Christ's Doctrine of Faith: A Study of "Believing" in John's Gospel (John 2:11)

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The fourth time the idea of "believing" occurs in John's Gospel is John 2:11, which reads: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him" (KJV). In this post, we'll 1) consider the context and 2) draw out what "believed" here means.

First, let's examine the context! Jesus, along with His disciples and His mother, attend a wedding in Cana of Galilee. During the festivities, the wine runs out, at which Mary informs Him that the wine is out. To this, Christ responds by asking Mary what He has to do with her and telling her that His hour has not yet come. After this, Mary goes to inform the servants to do whatever He says to them. Jesus then tells the servants to fill six waterpots (which the Jews used for purification) with water, and so the servants fill the pots up to the brim. The Lord then commands them to draw out the water [1] and bring the pots to the master of ceremonies [2], to which the servants also obey. The master then tastes the water, which Christ has transformed into wine, without knowing where it came from, unlike the servants. The master then calls the bridegroom and tells him that, at the beginning of celebrations like this, men give out good wine, but, when much of the wine is drunk, they then set forth worse wine. But, the master goes on to say, this bridegroom has kept the good wine all the way up to now. The Holy Spirit then informs us that this is the beginning of Jesus's miracles and reminds us that Jesus did this in Cana of Galilee. As a result of this miracle, which is said to be a manifestation of Christ's glory, His disciples "believe" on Him.

Second, let's see what definition of "believe" we can extract from here! As we've already gone over, Christ's disciples "believed" on Him here when they see His glory, which He manifested through His miracle of turning water into wine. Not that they didn't believe in Him before (minus Judas Iscariot, if he was outwardly following Jesus at this point), because they were already disciples before this (John 2:2). Rather, it appears their faith was strengthened here. Perhaps it's something similar to what's found in 1 John 5:13, where John says that he wrote that epistle to those who believed in the Name of the Son of God, so that they would know that they had eternal life and also so that they would believe in the Name of the Son of God. There, we have people who were obviously believers in Christ having God's Word spoken to them so they would believe in Christ. With that aside note made, let's return to the subject here: extracting a definition of "believe" from the way the word is used here! Here, we're told that the disciples saw Christ's glory, and then we're told that they believed in Him. We might keep going back to this in future posts, but we must always remember the purpose for which John, moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), says he writes his Gospel: to cause his readers to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and to, by that faith, have life in His Name (John 20:30-31). With that information in mind, we may legitimately conclude that for Jesus's disciples to "see His glory" is "to see that He is the Christ." And, in this scene, we learn one (but definitely not the only) aspect of Jesus being the Messiah is His transformative power, because He can (and did) transform water into wine. So, to say that the disciples "believed" on Jesus in this passage means that they recognized that Jesus, as the Messiah, possesses transformative power.

[1] https://biblehub.com/greek/501.htm

[2] https://biblehub.com/greek/755.htm