J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, Eerdmans, 2010.

(Reviewed by Jim West)

IV. Jesus’ Self Revelation to The Disciples (13:1-17:26)

Perhaps the most famous and well known saying in all of Christian theology is Jesus’s ‘love one
another’. In John 15:1-17 that saying and its context are investigated by Michaels in a
subsection which he titles ‘Indwelling and the Love Command’.

He begins by questioning the context of the passage. Is it meant to follow what comes
immediately before it or is it meant to harken back to material found in chapter 13? After
weighing the possibilities he concludes

… the traditional canonical reading of the text as it stands is

preferable. Jesus uses the metaphor of the Vine to explain further
what the indwelling of which he has just spoken will mean
concretely in the disciples’ experience (p. 800).

Throughout Michaels consistently writes about ‘Jesus speaking’ or ‘Jesus speaks’. I find this
interesting not least because it requires something of a ‘red letter’ reading of the Gospel of John.
Much preferable, in my estimation, would be the more restrained ‘the author says’ or ‘the writer
remarks’, etc. Further, Michaels seems to believe that Jesus spoke Greek and played on Greek
rhymes to make his points. For instance, in his discussion of v. 2, Michaels writes

Jesus speaks…[and] he plays on the rhyme of two verbs [αιρει and

καθαιρει] (p. 802).

This naturally presumes that 1) Jesus spoke Greek. Did he? He may well have but it’s far more
likely that he spoke Aramaic (if he spoke the present words at all and it isnt’ John the Theologian
shining through) and that 2) he used rhyming. But ‘rhyme’ as poetic method doesn’t seem to
have been operative in Greek, a language which by its very nature rhymed a lot due to case and
verb endings. Was Jesus rhyming in Greek to make his saying more memorable? That seems
doubtful.

What isn’t doubtful, though, is Michaels’ constantly-on-display theological clear sightedness.

When he remarks in connection with verse 3,

… they are clean not because of the footwashing itself, nor because
of baptism, but because of the word… (p. 803)

he is exactly on the mark.

Similarly is he on the mark in his discussion of the crux, v.6. As Michaels’ notes
 … the verse has played a significant role in theological debates
over the question of apostasy, or whether individuals can lose their
salvation. Clearly, Judas is still very much in mind, and the
question is whether or not Jesus is raising the possibility of other
Judases among the disciples or among the readers of the Gospel (p.
807).

And again

His love for them – and consequently his death on their behalf—
transforms them into ‘friends’ (p. 812).

When he exegetes v. 14, Michaels describes the issue of the ‘conditionality’ of the promise.

This sounds like a conditional sentence… but … Jesus says ‘you

are my friends’ right up front, as if without qualification… The
condition attached, ‘if you are doing the things I command you’,
has a force akin to that of a first-class condition … or even a
participle… (p. 813)

which means that he sees it as a statement of fact. If I may, putting a translation into his mouth
to get to the heart of the matter – ‘you are my friends, doing what I have commanded you’.

And finally, Michaels notes (on v. 16)

…whatever success they may have in ‘bearing fruit’ in the course

of their mission to the world is gained through answered prayer,
and only through answered prayer (p. 816).

Michaels may be overconfident in his reconstruction of the words and deeds of the historical
Jesus; but he is wonderful at theological interpretation. And as far as I’m concerned, the latter
far outweighs the former in terms of the value of this extraordinarily impressive volume.

The final review segment next.