Beginning the gospel of John

Day 127

OT Reading: 1 Kings 14-15

NT Reading: John 1:1-28

So far you've read through the books Matthew, Mark and Luke. In a lot of ways, these books are very similar. While each has its own style, emphasis or unique additions, for the most part a lot of the same information is covered in the three books. In fact if you ever hear someone talk about the "Synoptic Gospels" they are talking about Matthew, Mark and Luke (that's really just a fancy name to make people who go to seminary feel all smart and stuff ;-) ).

The gospel of John, however, is much different. John was likely the last of all the gospels and takes a much different approach, including information not shared in any of the other three gospels. In fact some have ventured to say that John may have had access to at least one (or more) of the other gospels and therefore concluded to add in information that was otherwise uncovered. This seems to be supported by the very last verse in the gospel of John which reads, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." (John 21:25, NIV)

Now don't get me wrong...this is still the story of Jesus and some of the material will be the same (the feeding of the 5,000 for instance). But I hope you do not enter this portion of the reading with the "here we go again" mindset. Because what you will see is that the Jesus of John's gospel may be quite different than what you might expect.