A verse-by-verse study · ESV
Of the four Gospels, John stands a little apart. It is slower and deeper, more deliberate. It was written, the author tells us, so that you would believe and, believing, have life. This is a study built to be walked, not run: one passage at a time, reading closely, following the threads out into the rest of Scripture, and stopping wherever a thing is worth stopping for.
Before we begin
Ninety percent of what is in John is found in no other Gospel.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story of Jesus in much the same way, from much the same angle. We call them the Synoptics because they "see together." John saw differently. Writing later, and probably last, he does not repeat what the others had already recorded so much as go beneath it. There is no birth in Bethlehem here, no parables about the kingdom, no agony in Gethsemane, no Lord's Supper in an upper room. In their place John gives us seven miracles he calls signs, seven great "I am" sayings, and long, searching conversations: with a Pharisee at night, a Samaritan woman at a well, a grieving sister at a tomb.
An early Christian writer, Clement of Alexandria, said that after the other Gospels had set down the outward facts, John, urged on by friends, wrote "a spiritual Gospel." That is a fair description. John is less interested in a sequence of events than in the question underneath every event: who exactly is this man, and what does it mean to trust him? He tells you his purpose in plain words, and it is worth having in mind the entire way through.
Everything in the Gospel serves that sentence. The signs are chosen to show who he is; the discourses explain what the signs mean; the whole book is an extended piece of evidence, laid out by a witness who was there, so that the reader might come to belief and, through belief, to life. Keep that goal in view and the strange, luminous shape of this Gospel starts to make sense.
John counts Jesus' miracles as signs pointing past themselves to his identity.
Each takes the divine name of Exodus 3:14 and fills it with an image.
The map
The Gospel falls into four natural movements. We will move through them in order and at an easy pace, stopping as long as each passage deserves. New parts are added as the study grows, and there is no schedule to keep.