The Johannine Vision of the Church

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how the Johannine writings envisage the identity and life of the believing community. In the Gospel’s narrative the primary function of Jesus’ followers is the continuation of God’s mission of salvific judgement for the world that has been decisively inaugurated through Jesus. Accompanied by the divine Spirit, they are to be witnesses to the truth of God’s verdict of life for the world established in the mission, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This witnessing community is to be identified by its distinctive belief in Jesus as the Messiah who is the Son of God, its following him in discipleship, and its experience of the Spirit who mediates the presence of God and Christ. The Spirit also shapes the community’s worship and mediates eternal life in the present. Such life has the quality of love, which is to be manifested in the community members’ unity and their willingness to lay down their lives for one another.