The Gospel of John

Jesus
Jesus was born approximately 5 B.C. in the town of Bethlehem, Israel, to a virgin named Mary, who was descended from King David. Raised in Nazareth by Mary and her husband, Joseph, Jesus lived the ordinary life of a carpenter's son. Those who knew him didn't yet know that he was also God's Son. At age 30, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and tempted by the devil into the desert. He then began healing, teaching and performing miracles throughout Judea. He called people to believe in him as the only way to God.

Jews
A yellow star stitched on a jacket declares a person's Jewish identity in Germany during World War II. It was not the fist time that being a Jew carried a death sentence, nor was it the first time that the Jews emerged victorious from a plot for their worldwide extermination.

Jews are the physical descendants of Abraham through his grandson Jacob, the father of the Israelites. The label "Jew" came into use after the Babylonian captivity. The stories of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther highlight God's protection of the people in the midst of great danger and opposition.

Healing
Jesus Christ walked this earth healing all sorts of diseases and bringing words of life to repair broken hearts and misled spirits. He healed out of compassion and, often, in response to an individual's faith.

Temple
After Jesus' death and resurrection, god no longer dwelt in a building made by human hands, but in the believing human heart. Because the Holy Spirit lives in each believer our very own bodies are his temples. Today a church building is not the temple, but it is where many "temples" of the Holy Spirit gather to worship God weekly.

Sin
Sin is a tough three-letter word to get one's brain around. It is a term loaded with lots of distasteful and challenging connotations in our world. Everyone sins, but no on e wants to talk about it. Bluntly put, sin is choosing our own will over God's will.

Father
God the Father perfectly cares fur us, giving us all we need -- though we may not agree with him regarding what those needs are. He promises us that we don't have to worry about having enough food or clothes because he knows what we need before we ask. God has also given us every spiritual blessing - something of much more value to our lives than any kind of physical possession.

As children of God, we can expect to be disciplined if we err. And we shouldn't be discouraged when this happens because discipline shows that God loves us. Just as good parents teach their children not to do things that will hurt them, so our Father in heaven teaches us what is best for us.

Work
God created us with a need to engage in meaningful, productive labor - it's part of being made in his image. God worked for seven days to create the earth (see Creation), and then he rested (see Rest).

God
When you look at your watch, you know that an intelligent person designed it. It didn't just come into existence by itself. What about your wrist - isn't it more complicated than your watch? Didn't an intelligent person design your wrist too? We call the One who designed these things God, our Creator, the One who spoke the word and created the universe.

God has spoken to us in terms we can understand. The Bible is the record of his revelation - what he wants us to know about himself. God also became flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is 100 percent human and 100 percent God. Want to know what God is like? Study the life of Jesus Christ in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Son
"If you really want to understand someone," said President George W. Bush, " you look at his family and where he was raised." Using this reasoning, what can we learn about Jesus Christ, the Son of God? The Bible says that Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). This means that the Son is fully God; all of God the Father's qualities are manifested in him: love, justice, righteousness, holiness. God the Son was also fully human; while he was on the earth, he shared our experiences: temptation, hunger, fatigues, pain and death.

Truth
What is truth? God is truth. Everything he says we can believe. There is no deception, no hypocrisy, no half-truth in God. Our finite minds can't fully comprehend God or understand all his mysteries, but he is everything he says he is: the all-powerful, just, loving Creator of everything that exists. How do we know right from wrong? God alone, because he is truth, provides an accurate standard for ethics and morality. Whatever he does and commands us to do is right. Anything God hates and forbids us to do is wrong.

Greatness
The Bible teaches us that God thwarts those who try to raise themselves up to greatness in people's eyes. It also teaches that those who humble themselves before God will be raised up by God to true greatness. You might think of God's path toward greatness as similar to the law of gravity, except in reverse: "Whoever goes up must first come down".

Death
Death has many faces in our culture, most of them ugly. There's a reason for that: Death was not part of God's plan. When God created us, he intended for us to live forever in perfect harmony with him. But when Adam and Eve sinned, death became a fact of life because the consequence of sin is death. Sin and death separate us from God because God's holiness cannot permit even the smallest imperfection to enter his presence. Those who don't know God are alienated from his love, guidance and spiritual protection all their lives. Physical death seals the sentence of permanent separation from him.

Life
Do you want to live forever? Jesus Christ says he's the only true way. He says he's the door to a life of abundant blessing. God is the giver of life, and his role as such started with the creation of our ancestors, Adam and Eve. When sin entered the world, we were blocked, not only from having eternal life with God, but also from a meaningful life on this planet. Both can be obtained through God himself.

Judge
In the Bible, the book of Job tells of a man who's loyalties to God were tested when God allowed him to be stripped of his wealth, children and health. Job's friends thought they had the answer: Job must have done something wrong. Why else would God do this to him? They were judging Job's heart, and they were wrong. In fact, God had allowed bad things to happen to Job to prove how righteous Job was. Judging someone is easy; love takes a whole new kind of heart, the kind Jesus has and gives to his followers.

