50 pages • 1 hour read
Gospel of John
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Chapters 13-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Chapters 13-17 encompass a single narrative, the story of Jesus’s actions and words to his disciples on his last evening before his death. The Gospel of John does not relate specific information regarding the setting of these events, but they appear to correlate with the evening meeting portrayed in the other gospels, which took place in a spot called the upper room, where Jesus instituted the rite that would later be enshrined in Christian communion (also called the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper). In John’s account, a different ritual is added to the narrative: Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, an act usually undertaken by a servant and conveying a sense of deep humility. Peter initially resists Jesus’s attempts to wash his feet, but he gives in at Jesus’s gentle encouragement. This act introduces one of the main points of Jesus’s teaching on that night—that they should love and care for one another: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (13:14-15).
Jesus says that he knows that one of the 12 disciples will betray him, and it is quickly revealed to be Judas Iscariot, who leaves the gathering and goes out into the night. After Judas is gone, Jesus repeats his injunction to love: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (13:34). Jesus then reveals another painful truth: that Peter will deny him three times in the events to come.
Chapter 14 Summary
As Jesus’s conversation with his disciples continues, he returns to his own identity and his relationship with God the Father: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also” (14:6-7). In a discourse that forms a foundational text for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus goes on to expound on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, whose dispensation was first promised by Old Testament prophets. After Jesus leaves them, he will ask the Father to send the Spirit to his community of disciples. The coming of the Spirit (an event that is foreshadowed at the end of John and that occurs in its full form on the day of Pentecost; see Acts 2) is here portrayed as an extension of Jesus’s ongoing presence with his followers, and the Spirit’s work is portrayed in the language of comforting, helping, and teaching. Jesus further encourages them to maintain their relationship with him by loving him and keeping his commands: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (14:21). Finally, knowing the sorrow and suffering they face, Jesus tells them not to be troubled by the events to come, but instead to receive his peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (14:27).
Chapter 15 Summary
Jesus’s discussion with his disciples on the night before his death continues, and he adopts one of his most famous images for his identity and his relationship to his followers: the vine and the branches, often depicted in Christian artwork through the ages. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (15:5). He then explains this imagery as an exhortation to keep Jesus’s commandments and to remain in his love: “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (15:9-10). He then goes on to repeat the “new commandment,” first introduced in Chapter 13, that the disciples love one another in the same manner that Jesus has loved them.
Jesus also warns them about the hatred and resistance they will face, predicting that the world will hate them and persecute them for their faith in him. He reminds them that hatred is to be expected because they hate Jesus and they associate the disciples with him. He promises them once again that the Holy Spirit will comfort them and assist them in bearing witness to their faith in Jesus, even in the face of great hostility.
Chapter 16 Summary
Jesus’s final discourse to his disciples continues. He hopes they do not fall away from the faith, even amid persecution and martyrdom: “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (16:1-2). Jesus again consoles them, promising that the ministry of the Holy Spirit will lead them into a deeper awareness of truth, and that Jesus’s departure is a necessary condition for the Spirit to be sent forth.
Jesus alludes to his death and resurrection, but the disciples do not understand what he is referring to: “‘A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.’ So some of his disciples said to one another, ‘What is this that he says to us?’” (16:16-17). He says they will have cause for sorrow, and yet their sorrow will ultimately turn to joy. He commends them to put their trust in the love of God the Father, clearly demonstrated in Jesus’s own person and work. Jesus concludes by again promising them peace: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (16:33).
Chapter 17 Summary
Jesus closes his long discourse to his disciples with a series of prayers he speaks aloud, a sequence often referred to in Christian tradition as “Jesus’s high priestly prayer.” He begins in words that echo some of the ideas of John 1, such as Jesus’s pre-existence with the Father: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (17:4-5).
The prayer also expresses many of the hopes and desires Jesus mentioned in his discourse to the disciples, including his hope for a deep sense of intimacy with God the Father. Jesus uses the prayer to portray not only his own unity with the Father, but the security of the disciples’ position within the Father’s care: “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, for they are yours. […] Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (17:9-11). After Jesus prays for his disciples’ sanctification in the truth, he turns the attention of his prayer toward all those who will believe in him in the future. He expresses the desire that these believers would also be united with one another—“I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (17:23)—and asks the Father to reveal his glory to them and make the truth known in them.
Chapters 13-17 Analysis
Chapters 13-17 represent one of the most important sequences of Jesus’s teachings, not only in the Gospel of John but in the entire New Testament. Within the flow of the story, these chapters represent a pause in the dramatically rising tension, an excursus set between the high action of Jesus’s triumphal entry in Chapter 12 and his arrest in Chapter 18. Nonetheless, there are hints throughout Jesus’s discourse that point toward the coming climax: the revelation of Judas Iscariot as his betrayer, the prediction of Peter’s denials, and the warnings that the disciples will suffer sorrow and persecution in the future. This section also continues to address The Identity of Jesus Christ through his “I Am” statements, one of the most prominent being his description of himself and the disciples in the familiar Old Testament imagery of God’s people as a vineyard: “I am the vine, and you are the branches” (15:5; see also Isaiah 5:1-7).
Unlike Jesus’s other discourses in John, which were usually given to outsiders like Nicodemus or to crowds like those gathered during Jerusalem’s religious festivals, this discourse is Jesus’s message to his own disciples. As such, some themes that were previously only touched upon now receive a much fuller treatment. For example, while the theme of Jesus’s relation to the Father has been discussed many times in earlier discourses, his relation to the Holy Spirit has so far received just a few passing references. In Chapters 14 and 16, however, Jesus’s relation to the Holy Spirit comes into focus. Jesus presents the Spirit as the divine person whose dispensation will come after Jesus’s ascension and glorification. At the time, many Jews believed that the pouring out of God’s Spirit on his people, which had been foretold by the prophets, would coincide with the reign of the messianic king. Jesus promises that the Spirit will come to his disciples upon his return to the Father and the beginning of his heavenly reign, further proof of Jesus’s identity as the Messiah. Jesus describes the Spirit as representing the continuing presence of God with the disciples even after Jesus’s departure, filling functions as their helper, comforter, teacher, and guide.
Another theme that receives more explicit attention in this section is that of Love as the Foundational Christian Ethic. Whereas in previous chapters it was only alluded to, in these chapters, it forms the central message of Jesus’s discourse to his disciples. The theme is enshrined in what he calls his “new commandment”: “Love one another as I have loved you” (15:12; 13:34). Jesus commands that love be the hallmark of their relationship to one another, not only as a feeling but as a lifestyle of humble, self-sacrificing acts, illustrated both in Jesus’s washing of their feet and in his references to going to the cross for their sakes. Jesus also illustrates the theme in his prayer in Chapter 17. Despite his own coming sufferings, he devotes his prayer to his followers, praying for their good and unity in the difficult times to come.
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