In the Gospel of John, the central theme is the divine Logos, the word that was with God and that was God. This Logos became flesh and dwelt among men in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. John says nothing of a supernatural birth. He regards Jesus as a human being who possessed actual flesh and blood, the same as other people. The most significant thing about Jesus is that the divine Logos was present in him, and all of the marvelous things that he accomplished were by virtue of the power of God. In this way, John conceives the relationship between the divine and the human. Because God was present in Jesus, it is appropriate to refer to Jesus as the Son of God, which is an example of what can happen in the life of anyone else in whom the power of God dwells. In this connection, John says, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."
John's account of the ministry of Jesus consists of two parts. The first twelve chapters describe Jesus' public ministry, beginning with his meeting John the Baptist and closing with the visit of the Greeks who came to worship at the Feast of Passover. The remaining chapters deal with the closing days of Jesus' earthly ministry, when he gave instruction to his disciples and explained the meaning of his life and approaching death in a number of lengthy discourses. This division of the gospel into two parts follows the pattern used by the Synoptic Gospels' writers, but the contents of the two sections differ widely from the earlier accounts. According to John, Jesus' public ministry can be summarized in connection with a number of miracles that John reports and then follows with interpretations that point to their spiritual significance.
John records only seven miracles, considerably less than the number reported in the Synoptic Gospels. But John's use of the miracle stories is different from that of his predecessors. John does not regard the stories' miraculous elements themselves as having great significance but rather the spiritual meanings that he finds implicit in them. The miracles are signs not of the imminence of the coming of God's kingdom as that term is used in the Synoptic Gospels but of the presence of the Logos, or the power of God, which brings about a transformation in people's lives.
