectly loves him and perfectly obeys him. The Church
must never be out to propagate her message; she must be out to propagate
the message of Christ. She must never be out to follow man-made
policies; she must be out to follow the will of Christ. The Church fads
whenever she tries to solve some problem in her own wisdom and strength,
and leaves out of account the will and guidance of Jesus Christ.
(ii) Jesus breathed on his disciples and gave them the Holy
Spirit. There is no doubt that, when John spoke in this way, he was
thinking back to the old story of the creation of man. There the writer
says: "And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7).
This was the same picture as Ezekiel saw in the valley of dead, dry
bones, when he heard God say to the wind: "Come from the four winds, O
breath, and breath upon these slain that they may live" (Ezekiel 37:9).
The coming of the Holy Spirit is like the wakening of life from the
dead. When he comes upon the Church she is recreated for her task.
(iii) Jesus said to the disciples: "If you remit the sins of
anyone, they are remitted; if you retain them, they are retained." This
is a saying whose true meaning we must be careful to understand. One
thing is certain--no man can forgive any other man's sins. But another
thing is equally certain--it is the great privilege of the Church to
convey the message of God's forgiveness to men. Suppose someone brings
us a message from another, our assessment of the value of that message
will depend on how well the bringer of the message knows the sender. If
someone proposes to interpret another's thought to us, we know that the
value of his interpretation depends on his closeness to the other.
The apostles had the best of all rights to bring Jesus' message
to men, because they knew him best. If they knew that a person was
really penitent, they could with absolute certainty proclaim to him the
forgiveness of Christ. But equally, if they knew that there was no
penitence in his heart or that he was trading on the love and the mercy
of God, they could tell him that until his heart was altered there was
no forgiveness for him. This sentence does not mean that the power to
forgive sins was ever entrusted to any man or men; it means that the
power to proclaim that forgiveness was so entrusted; along with the
power to warn that forgiveness is not open to the impenitent. This
sentence lays down the duty of the Church to convey forgiveness to the
penitent in heart and to warn the impenitent that they are forfeiting
the mercy of God.
20:24-29 But
Thomas, who is called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when
Jesus came. The other disciples told him: "We have seen the Lord." He
said to them: "Unless I see the print of the nails in his hands, and put
my finger in the print of the nails, and unless I put my hand into his
side, I will not believe." Eight days later the disciples were again in
the room, and Thomas was with them. When the doors were locked, Jesus
came and stood in the midst of them, and said: "Peace be to you." Then
he said to Thomas: "Stretch out your finger here, and look at my hands;
stretch out your hand and put it into my side; and show yourself not
faithless but believing." Thomas answered: "My Lord and my God!" Jesus
said to him: "You have believed because you have seen me. Blessed are
those who have not seen and who have believed."
To Thomas the Cross was only what he had expected. When Jesus
had proposed going to Bethany, after the news of Lazarus' illness had
come, Thomas' reaction had been: "Let us also go, that we may die with
him" (John 11:16).
Thomas never lacked courage, but he was the natural pessimist. There
can never be any doubt that he loved Jesus. He loved him enough to be
willing to go to Jerusalem and die with him when the other disciples
were hesitant and afraid. What he had expected had happened, and when it
came, for all that he had expected it, he was broken-hearted, so
broken-hearted that he could not meet the eyes of men, but must be alone
with his grief.
King George the Fifth used to say that one of his rules of life
was: "If I have to suffer, let me be like a well-bred animal, and let me
go and suffer alone." Thomas had to face his suffering and his sorrow
alone. So it happened that, when Jesus came back again, Thomas was not
there; and the news that he had come back seemed to him far too good to
be true, and he refused to believe it. Belligerent in his pessimism, he
said that he would never believe that Jesus had risen from the dead
until he had seen and handled the print of the nails in his hands and
thrust his hand into the wound the spear had made in Jesus' side. (There
is no mention of any wound-print in Jesus' feet because in crucifixion
the feet were usually not nailed, but only loosely bound to the cross.)
Another week elapsed and Jesus came back again; and this time
Thomas was there. And Jesus knew Thomas' heart. He repeated Thomas' own
words, and invited him to make the test that he had demanded. And
Thomas' heart ran out in love and devotion, and all he could say was:
"My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him: "Thomas, you needed the eyes of
sight to make you believe; but the days will come when men will see
with the eye of faith and believe."
The character of Thomas stands out clear before us.
(i) He made one mistake. He withdrew from the Christian
fellowship. He sought loneliness rather than togetherness. And because
he was not there with his fellow Christians he missed the first coming
of Jesus. We miss a great deal when we separate ourselves from the
Christian fellowship and try to be alone. Things can happen to us within
the fellowship of Christ's Church which will not happen when we are
alone. When sorrow comes and sadness envelops us, we often tend to shut
ourselves up and refuse to meet people. That is the very time when, in
spite of our sorrow, we should seek the fellowship of Christ's people,
for it is there that we are likeliest of all to meet him face to face.
(ii) But Thomas had two great virtues. He absolutely refused to
say that he understood what he did not understand, or that he believed
what he did not believe. There is an uncompromising honesty about him.
He would never still his doubts by pretending that they did not exist.
