18 May 2010

Christ's Climactic Fulfillment in John

A good preliminary statement as Andreas Koestenberger launches into a discussion of christology in John's Gospel--

[T]he question is not so much whether Jesus was the Son of Man, or the prophet like Moses, or the Messiah, and so on, and, if so, exactly what this meant for John; but rather that for John, as for Jesus, in Jesus all of these figures found their culmination. . . .

Thus, it is John's message that in Jesus, all the various scriptural messianic predictions and typology converged, not only in his life but most signally in his death (John 19:24, 27, 28) [and resurrection!]. Thus it misses the point to argue that one messianic figure is more central in John's portrayal of Jesus' identity than another. In a very important sense, John's message is that in Jesus all of salvation history finds its climactic fulfillment.

--A. Koestenberger, A Theology of John's Gospel and Letters (Zondervan 2009), 317

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