The gospel of John is totally different from the three synoptic gospels. We know the synoptic gospels were all written within a few years of each other. Mark was written first and then Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a template to follow when writing their gospels. The synoptic gospels covered the who, what, when and where of the life of Jesus in pretty much the same order so in many ways all three gospels are very similar. The Apostle John was familiar with the synoptic gospels but he was also aware that there was a lot of the story of Jesus left untold. John didn’t want to repeat what what had already been said. John was much more concerned with the how and the why of Jesus’ life. We’re not sure when the gospel of John was written. We know it was after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD because of certain references in the text. We also know it was written before John wrote the book of Revelation which was around 95 AD. The best guess is John wrote his gospel in Greek around 90 AD while he was living in Ephesus, a Roman city in Asia Minor, which is now present day Turkey.
By the time John wrote his gospel 15-25 years after the synoptic gospels the church had changed in many ways. What started as a small Jewish movement in Jerusalem had gone out into the wider Gentile world and the church had become overwhelmingly a Gentile movement. Christianity was suffering from growing pains and needed some clarification and there were heresies arising within the church that needed to be addressed. We know that the writers of the synoptic gospels each had a targeted audience in mind but with John his intended audience was the entire world. The purpose of John’s gospel was to make it clear to everyone that Jesus is the Word, God in the flesh. John emphasized that Jesus is the Son of God whose death and resurrection give eternal life to all who believe in him. John gives us the “how” and the “why” of eternal life and John’s gospel has been used to lead more unbelievers to salvation than any other book of the Bible with the possible exception of the book of Romans which is my personal favorite.
More than 90% of John’s gospel is not found in any of the other gospels. John places his emphasis on the identity of Jesus as the Son of God and how we, as believers, should respond to his teachings. The consistent theme of John is the deity of Jesus. Seven times in John we read where Jesus refers to himself with the phrase “I am”, claiming the personal name of God as his own. Jesus is declaring to the world that he is God. John always portrays Jesus as being in charge and knowing all future events before they unfold which, of course, he does because he is God and the author of history. Of all the gospels, or any other New Testament book for that matter, John most clearly teaches the deity and preexistence of Christ. I think the reason for this is the Holy Spirit had been very active in John’s life for a long time and as a result John was made more aware of the spiritual truths of the kingdom of God than any other living person. More than 90 times John uses the terms “knowing” and “believing” God as the keys to salvation. Along with the gospel of Matthew, John provides the most striking proofs of Jesus’ messiahship which it does by narrating the seven “I am” messianic signs. The gospel of John also taught the difficult concept of the triune Godhead which requires acute spiritual perception. For all of these reasons, John is known as the spiritual gospel.
John wrote his gospel because he wanted to address the entire three and a half years of Jesus’ ministry because the synoptic gospels only focused on the last year of Jesus’ life. John doesn’t mention the parables of Jesus but instead focuses on long discourses where Jesus taught his disciples about the kingdom of God. John does the best job of giving distinct personalities to each of the disciples. By the little extra details John provides in his gospel you can tell he was a witness to those events and is recalling them from memory. John presents Jesus as God acting in human form. It’s clear in John’s gospel that John has greater spiritual perception and understanding of the kingdom of God than the other gospel writers. John is careful in his gospel never to mention himself by name but he does give us clues when he refers to himself as the witness or the disciple whom God loved. Most people don’t realize that John was most likely Jesus’ first cousin because his mother was thought to be the sister of Mary, mother of Jesus. At any rate, John was illiterate and at the end of his life dictated his gospel to preserve his eyewitness testimony of the life of Jesus Christ and the glory of God. John was the only Apostle not to suffer a martyr’s death. John wrote the book of Revelation around 95 AD on the Isle of Patmos and died a few years later around 100 AD of of old age.
Witnessing for Christ