He was not the kind of man who would rattle off a creed without
understanding what it was all about. Thomas had to be sure--and he was
quite right. Tennyson wrote:
"There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds."
There is more ultimate faith in the man who insists on being
sure than in the man who glibly repeats things which he has never
thought out, and which he may not really believe. It is doubt like that
which in the end arrives at certainty.
(ii) Thomas' other great virtue was that when he was sure, he
went the whole way. "My Lord and my God!" said he. There was no halfway
house about Thomas. He was not airing his doubts just for the sake of
mental acrobatics; he doubted in order to become sure; and when he did,
his surrender to certainty was complete. And when a man fights his way
through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has
attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can
never reach.
We do not know for sure what happened to Thomas in the after days;
but there is an apocryphal book called The Acts of Thomas which purports
to give his history. It is of course only legend, but there may well be
some history beneath the legend; and certainly in it Thomas is true to
character. Here is part of the story which it tells.
After the death of Jesus the disciples divided up the world
among them, so that each might go to some country to preach the gospel.
India fell by lot to Thomas. (The Thomist Church in South India does
trace its origin to him.) At first he refused to go, saying that he was
not strong enough for the long journey. He said: "I am an Hebrew man;
how can I go amongst the Indians and preach the truth?" Jesus appeared
to him by night and said: "Fear not, Thomas, go thou unto India and
preach the word there, for my grace is with thee." But Thomas still
stubbornly refused. "Whither thou wouldest send me, send me," he said,
"but elsewhere, for unto the Indians I will not go."
It so happened that there had come a certain merchant from India
to Jerusalem called Abbanes. He had been sent by King Gundaphorus to
find a skilled carpenter and to bring him back to India, and Thomas was a
carpenter. Jesus came up to Abbanes in the market-place and said to
him: "Wouldest thou buy a carpenter?" Abbanes said: "Yes." Jesus said,
"I have a slave that is a carpenter, and I desire to sell him," and he
pointed at Thomas in the distance. So they agreed on a price and Thomas
was sold, and the agreement ran: "I, Jesus, the son of Joseph the
carpenter, acknowledge that I have sold my slave, Thomas by name, unto
thee Abbanes, a merchant of Gundaphorus, king of the Indians." When the
deed was drawn up Jesus found Thomas and took him to Abbanes. Abbanes
said: "Is this your master?" Thomas said: "Indeed he is." Abbanes said:
"I have bought thee from him." And Thomas said nothing. But in the
morning he rose early and prayed, and after his prayer he said to Jesus:
"I will go whither thou wilt, Lord Jesus, thy will be done." It is the
same old Thomas, slow to be sure, slow to surrender; but once his
surrender is made, it is complete.
The story goes on to tell how Gundaphorus commanded Thomas to
build a palace, and Thomas said that he was well able to do so. The king
gave him money in plenty to buy materials and to hire workmen, but
Thomas gave it all away to the poor. Always he told the king that the
palace was rising steadily. The king was suspicious. In the end he sent
for Thomas: "Hast thou built me the palace?" he demanded. Thomas
answered: "Yes." "When, then, shall we go and see it?" asked the king.
Thomas answered: "Thou canst not see it now, but when thou departest
this life, then thou shalt see it." At first the king was very angry and
Thomas was in danger of his life; but in the end the king too was won
for Christ, and so Thomas brought Christianity to India.
There is something very lovable and very admirable about Thomas.
Faith was never an easy thing for him; obedience never came readily to
him. He was the man who had to be sure; he was the man who had to count
the cost. But once he was sure, and once he had counted the cost, he was
the man who went to the ultimate limit of faith and obedience. A faith
like Thomas' is better than any glib profession; and an obedience like
his is better than an easy acquiescence which agrees to do a thing
without counting the cost and then goes back upon its word.
20:30-31 Jesus
did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which have not
been written in this book. These have been written that you may believe
that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God, and that believing you
may have life in his name.
It is quite clear that as the gospel was originally planned, it comes to an end with this verse. John 21:1-25 is to be regarded as an appendix and an afterthought.
No passage in the gospels better sums up the aim of the writers than this.
(i) It is quite clear that the gospels never set out to give a
full account of the life of Jesus. They do not follow him from day to
day but are selective. They give us, not an exhaustive account of
everything that Jesus said or did, but a selection which shows what he
was like and the kind of things he was always doing.
(ii) It is also clear that the gospels were not meant to be
biographies of Jesus, but appeals to take him as Saviour, Master and
Lord. Their aim was, not to give information, but to give life. It was
to paint such a picture of Jesus that the reader would be bound to see
that the person who could speak and teach and act and heal like this
could be none other than the Son of God; and that in that belief he
might find the secret of real life.
When we approach the gospels as history and biography, we
approach them in the wrong spirit. We must read them, not primarily as
historians seeking information, but as men and women seeking God.
On any view John 21:1-25 is a strange chapter. The gospel comes to an end with John 20:1-31 ; and then seems to begin again in John 21:1-25
. Unless there had been certain very special things that he wanted to
say, the man who put the gospel into its final form would never have
added this chapter. We know that in John's gospel there are often two
meanings, one which lies on the surface, and a deeper one which lies
beneath. So, then, as we study this chapter, we will try to find out why
it is so strangely added after the gospel seemed to have come to an
end.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)