The New Testament · The Gospels · Book 50 of 73
Prophecy in John
John's Gospel has no Olivet Discourse. Its prophecy works through signs and types: the Lamb, the ladder, the temple, the serpent lifted up. And it speaks of an “hour” that is coming and is already here, so that the last things begin in Christ even before his return.
In progress: 10 passages so far
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The book at a glance
Tradition attributes the fourth Gospel to the apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved (13:23; 21:20, 24), writing late in the first century. After a prologue on the Word made flesh, it falls into two parts: a Book of Signs (chapters 1–12), in which seven signs reveal who Jesus is, and a Book of Glory (chapters 13–21), the Last Supper, the Passion and the Resurrection.
John looks forward in his own way. He shows the Old Testament fulfilled through types: the Passover lamb, Jacob's stairway, the Temple, the bronze serpent. He records Jesus' prophecies of his death, his resurrection and the fate of Peter. And he joins present and future: eternal life begins now for whoever believes, while the resurrection of the dead and Christ's coming are still to come.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:29 | Behold, the Lamb of God | Fulfilled |
| 1:51 | Angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man | Fulfilled |
| 2:19–22 | The temple of his body | Fulfilled |
| 3:14–15 | The serpent lifted up | Fulfilled |
| 5:25–29 | The hour is coming and is now here | Unfolding Future |
| 12:31–33 | The ruler of this world driven out; all drawn to Christ | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 14:2–3 | I will come back again | Future |
| 19:26–27 | “Woman, behold, your son” | Unfolding |
| 19:36–37 | They will look upon him whom they have pierced | Fulfilled Future |
| 21:18–23 | Peter's death foretold; the saying about the beloved disciple | Fulfilled |
The passages
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
- Reading
- John the Baptist gathers two figures into one title. Jesus is the servant of Isaiah 53:7, led like a lamb to the slaughter and bearing the sins of many, and he is the Passover lamb of Exodus 12, whose blood marked Israel's redemption. The Catechism reads the title exactly this way (CCC 608). At the Cross John applies to him the Passover rule that no bone be broken (19:36).
- See also
- The Lamb is the central figure of Revelation, “a Lamb that seemed to have been slain” (Revelation 5:6). See The Lamb's Victory, chapter 5.
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
- Reading
- Jesus answers Nathanael with Jacob's dream at Bethel, where angels went up and down a stairway between earth and heaven (Genesis 28:12). What was a stairway in the dream is now a person: the Son of Man himself is the meeting place of heaven and earth, the true house of God and gate of heaven that Jacob named at Bethel.
- See also
- Prophecy in Genesis, on Jacob's ladder.
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” … But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
- Reading
- After cleansing the Temple, Jesus is asked for a sign and gives only one, his death and resurrection, the same sign of Jonah he gives in Matthew 12:40. His hearers take him to mean Herod's Temple, “under construction for forty-six years” (2:20). John explains that he meant his body, and that the disciples understood only “when he was raised from the dead” (2:22). Jesus identifies himself with the Temple as God's dwelling among us (CCC 586).
- Note
- John himself shows here how a prophecy can be understood only after its fulfillment. Fr. John's own reflection on this passage, offered as a reflection and not as Church teaching, is The Temple of His Body.
- See also
- Matthew 24:1–2; Revelation 21:22.
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
- Reading
- In the desert, the people bitten by serpents looked at the bronze serpent Moses set on a pole and lived (Numbers 21:8–9). Jesus names himself as what it foreshadowed. The Catechism lists the bronze serpent among the Old Testament images that pointed to salvation through the incarnate Word (CCC 2130).
- Note
- “Lifted up” in John means both the Cross and the exaltation to glory. See 8:28 and 12:32–33.
“Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
- Reading
- Jesus speaks of two resurrections. The first is “now here”: whoever hears his word and believes passes from death to life already (5:24). The second is only “coming”: all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, to the resurrection of life or of condemnation (5:28–29). The Catechism takes up these words for the resurrection of all the dead before the Last Judgment (CCC 1038), which will take place “at the last day” (CCC 1001).
- Why two labels
- The life of faith is given now, in the age of the Church. The bodily resurrection waits for Christ's return.
“Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
- Reading
- On the eve of the Passion, Jesus says that his death is the judgment of the world and the defeat of its ruler. The Catechism teaches that Christ's freely accepted death won the victory over evil once for all, and the “prince of this world” was cast out (CCC 2853). The lifting up begins his exaltation, from which he draws all to himself (CCC 662).
- Why two labels
- The victory was won on the Cross. The drawing of “everyone” goes on wherever Christ crucified is preached.
- See also
- The dragon thrown down from heaven (Revelation 12:9–10); The Woman Clothed with the Sun.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.”
- Reading
- At the Last Supper Jesus promises a place in his Father's house, which has “many dwelling places” (14:2). He goes ahead of his members so that they may follow him there (CCC 661), and heaven itself is being with Christ (CCC 1025). His coming back again is the return the Church professes in the Creed.
- Note
- Some Christians read this verse as a secret coming of Christ to take believers away before a time of tribulation (the “rapture”). The Catholic reading sees one visible return of Christ in glory; the promise is also tasted already in the death of each believer who goes to be with him. See The Lamb's Victory: the rapture.
“Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.”
- Reading
- These words are not a prediction. They are placed here because the Church reads them as reaching beyond that afternoon. From the Cross Jesus gives his mother to the disciple he loved, and the Catechism sees in this the motherhood of Mary in the Church (CCC 964). He calls her “Woman,” as at Cana (2:4); she is “the Woman, the new Eve,” the true mother of all the living (CCC 2618).
- Why unfolding
- Every disciple is invited to take her “into his home” (19:27), in the time between the Cross and the return.
- See also
- Genesis 3:15; Revelation 12:1, 17. See The Woman Clothed with the Sun.
“They will look upon him whom they have pierced.”
- Reading
- John, who stood at the Cross, gives two fulfillments. No bone of Jesus is broken, as with the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:46; Psalm 34:21). And the soldier's lance fulfills Zechariah 12:10, where God promises a spirit of mourning for the one they have pierced. The blood and water from his side the Church sees as figures of Baptism and the Eucharist (CCC 1225).
- Why two labels
- Fulfilled at Calvary. Revelation takes up the same words for his return: “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him” (Revelation 1:7).
“…when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”
- Reading
- The risen Lord tells Peter how he will die, and John adds that he said this “signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God” (21:19). By the time the Gospel was written Peter had died a martyr. Eusebius, citing Origen, records that he was crucified at Rome, head downward at his own request (Church History 3.1).
- Note
- Peter then asks about the beloved disciple, and a rumor spreads that this disciple would not die. John corrects it himself: “Jesus had not told him that he would not die, just ‘What if I want him to remain until I come?’” (21:23). Saint Augustine comments on this correction (Tractates on John 124). A lesson for every reader of prophecy: a saying of the Lord is not a timetable.
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the prologue and the Word made flesh (1:14), the woman's hour at Cana (2:4), worship in Spirit and truth (4:21–23), the bread of life and the last day (6:39–54), Caiaphas' unwitting prophecy (11:49–52), the grain of wheat (12:24), the Spirit who “will declare to you the things that are coming” (16:13), and the sorrow of labor turned to joy (16:20–22).
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