Christ's Doctrine of Faith: A Study of "Believing" in John's Gospel (John 20:31)

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Well, readers, we have finally made it! We have made it to the final two occurrences [1] of “believing” in the Gospel of John, which are the ninety-ninth and one-hundredth occurrences of the language of belief in John’s Gospel! After this final post in our series, I think, so far, that I will just do posts about random topics trying to think about them from a Biblical worldview. But for now, let’s deal with our final post for this series! The text, John 20:31, says: “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (KJV). Now, for the last time, we will examine the context and some facts about faith that we can draw from this passage!

First, what is the context? Back in verse 29, which was the text for our semifinal post, the Lord Jesus Christ told His disciple Thomas that he believes because he has seen Him, after which He pronounces a blessing on those who haven’t seen and yet have believed. After this, in verse 30, John gives his God-breathed [2] commentary, saying that Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciple, which signs John did not record in this gospel. But, John goes on to say, the signs recorded here are written so that his original audience (and, by extension, we who are modern readers of his gospel) may believe that Jesus is the Christ (i.e., Messiah [3]), the Son of God, and that, believing, they (and we) may have life in His name. This is the context of John 20:31!

Second, what are some facts about faith? Especially because this is the final post, I will try to draw out as many facts about faith from this passage as possible! And again, many (perhaps all) of the facts we will cover here have already been covered in this series. But repetition, when done rightly, aids learning, so here we go! The first fact is this: all the signs of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John have been written for the purpose of bringing the Gospel’s readers to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, this belief being the means by which readers can have life in Jesus’s name. Because that is what John 20:31 clearly says. Like we have talked about before, this text can be reasonably seen as the thesis statement of the Gospel, since John here clearly says why he wrote his Gospel. That this text functions as a thesis statement in the Gospel also indicates that all the times faith is mentioned in John’s Gospel serve to show what faith in Christ is and looks like. Related to that, second, belief in Jesus’s name (John 1:12-13) means, again, believing that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. Because, as John 3:14-16 says, those who believe in Jesus are the ones who have eternal life. Comparing that with John 20:31, which clearly says that believing Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God and results in having life in His name, proves that believing in Jesus means believing He is the Christ, the Son of God. Third, to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God means believing that the Messiah, the Son of God is the One whom the Bible reveals the Messiah to be. Because, as all four Gospels in the New Testament make clear, the unbelieving Jews had a conception of the Messiah that contradicted the identity of Jesus. So, to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God means believing who the Bible says the Messiah and Son of God is, not what extrabiblical sources say characterizes the Christ. These are some facts about faith from John 20:31!

Thank you for a great series, readers!!!

[1] Only by God’s grace, I just realized that there were two occurrences in this passage instead of just one

[2] https://biblehub.com/greek/2315.htm

[3] Remember John 1:41!