Touring John's Gospel

It is possible to see John’s gospel as a whole as a tour through the sanctuary. In chapter 1, John the Baptist introduces Jesus as the “Lamb of God” who takes away the sins of the world, thus bringing the reader to the bronze altar with a sacrificial animal. Chapters 2-5, with their focus on water, take place at the laver. Jesus turns water to wine, tells Nicodemus he must be born of water and the Spirit, discusses living water with the Samaritan woman, and heals a paralytic who has waited thirty-eight years to be healed by the angelic stirring of the pool. Chapters 6-7 center on the feeding of the five thousand, in which Jesus distributes the bread of the presence from the golden table. In Chapters 8-9, Jesus lingers at the lampstand, declaring Himself the light of the world, and the Upper Room Discourse, especially Chapter 17, displays Jesus as the intercessory priest, raising his hands before the golden altar. At the climax of the gospel John is at pains to show that the empty tomb is the new Holy of Holies. Like the ark cover, the slab on which Jesus’ body once lay is flanked by angels, and Peter, a high priest, is the first to enter this grave of defilement now wondrously illumined with holiness. —Peter Leithart, “‘We Saw His Glory’: Implications of the Sanctuary Christology in John’s Gospel,” in Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, Christology Ancient & Modern, 128-29