Great resource on John’s Gospel

God Among Us: Studies in the Gospel of John Raymond Bystrom. Luminaire Studies of Kindred Productions, 2003. 339 pages.

The theological insights and striking stories of John’s Gospel draw readers back to it again and again. Raymond Bystrom’s commentary, God Among Us, is a great new resource for the study of this gospel.

Bystrom, a Bible teacher and former pastor, currently serves as associate professor of Pastoral Ministry at MB Biblical Seminary in Fresno, California. He contends that John’s Gospel “may be the most influential book of the New Testament.” While this may be true, perhaps it is not the best understood. God Among Us will go a long way in correcting that.

The commentary is divided into 24 chapters. Each follows a pattern of listing the specific text, outlining its flow and form, and then explaining its content. This is followed by suggested applications, teaching and preaching points and personal reflection questions.

Bystrom is to be commended for dealing with the difficult authorship issue. While admitting that “certainty about the identity of the author may not be possible” he concludes: “The hypothesis that John the son of Zebedee is the Beloved Disciple and the Gospel’s eyewitness is a highly defensible position.”

This is a clear and readable commentary, valuable for both the specialist and non-specialist. References to original languages are limited, and only used when needed to clarify a point. Issues that are potentially troubling in our culture are not avoided. Bystrom deals with John’s frequent disparaging statements about “Jews,” by saying, “It must not be interpreted to mean any and all Jews. And certainly it does not suggest that the author, likely a Jew himself, was anti-Semitic. Here the term ‘the Jews’ refers first and foremost to the Jewish religious leaders.”

Of particular note are the comments on contemporary application related to the biblical text. This is where Bystrom’s pastoral experience certainly shows through.

The only reservation this reviewer had with Bystrom’s book was the suggestion that certain words and phrases also have symbolic meaning. This is highly subjective and one wonders if this was John’s intent.

I gladly recommend God Among Us for both personal and group study. It would also be a fine textbook for a college level course on John’s Gospel.

John Vooys is New Testament Instructor at Columbia Bible College, Abbotsford, B.C. and a member of South Abbotsford MB Church.