Elizabeth Robertson: Outside Reading-The gospel of John

The gospel of John, written by John, one of Jesus's disciples, chronicles the life of Jesus. I just finished the book today, and it was the first book of the Bible that I had read straight through fairly quickly without studying it along the way. I did this because I wanted to understand exactly what happened during Jesus's life. I grew up in the church so I pretty much already knew all the stories, but for myself I wanted to grasp the different perspectives so I could really understand who Jesus was and is. Something that I discovered in reading the book the way I did was something that might seem pretty obvious to other people, but was not obvious to me initially. I was able to understand what the people back then thought of him. They had all grown up hearing about the Christ who was to come and save the world, and their understanding of it was that he would be a king. He was a king, but not in the way they expected. I was able to understand their points of view better because it really makes sense that they would not believe him when he said that he was the Christ. After all, he was a human just like them, and his parents were Mary and Joseph, normal human beings who were not royalty. I thought it was really interesting. Again, another book worth reading.