John 21, verses 20 to 25, what shall this man do

 

John 21:20 ¶  Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? 21  Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? 22  Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. 23  Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? 24  This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. 25  And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

John explains how the error is made that some might think that John would not die until Jesus returned. Jesus only said, “what is it to you if he doesn’t die until I return?” so this teaching must have been a stumbling block of some sort in the early church. This teaches us a lesson of interpretation of the Bible. We are warned here about taking a comment, a verse, out of context and making it mean something it was never meant to mean. John lets us know that he is the one writing this gospel and confirms his testimony.

For verse 25 see verses 30 and 31 of the last chapter for a connection. John then wraps up his gospel giving us the idea that if he had wanted to and had the time he could have written many volumes of the things Jesus did. This brings to mind a great point. God, who has seen every moment of every life that has ever lived could have written a Bible no one could read but we have had come down to us about 1200 pages. One would assume that we should pay attention to every word, that everything is important in some way. I hope my comments on the Gospel According to John have helped you want to dig deeper into God’s Bible and that my study has been a blessing to you as it was to me. Thank you for reading.