Honor
We set apart those whom we honor: red carpets are rolled out, flashy medals are given and achievements are celebrated. Honor is reserved for the worthiest individuals and organizations, and by honoring them, we openly demonstrate our respect and esteem for them.

As Christians, the most important person we can honor is God himself. He tells us that showing kindness to others and living a morally upright life are ways to honor him. We also honor God by humbly acknowledging his power and our dependence on him.

We also honor the Lord through honoring others - including our parents, a command that made God's "top ten list," the Ten Commandments.

Believe
Beliefs dictate who we are and how we live our lives. To believe in something is to have faith in it. Though it may seem feeble to accept something on faith rather than fact, we all believe many things on different levels without being experts through experience or knowledge. A Christian's life is a demonstration of grounded belief in action.

Merely "believing" in God does not make someone a Christian any more than believing in exercise keeps one in shape; a person must actually exercise to stay in shape. Demons "believe" in God (James 2:19). They know he exists, but they don't choose to follow him. Believing that Jesus Christ is your Savior means believing that Jesus' death pays the penalty for your sin. As a result of this belief you repent-you turn away from your sin-and obey Jesus Christ.

Eternal
Eternity is much more profound than our common perception of it. God describes himself and his ways as eternal - he and his ways have always been and always will be. His commands, promises and truths are the same forever; they are unchanging. Therefore, we don't need to worry about constantly redefining God's standards for us. He doesn't change. What he says in the Bible will always be true.

Condemn
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a political radical arrested for treason in czarist Russia. Condemned to death, he was in front of the firing squad when a last-minute pardon came from the czar. Rather than death, he received life. The experience lead Dostoyevsky to write about redemption versus condemnation in his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

Before we trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, we were condemned. Our sin promised death - eternal separation from God. But then God pardoned us. Almost daily, we have the option of condemning or forgiving people. Jesus Christ urges us to love each other and to let our righteous God do the judging.

Time
Time governs our lives. Our day planners help us manage it. We eat by it. We sleep by it. We're upset if people don't respect it. God, however is not constrained by time. He created time, and - though it's hard for us to grasp - he exists outside of time. Because he contains time, he knows the future and is able to reveal it in prophecy.

God has a clear understanding of time. In the Bible, he warned that all people should live for him because the time is coming when he will return to the earth. While some believe they can delay serving God, we are commanded to serve God now. We are to take advantage of the moments God gives us to share the gospel.

Grave
Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain - each of these young lives ended with a tombstone. Likewise, Jesus Christ was about 33 years old when he was crucified. He was a popular religious leader and reformer who was adored by the common people. But Jesus was more than a popular icon; he was God's Son. And unlike the graves of these rock stars, Jesus' grave is empty because he came back to life after being dead three days. God had this planned for a long time. Prophets of old, given visions by the Holy Spirit, talked about Christ's coming death and his triumph over death.

Christians have eternal life, but it doesn't mean we'll never die a physical death. We all have to leave this life sometime. But Jesus' empty grave means we don't have to fear death anymore. In fact, we're told that he defeated death and Hades (another name for hell). His resurrection means that we can have life even after our bodies die and that one day our bodies will be raised anew. We can live in peace with the Lord forever.

Evil
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot - these names are associated with the epitome of evil. With arrogant and wicked (see Wicked) schemes, they brought about unspeakable injustice and shed much innocent blood. Their evil went beyond the sins of racism, prejudice, lying, stealing or murder. It was their persistence and their pride in their atrocities that characterized these men as thoroughly evil.

We would be horrified if someone added our name to this list of wicked men, yet we all have sinful human nature that, without God, is capable of every kind of evil. The Truly evil person loves what God hates and refuses to admit his or her wrong. Avoid evil, for god will one day completely punish all evil.

Justice
United States citizens place their right hands over their hearts and recite their allegiance to their nation as a place where there is "liberty and justice for all." If only that were true!

Though there are laws to punish wrongdoers, sometimes justice can be bent or even broken. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, God makes it clear that he expects both government leaders and individual believers to pursue moral rightness in the workplace, in the court system and in all social relationships. There may not be perfect equity now, but someday the Lord will take his seat as judge and bring about complete justice for all.

Seek
Sometimes people say that they are trying to find themselves. But as Christians, we cannot find our identity without first seeking God. After we "find" God by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and turning from our former sins, our seeking continues as we ask him for direction in our lives and seek to know him better. How do we seek God? We pray and expect him to answer, and we read his letters to us, the Bible.

The Bible says that if we seek God, we will find him. That's a great guarantee. God is not hiding or trying to elude us. In fact, the Bible says he is pursuing a relationship with us! But we have to look for him or we won't recognize his advances. If we are busy pursuing wealth, God's revelations of himself to us. But if we look and don't give up, his activity in our lives will be unmistakable.

