Week 41 John
I finished reading John with the impression that belief was pretty important to him so ran some numbers to see.
I looked up Believe in a word book.
Matthew-Mark-Luke used the word a total of about eighteen times; John more than fifty. 18:50. A similar ratio showed up with other forms of the word:
Believed 5:22
Believes 2:14
Believing 1:5
Another impression I had – I can’t show this one numerically – is that John had a sort of Belief Continuum in mind. Not so much just two exclusive categories: Belief & Unbelief. More like a line stretching from Comprehensive Belief along through middle-stages and then on through uncertainty and all the way over to Complete Unbelief.
For example Martha in the Lazarus story is near the top-end of belief.
Nicodemus seems like a kind of middling guy who was belief-curious and who maybe in the end believed. The woman at the well spends some time in a belief-flux; ditto for the man born blind.
Judas is a sad and almost incomprehensible case of unbelief in-spite-of-everything-he-saw.
People move toward belief, away from belief, shifting one way or another.
Anyway at the end John spelled-out his aim. His gospel was written: so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life.
Which confirms my suspicion that belief is pretty important to John.
Note: quote from John 20:31 (NLT)