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There are many summaries of the gospel in popular evangelism. Perhaps the most popular is the “Romans Road” consisting of quotes pulled from Rom 3:23; 6:23a; 5:8; 6:23b; and then 10:9, 13. But I have found it odd that these summaries do not generally appeal to the gospel summaries that are presented in the Bible itself. There are, in fact, many such summaries. And they contain a variety of content, but they are generally identifiable by containing some portion of a condensed three-stage narrative summary of key gospel events. Those key gospel events are: 1) Jesus’s crucifixion, 2) Jesus’s resurrection, and 3) Jesus’s exaltation.
Each of these events assumes a larger story not only surrounding the particular events, but also leading up to them and proceeding from them. The Gospels in particular, in their own distinct ways, show how the gospel story is about a larger context than these key events. Indeed, the gospel story is one that is still ongoing, as the eschatological conclusion still lies in the future. But in all cases, these three events, explicitly or implicitly, are the key reference points for the articulation and summarization of that story in the NT.
In this 5-part series, I will be reviewing where and how this three-stage narrative, or some portion thereof, appears throughout the NT. Here in Part 1, my focus will be on the Gospels, how each of them foreshadow, build up to, and present the climactic gospel events in the context of the larger stories they tell. Part 2 concerns Acts, the book that presents us with the most summaries of the gospel by virtue of Luke recapitulating the many gospel proclamations in the book. As such, it will be treated separately from the Gospel of Luke with which it properly belongs. Part 3 focuses on the gospel summaries in the letters of Paul, the figure who is most often turned to for summarizing the gospel, but whose summarization can only be framed properly in the context of what we learn from the Gospels and Acts. Part 4 covers Hebrews and the General Epistles, which do not receive nearly enough attention in terms of their articulation of the gospel. Part 5 then addresses the gospel as presented in Revelation, as this book concerns not only the awaited completion of the gospel narrative, but also recapitulates at key junctures the key events of the gospel story that have fulfilled God’s promises and changed the grand cosmic story forever.
The Gospels
The four Gospels are notable not only for how they are the most extensive articulations of the gospel in the NT, but also for how they connect, through the key gospel events, the proclamation of Jesus to the proclamation of the earliest Christians. In all the Gospels, Jesus’s proclamation concerns the kingdom/dominion of God and of his work in the same, although in John the favored terminology is that of everlasting life. Conversely, the primary way in which the earliest Christians proclaimed the announcement of the kingdom/dominion of God was through claiming that Jesus is Lord/King, and that he was declared to be so by God in the sequence of his crucifixion followed by his resurrection followed by his exaltation to God’s right hand for his heavenly reign and ministry (although the latter is clearest in Hebrews).
Jesus’s death was crucial to the purposes of God as the means of establishing God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. When one connects it to the story of Israel, as the Gospel writers and other teachers in the NT did, one finds other similar layers of meaning. Jesus’ crucifixion showed how far gone Israel was in fulfilling its God-given vocation (since the Messiah attained a cursed and shameful death), how Jesus was truly the Messiah in climaxing the story of Israel (including his incorporation of the suffering and rejection experienced by Israel), and how faithful God has been to his covenant with Israel, including by providing the means of salvation and forgiveness from sin.
Jesus’s resurrection was likewise crucial to the fulfillment of God’s covenant and promises in Scripture. From the beginning, the apostles understood their role to be witnesses of his resurrection (Acts 1:22; 1 Cor 9:1; 15:5–8). It is the foundation of the Christian ministry, the way by which God vindicated Jesus’s claims and identity, the way by which he defeated death and revealed that Jesus was the inauguration of the new creation and new life with it even during the present age. In further terms of the Israel story, Jesus’s suffering of shame by crucifixion and vindication by resurrection shows how he incorporates the entirety of Israel’s identity into himself, both the shame of exile and the glory of restoration in fulfillment of God’s promises.
Jesus’s exaltation, physically signified by his ascension, brought the resurrection to its completion, particularly in terms of bringing Jesus to his reign and ministry at God’s right hand. As I have noted before at multiple points in my series on resurrection in the OT (such as Ezek 37 and Dan 12), promises of exaltation and the eschatological kingdom accompanied promises of resurrection, especially since these conditions were fitting for a setting in which the dead are raised to everlasting life, the life of the age to come, the life that God gives to make humans more like him. But while the eschatological exaltation will make humans more fully what God created them to be, Jesus’s exaltation was a confirmation that he was the Son of God (indeed, God the Son) all along and a return to heaven whence he came, having accomplished God’s purposes for his Incarnation.
