The importance of the Gospel of John can scarcely be overestimated. Throughout Christian history, it has been read and cherished far more than any of the other preserved accounts of Jesus' life. The genius of the gospel lies in the way in which John conceives of the relationship between the human and the divine. This relationship has always been a problem that has puzzled people. How can God, who is conceived as an eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent being, have any direct contact with that which is temporal, changing, and limited by the conditions of space and time? In other words, how can divinity ever be united with humanity unless one thereby becomes involved in a contradiction of terms? John's answer to this question is his statement, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." The Logos is identified with God and is the spirit that dwelt in the human being known as Jesus of Nazareth. This divine spirit motivated Jesus' activities and enabled him to meet triumphantly the temptations to which all human beings are subject. As John sees it, no human being using only his own strength can overcome the forces of evil. Only God can impart the power to human beings to do this. That it was done in the person of Jesus is all the evidence needed to assure that triumph over evil is a possibility for humans and that the ultimate overthrow of the forces of evil is something that has now been made certain.
Throughout John's gospel, Jesus appears in the role of a human being, which is especially important because it means that he is an example for other people to follow. As a typical human being, he possessed no extraordinary power that is not available to anyone else who asks for it and who meets the conditions for receiving it. Because Jesus' will is in complete harmony with the will of God, it is proper and right to refer to him as the Son of God; in this connection, we are to understand the statement "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."
