A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St John, Volumes 1 & 2 (ICC)

Top Highlights

“In one flock there may be many folds, all useful and each with advantages of its own, but the Flock is One, for there is only One Shepherd.” (Page 363)

“ascribing his treachery to the instigation of the devil,” (Pages 455–456)

“The consolation which Jesus offers to those mourning the death of a Christian believer is not that their friend will rise again at some distant day when the dead shall be raised by a catastrophic act of God (however true that may be), but that the Christian believer never dies, his true life is never extinguished. ‘Your friend is alive now; for in me he touched the life of God which is eternal; in me he had already risen, before his body perished.’ This is the Johannine doctrine of life (see Introd., p. clxi); it is also the doctrine of Paul (cf. Col. 3:1).” (Page 388)

“Every one who is living (sc. in the heavenly life) and a believer in me shall never die.’ Verse 25 gives only the promise of life after physical death; v. 26 gives the assurance of that future life being immortal. For this use of ζῶν as indicating one who is living, not on earth, but in the spiritual world, cf. the saying of Jesus to the Sadducees, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (ζώντων, Mk. 12:27 and parallels).” (Page 389)

“On the first night of the feast, there was a ceremony of lighting the four golden candlesticks in the Court of the Women (see v. 20), and there is some evidence for the continuance of the ceremony on other nights. This may have provided the occasion for the words of Jesus about light and darkness. But Philo’s account of the Feast of Tabernacles would furnish an equally plausible explanation.” (Page 291)