Messiah in the Gospel of John

“These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

— John 20:31

The Gospel of John presents Jesus’s identity as Messiah as a claim its narrative builds toward, rather than one it states all at once. Confessions of Jesus as the Christ recur across the book, from an early disciple’s testimony in the first chapter to the risen Christ’s climactic recognition in the last, culminating in the book’s own stated purpose: “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). This article traces that theme through the book’s own narrative sequence; for the term’s wider doctrinal content and confessional witness, see Messiah.

Biblical Basis

Early testimony and confession (John 1)

John the Baptist’s own testimony opens the theme: pressed on his identity, he denies being the Christ himself and points instead to one “coming after” him (1:20-23, 26-27). Andrew, after following Jesus, tells his brother Simon, “We have found the Messiah (which means Christ)” (1:41), and Philip brings the same report to Nathanael (1:45). Nathanael’s own confession follows at once: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel” (1:49). John introduces him just before this as a man “in whom there is no deceit” (1:47), framing him as a witness whose word can be trusted.¹

Public ministry: recognition and misunderstanding (John 2-10)

Jesus’s own most direct statement of the claim, anywhere in the Gospel, is made privately to a Samaritan woman at a well: told that Messiah is coming, she hears Jesus answer plainly, “I who speak to you am he” (4:25-26). She carries the claim back to her town, and many Samaritans come to believe on her testimony before hearing Jesus themselves (4:29, 39-42).

Public reaction grows more divided from there. After Jesus feeds five thousand people, the crowd tries to seize him and “make him king by force,” a response John records as a misreading of Jesus’s mission (6:15). Jewish messianic hope by this period had narrowed mostly to an earthly king who would restore the nation’s political fortunes, since Israel’s own observance of the law left little felt need for a savior from sin.² Peter, speaking for the Twelve after the same feeding leads many other disciples to turn back, confesses, “you have the words of eternal life… you are the Holy One of God” (6:68-69). At the Feast of Booths, crowds in Jerusalem argue openly over Jesus’s identity, some concluding “this really is the Prophet” or “the Christ,” others objecting that the Christ cannot come from Galilee (7:25-27, 40-43). Jesus does not press the claim publicly through most of this section; when directly asked in the temple whether he is the Christ, he points to his own works as the answer rather than repeating the Samaritan woman’s plain statement (10:24-25).

The turning point: Bethany and Jerusalem (John 11-12)

At Bethany, before raising Lazarus, Jesus draws from Martha the same confession the book as a whole is written to produce: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (11:27). Martha states this in the perfect tense of the Greek verb “believe,” a grammatical choice that marks her confession as an already settled conviction rather than a realization she is only now reaching.³ Days later, crowds gathering for Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem hail him with royal language, “Hosanna!… even the King of Israel!” (12:13), as he rides in on a donkey in fulfillment of Zechariah’s own prophecy of the coming king (12:14-15; cf. Zech. 9:9).

Trial, death, and resurrection (John 18-20)

The claim publicly acclaimed at the triumphal entry becomes the substance of the charge against Jesus before Pilate. Pilate’s repeated question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (18:33), and the notice fixed to the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (19:19), both keep the claim in its political form, even as Jesus tells Pilate directly that his kingdom “is not of this world” (18:36).

After the resurrection, the theme reaches its fullest statement not in a crowd’s acclamation but in one disciple’s address to the risen Christ himself. Thomas, on seeing Jesus, answers him, “My Lord and my God!” (20:28). The Greek grammar marks this as an address made directly to Christ rather than a mere exclamation of surprise, a point pressed on the ground that a devout Jew’s use of “Lord” and “God” together, spoken to a person, would have been unthinkable unless that person were himself truly God.⁴

The Gospel’s stated purpose (John 20:30-31)

John closes this sequence of confessions by stating outright what it had been building toward. Placed directly after the resurrection narrative itself, the Gospel’s own purpose statement reads: “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (20:30-31).⁵

Related Doctrines

References

Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Fulfilled,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 244: “Nathaniel, the one who is without guile, and therefore whose words the reader is surely meant to trust, says to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.’” ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father”: “Generally speaking, the self-righteousness of Judaism was not favorable to messianic expectation. Israel, after all, had the law; it was righteous by its observance of the law and needed no Savior. At most there was room for an earthly king/messiah who could deliver the Jews and restore their political fortunes.” ↩
Todd R. Chipman, “Faith and the Future: The Role of the Believer in the Gospel of John,” Themelios 50, no. 1 (2025): 66-73, at 72: “[Martha] goes on to confess a settled belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God who has come into the world (‘I believe [ἐγὼ πεπίστευκα] that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world’). Martha’s choice of the perfect indicative of πιστεύω objectifies the level to which she has embraced the role of ὁ πιστεύων.” ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VII. The Divinity of Christ,” in Systematic Theology, Volume I (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), 508-9: “Thomas, not being present at the first interview between Christ and his disciples, doubted the fact of his resurrection; but when he saw Him he was fully convinced, and owned Him as his Lord and God… Thomas answered that he was fully satisfied and firmly convinced that Christ was Lord and God.” ↩
McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Fulfilled,” 248: “the purpose of John’s Gospel is to persuade the reader that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:30), a statement made directly on the heels of John’s report of the resurrection.” ↩