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Some Jews come to ask Jesus to plainly declare Himself the Christ, but He tells them what He already said, but they take up stones because Jesus makes Himself out to be God. Jesus tells them that they do the same thing when they use the title of God for their religious.

Jesus then hears that Lazarus has died. He stays for two more days and then returns Judea to Lazarus’ home. Thomas cynically suggests that they will be going to their deaths by returning to Judea, as well.

When Jesus visits the family and sees Lazarus’ tomb, He starts to cry, overcome with emotion despite the knowledge that He will raise Lazarus soon. Jesus then tells the people to take away the stone, cries out with a loud voice, and raises Lazarus, who had been dead for four days.

Hearing of this, the Pharisees seek to kill Jesus.

Jesus tells the parable of the Good Shepherd, which recalls Zechariah 11, Ezekiel 34, and Malachi 2. A father must feed his children first, and likewise the priests must tend their flocks before themselves.

Jesus uses an example of sheep who come to the shepherd’s name to explain Himself. He is the gate for the sheep, and while a hireling would abandon his flock, the good shepherd will not. Jesus will put his life down voluntarily to save His flock, and He will pick it up again. This is something that only God can do, and those who hear Him say it understand the implications of such statements.

Jesus and the authorities get into a heated argument. Jesus tells them that He knows the will of the Father, and that the authorities do not. Jesus then says that Abraham saw His day, and that before Abraham was, I am, referring to the name of God. The authorities then take up stones against Jesus, but He escapes.

Jesus then heals a man born blind, but the Pharisees question the man, who tells them that Jesus did it on the Sabbath, and defends Jesus. The Pharisees throw the man out, who goes and becomes a disciple of Jesus, who tells him that He is the Son of Man.

John 8 begins with the narrative of the woman caught in adultery. This section, while an authentic eyewitness account of the Gospel, was probably not written by John, since early manuscripts attached it to different gospels or different parts of John, but it was too important to be left out of the Gospel altogether.

Jesus proclaims that He is the Light of the world. Darkness is used to denote that which is not of God throughout the Bible. Psalms 27, 36, 119, Numbers 6, and Isaiah 49 correlate light with God and God’s gift of life. The Pharisees object that Jesus has not confirmed His testimony by another witness, a legal procedure. Jesus states that His testimony is confirmed even if He states it Himself, since He does not judge, but rather the Father.

Jesus then speaks of His death, but the Pharisees do not understand. Jesus tells them that they will understand when He is lifted up, which refers to His crucifixion.

Jesus says that He is the bread which has come down from Heaven, that we must physically eat His body to have eternal life, and that He will raise those who believe on the last day, and this upsets many of his followers. Jesus states these things clearly and without equivocation and makes no attempt to offer a more crowd-pleasing teaching.

John next tells of Jesus teaching at the Fesival of Booths, where Jesus states that His teaching comes from God, not from any man, which hearkens back to Jeremiah 31:31ff, where God says that His new covenant will no longer need to be taught by men, since God will forgive them. In this, the New Testament and forgivness are bound up with teaching.

Jesus is provoking the religious with His statements; if the statements are true, we must worship Him, if they be false, His blasphemy would carry the punishment of death. Whatever His followers knew, His detractors understood this.

A number of people listen to Jesus preach for a day, and by the end, they are hungry. Jesus finds a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish. With this, five thousand are fed, and the scraps from the loaves (and from no other food) fill up twelve baskets. This event is important enough to be mentioned in all four gospels.

The people there think Jesus to be the prophet mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:15, and want to make Him their king, but Jesus withdraws. Some of the people meet up with Jesus and ask Him about more miracles of bread. Jesus tells them that for God, providing them with food is nothing compared with providing them with what they really need, the bread of life, which Jesus provides for us in the Eucharist.

Jesus heals a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years. The man takes up his mat and is accused for taking up his mat on the Sabbath, ignoring the great feat of healing that just took place. When pressed on this point, Jesus declares that He is working on the sabbath because His father is working. This stirs up some people because while  there was a Jewish tradition of calling God our father, calling Him one’s own father means that the speaker is either blaspheming or the begotten son of God.

Jesus, who brought up the point, does not back down, but rather points out His authority comes from the father, who has given all judgment to the son. Jesus also states that judgment will be based on whether we do
good or evil.

Jesus returns to Galilee after the arrest of John, but even at that time, the disciples of Jesus were baptising more people than John the Baptist. Even still, there is no evidence that any baptisms were sacramental baptisms before Pentecost. As He travels through Samaria, and runs into a woman who is drawing water at high noon, trying to avoid the others in the community. Jesus baits the woman into asking Him about the “living water” that he can give her. He explains that this water will become a spring and anyone who drinks of it will never be thirsty again. If we have truly received this living water, this should be our experience as well, though it may be that we have only allowed it to be a trickle in us.

Jesus’ disciples come back and tell Him to eat something, but He tells them that His food is doing the will of God, and that it is important to begin the harvest when some are now ripe. Jesus then goes into Galilee, where He is initially well-received. John places this next to Jesus’ statement that a prophet is not welcome in his own country, implying that Jesus’ country was in Jerusalem.

A man asks Jesus to heal his son, and Jesus challenges him, saying that men only believe if they see signs. The man is not intimidated, but continues in parental concern. Jesus heals his son.

John identifies several Passovers that span the length of Christ’s ministry, and the first Passover that is identified is the one when Jesus cleanses the temple. Since the synoptic gospels say that this happened on the last week before Jesus’ death, this raises the very real possibility that Christ cleansed it more than once.

Jerusalem was packed during the days leading up the Passover, and to avoid having travelers driving livestock through the town, the livestock trade was brought into the outer court, the court of the Gentiles. The business of the Passover had taken over, which was a pragmatic reaction to the logistics of managing the Passover sacrifice. So Jesus drives the merchants out of the temple, fulfilling the prophecy in Psalm 69.

Nicodemus comes to see Jesus, who tells him that he needs to be born again. This confuses Nicodemus, since conversion was not something that he expected.

John’s gospel takes the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist at length, because John the Evangelist was a disciple of John the Baptist, and then discusses several signs. A sign is something that signifies something else, in this case, pointing to the spiritual reality that we might not otherwise notice.

The first sign is the Wedding Feast at Cana. The wine runs out at a wedding feast, and Mary (never called by name in John’s gospel) asks him to do something. Jesus asks what the situation had to do with Jesus and Mary, but still changes water into wine, signifying the importance of a wedding and thus blessing the ceremony. Doing this, we know that he is able to change reality. He can alter reality and he isn’t just changing perception.