John
John the Baptist and the apostle John, the disciple who called himself, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 13:23), both played critical roles in the life of Jesus Christ on earth.

John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. His name came from his ministry of baptizing people who were returning to the ways of God. His life was prophesied about hundreds of years before his birth. He had a specific task: to preach repentance and to baptize people in preparation for the coming of the Son of God. While in prison, John the Baptist questioned whether Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus reassured John that he was indeed the Savior of the world. Herod beheaded John the Baptist.

Salvation
Some people call for God to save them only when they are desperate and in immediate danger. In the Old Testament, when God's people called out to him for salvation, they were looking for deliverance from their enemies. We may not have and army on our doorstep, but we're all in immediate danger from the effects and consequences of sin (see Sin). We can't save ourselves from this-we need a rescue operation. Thankfully, God executed the resource operation for salvation. He sent his Son to save the world by paying the penalty for sin and bringing us back to God. Salvation is all God's work, but we must grab hold of his lifeline, Jesus Christ.

Word
God's Words are powerful! God spoke, and everything that exists in our universe was created. His written Word, the Bible (see Scripture), flawlessly teaches people about God and the way to follow him. God's message through his prophets to his people, the nation of Israel, was often called, "the word of the Lord." God's Word is also displayed in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Word of God in human form. He is complete communication of who God is, and he is the revealer of how to follow God.

Words can bring either healing or destruction. God has entrusted his people to carry his Word to all peoples, instructing them and guiding them in the ways of God. Because of this great responsibility, a Christian's words should exemplify Christ's words. God desires for his people to build each other up and encourage each other with words modeled after Christ's words.

Scripture
Before Jesus Christ came to the earth, the collection of inspired writings consisted of what we now call the Old Testament, the books from Genesis through Malachi. After Jesus' resurrection, Scripture was completed with the inclusion of the New Testament, the books arranged from Matthew to Revelation.

Moses
As the son of an Israelite slave, Moses should have been killed at birth. Instead, his parents raised him secretly for three months, then placed him in a floating basket among the reeds of the Nile River. No one could have guessed this baby would one day become one of the Bible's greatest leaders, and at the same time, the humblest of men.

Eighty years later, Moses was herding sheep in a desert when God recruited him for an incredible rescue mission. With God's help, Moses led the Israelites - over a million people - out of Egypt. Over the next 40 years, the Israelites faced the Egyptian army, walked through the Red Sea, drank water from a rock (twice!), heard firsthand the Ten Commandments, survived in the desert and finally reached the promised land. Today we remember Moses as a powerful leader, a servant of God and a man of faith.

Choose
God demonstrates that he values choice because he created human beings with the capacity to choose. We are not robots, programmed to mindlessly follow his directions. We may choose to accept or reject his gifts, commands and promises. He gave Adam (see Adam) and Eve (see Eve) the opportunity to obey or disobey. When they chose to go their own way and eat the forbidden fruit, God honored their choice. He also allowed them to experience the consequences. Scripture is filled with admonitions to choose wisely, to choose to obey, to choose to serve God. We are responsible for how we choose to life- and accountable for the consequences.

Praise
"Thank you for all your hard work today," the employer regularly said at the end of the day. True, the work was expected, yet the praise acknowledged the effort, making the employees feel important and valued. Recognition is integral to praise, and in our relationship to God, praise is one thing we can actually give him. He desires that we praise him through acknowledging his works, benefits and perfect character.

True praise is not flattery or empty adoration. It starts as genuine thanks in the heart, which is expressed in songs, prayers or meditation. No matter how it's done, praise lifts up sincere admiration to God, who rightfully deserves to be lauded.

Heart
The heart is a muscle at the center of the body that, through contraction and relaxation, sustains life. When it stops working, we cease to be alive. Yet a heart is more than an organ that pumps blood. In our culture, as well as in the Bible, the heart is a metaphor for the most sensitive areas of our lives, the place from which our passions are aroused and our worst plans are conceived.

Effort
If a coach says, "Give me your best effort!" you know you'd better give it all you've got! That's what God's Word urges us to do when it comes to seeking after godliness, self-control and love. We are to make every effort to live in peace with all people, to be holy (see holy) and to add to our faith goodness, knowledge and perseverance.

Finish
There is nothing quite like the exhilaration of finishing a task. Whether the job is small or large, changing a light bulb or painting a watercolor, we enjoy the sense of completion. For example, most marathon runners keep the finish line in mind throughout the grueling endeavor.

19. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these. 21. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son,
23. That all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

24. “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
25. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.

27. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. 28. “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice

29. and come out – those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. 30. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

Testimonies about Jesus

31. “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid.
32. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid.

33. “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. 34. Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. 35. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

36. “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me.
37. And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38. Nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39. You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

41. “I do not accept praise from men, 42. but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.

43. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44. How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

45. “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set.
46. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?

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THE STARTING POINT STUDY BIBILE New International Version
The Luis Palau Evangelistic Association / www.luispalau.org