Studying through the book of John on Tuesday nights has been tremendously profitable. It is hard to find a dispensational teaching of the book that respects John’s agreement in Gal 2:9 to confine his ministry to the ‘circumcision’.

Yet, even though the book of John is written in the context of prophetic Israel, we can profit from John’s detailed proof of Jesus as the Son of God.

Not a chapter goes by that does not emphasize Jesus as the Messiah to Israel and God manifest in the flesh.

• John 1 begins sharply with the declaration that the Word is God. He is the Light of men, the Son of God, and the King of Israel.
• In John 2 Jesus calls God his Father and claims he can resurrect as proof.
• John 3 he ‘came down from heaven’, was sent from God, and calls himself the only begotten Son of God.
• John 4 straightforwardly declares him as the Messiah and the Saviour of the world.
• In John 5, he incurs the wrath of the Jews twice since he made himself equal with God. On top of this there are some pretty grand deity attributes identified in this chapter including: oneness with God, power over life, authority to judge, and honoured as God.
• John 6 does not slow down as Jesus preaches that to have eternal life you must eat his flesh and drink his blood. (Which has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Mass or Paul’s Communion by the way.)
• In the debate of John 7, half of the crowd and officials believe he may be the Christ just from the power of his words.
• In John 8, he again claims to come from God and gains another threat by revealing that he was before Abraham. He is the I AM.
• John 9 shows Jesus making the blind to see that he is the Son of God, and exposes the guides of Israel as blind. Even the blind man did not see the fellowship of the mystery.
• In John 10 Jesus almost gets stoned when he makes himself one with God having the power to give and take life.
• John 11 records Jesus resurrecting dead Lazarus allowing all to witness the glory of God in the powerful words of the man from Nazareth.
• John 12 declares Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecies about God’s deliverance and judgment of Israel. Jesus explains that those who saw him have seen God.
• John 13-18 is the record of the night before his crucifixion. He has finished the work (John 17:4). Jesus prays to return to glory.
• John 19-21 provides the greatest proof that he is God: his own resurrection from the dead.

Along with these bold proofs  miracles that only God could do are sprinkled throughout the text.

We are not half way through the book and already it is saturated with proof of Jesus’ diety and position as Messiah.

Yet with all this proof that Jesus is God there is not one verse describing what was later revealed to Paul. The mystery of Christ’s blood and resurrection for salvation to the Gentiles was hidden from them.

After all, their gospel was to have faith that Jesus was the Messiah. That is exactly what the book of John is about (John 20:31).