Sunday, April 23, 2006

Repentance and the Fourth Gospel: Part 2

Possibilities

The following texts were identified as possibilities and examined to test their merits:

(1) References to John the Baptist and baptism: 1:25ff.; 3:23ff; 10:40.
(2) Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”: 1:29.
(3) The Wedding at Cana: could the reference to the purification jars be a reference to repentance: 2:1–13.
(4) Born from above/anew and born of water and spirit: 3:3–7.
(5) The lifting up of the snake in the wilderness: 3:14 (see Num 21:4–9).
(6) Light and darkness motif throughout FG: 1:4–9; 3:19–21; 8:12; 9:5.
(7) The relationship of obedience and believing: 3:36.
(8) Jesus pointing out the Samaritan woman’s sinful life: 4:16–18.
(9) Jesus’ command to not sin: 5:14; 8:11.
(10) The motif of hearing and its relationship to obedience: 5:24; 12:47.
(11) The motif of “coming”: 5:40; 6:35.
(12) “die in sin”: 8:21.
(13) “continue to follow”: 8:31.
(14) obeying Jesus’ teaching equals never seeing death: 8:51; 17:6.
(15) “turn to me” from Isaiah: 12:40.
(16) obedience and love: 14:15, 21, 23–24.
(17) remain and bear fruit: 15:1–5.
(18) Peter’s restoration: 21:15–17, 19b.

The majority of these concepts and texts have not been analyzed in relationship to repentance in previous research. Some texts were found to provide no concrete evidence for the concept of repentance and others may provided only some weak evidence. The first group that will be discussed will include those texts that are not strong texts for repentance in the Fourth Gospel.

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