50 pages • 1 hour read
Gospel of John
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Light and Darkness
The dual symbols of light and darkness appear throughout the Gospel of John and comprise one of the main figurative expressions by which John explains the impact of Jesus’s ministry. These juxtaposed symbols appear as early as the opening prologue: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:5). Later, in Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, he brings up the same symbols again: “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” (3:19). Before his death, he repeats the same imagery several times in his address to his disciples, identifying himself with the symbol of light. The clearest and most pointed use of this symbol, however, comes in the central section of the gospel, when Jesus has gone to Jerusalem for the celebration of a religious festival. There, in the midst of the crowds of worshipers gathered in the temple courts, Jesus boldly proclaims, “I am the light of the world” (8:12, 9:5).
The implication of these statements is that Jesus is the means by which God provides salvation and illumination from the darkness of sin. The close association of the light/darkness symbology with the assertion of Jesus’s role in the creation of the world in John 1:1-5 also suggests that Jesus’s claim to be the light of the world may be an implicit claim to divine pre-existence, in which he embodies the first words spoken by God into the darkness of the primeval void: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3).
Water and Thirst
A second set of dual symbols is that of water and thirst, which, like the light/darkness juxtaposition, occurs throughout the gospel. It first appears clearly in John 4 in Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well (though it may be alluded to in Jesus’s first miracle of changing water to wine in John 2). Jesus tells her that while drawing ordinary water will only satisfy one’s thirst for a anyone who draws from his well will never thirst again. He gives a tantalizing offer of “living water” (similar to his offer of the “bread of life” elsewhere in the gospel)—an offer the story clearly associates with the truth of his teaching and the vivifying spiritual power of being connected to him.
In a later passage, he asserts not only that he has living water to give, but that living water will pour forth from the hearts of those who believe in him. There in Jerusalem, just as when he proclaimed himself the light of the world, Jesus gives the clearest form of this invitation: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (7:37). The Gospel of John portrays Jesus as the only true source of deep-running, perpetual satisfaction of the heart and soul. The image appears one last time in the gospel, but in a more tragic form, where Jesus himself, who claimed to be the source of living water, says “I thirst” during his crucifixion—an illustration of the depths of suffering and deprivation Jesus endured to complete his self-offering on the cross.
The Shepherd and His Sheep
In one of the most enduring images from the Gospel of John, Jesus portrays himself as “the good shepherd” (10:11-14). This description, often combined with similarly themed parables from the other gospels, led to a rich tradition in the Christian artwork of the first few centuries CE, in which the dominant artistic representation of Christ was in the guise of the good shepherd, rescuing his sheep. The symbolic portrayal of Jesus as a shepherd and his followers as sheep appears most clearly in Jesus’s long discourse of Chapter 10. It was common in the Jewish religion, based on Old Testament references, to portray the people of Israel as a flock of sheep, but in that context it was usually God who was portrayed as the shepherd. For Jesus to co-opt that imagery, and to do so by applying it to himself by means of an “I am” rhetoric that would have called to mind the personal name of God (“I am who I am,” Exodus 3:14)—is to make an implicit claim to divinity. This implicit claim adds to the ire of his antagonists, who find such a claim to be blasphemous. Jesus further angers them in the same passage by claiming that his flock includes not only sheep from the fold of Judea, but sheep from outside as well, a foreshadowing of the way that Gentiles would later be welcomed into the community of Jesus’s followers, but an unforgivable implication in the minds of the Pharisees and temple authorities.
The symbols of shepherd and sheep are meant to convey a sense of belonging, trust, protection, and care. The shepherd is an image of reassurance and rest for his followers, bearing with it a promise that Jesus is watching over them just like a faithful shepherd watches over their sheep. Jesus brings up this symbolic imagery one more time in the gospel, in his final conversation with Peter along the shorelines of Galilee, after his resurrection from the dead. There, in his commission to Peter, he describes his followers as “sheep” and “lambs” (21:15-17). Further, he invites Peter to undertake a shepherding role, as the one who is to feed the sheep, which implies that Jesus’s care for his flock is not ended once he returns to heaven, but is rather still to be experienced through the leaders of his church.
Unlock all 50 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