Matthew
Each of the Gospels builds up to these climactic events from the very beginning. Matthew, for example, does so in his Christmas story with the declaration that Jesus will bear that name because he will save his people from their sins, that he will fulfill the name of “God with us,” and that the Scriptures are fulfilled in his life. But it would take too long to chart all the ways in which the Gospels build to their conclusions in the key gospel events by which the larger story would be referenced (and that is what commentaries are for). What I am more interested in are the narrative summaries and more direct hints at the gospel events.
On two occasions in Matthew, Jesus refers to the sign of Jonah that signifies his death and resurrection, which is explicit in Matthew, but not Luke (Matt 12:38–40; 16:1–4; cf. Luke 11:29–30). On the one hand, this image shows that the resurrection is the sign that truly demonstrates who Jesus is and that he has the divine endorsement of his claims and actions (which implies an exaltation after death less directly than it does his resurrection with the reference to “three days and three nights”). It is the only sign that Jesus’s “wicked and adulterous generation” will receive. On the other hand, the fact that Jesus describes himself in terms of fulfilling the sign of Jonah in a typological sense fits with the larger theme of Matthew’s regular referrals to the fulfillment of Scripture in the life of Jesus (1:22–23; 2:5–6, 15, 17–18, 23; 3:15; 4:14–16; 5:17; 8:17; 11:10; 12:15–21; 13:14–15, 35; 21:4–5, 42–44; 26:24, 31–32, 54–56; 27:9–10). These dual themes of divine confirmation and vindication of Jesus through his resurrection and crucifixion on the one hand, and the fulfillment of Scripture in the gospel events on the other, were characteristic dual emphases of gospel proclamations in Acts, as well as others we will note in the rest of this series (though the first will be more prevalent). It is fascinating to see how such emphases are condensed in Jesus’s uses of the sign of Jonah imagery.
More explicitly, Jesus foreshadows the key gospel events in his direct predictions of his death and resurrection (16:21; 17:9, 22–23; 20:18–19; 27:63–64). In each of the Synoptics, the first such prediction follows immediately after Peter’s confession of Jesus’s identity, so that these two episodes are juxtaposed to illustrate the necessary end goal of who Jesus is, what he has said, and what he has done (cf. Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22). The first prediction also has the most exposition attached to it as it leads into Jesus’s teaching about discipleship, this time illustrating the close connection between being Jesus’s disciple and sharing in his goal (16:24–25 // Mark 8:34–35 // Luke 9:23–24). Even as he will be killed for his faithfulness to God and then be raised, so too his followers must follow him in faithfulness unto death, for that path leads to sharing in his resurrection. In other words, being a disciple means making the gospel story one’s own story (cf. Matt 10:38 // Luke 14:27; Matt 20:28 // Mark 10:45).
These themes are likewise intertwined in Matthew and Mark’s versions of the transfiguration, wherein Jesus tells his disciples to say nothing of what they have seen until he has been raised from the dead (17:9 // Mark 9:9–10), and he tells them again that he will suffer, even as Elijah/John the Baptist before him has suffered (17:12 // Mark 9:12). The conventional order of foreshadowing these things returns in Jesus’s next prediction in Matthew, as well as Mark (17:22–23 // Mark 9:31; Luke’s version [9:44] only refers to him being handed over). Both events are referenced again in Jesus’s final prediction before arriving at Jerusalem (20:18–19 // Mark 10:33–34 // Luke 18:31–33).
Also notable is the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (21:33–46 // Mark 12:1–12 // Luke 20:9–19), where Jesus hints not so subtly at what it is to come when the landowner sends his son, and the tenants kill him. Although the parable proper ends with this death, Jesus’s further teaching warns of what the owner (God) will do in response to the slaying of his son, but then he goes even further with his application of Ps 118:22–23. This text will more clearly apply to Jesus’s resurrection in Acts 4:11, but it still functions more obliquely as a reference to the same here, as the Son (ben in Aramaic) is portrayed as the stone (eben in Aramaic) that the builders rejected, but which instead becomes the cornerstone/head of the corner by the Lord’s doing. This pattern of both vindication and exaltation after rejection fits the gospel pattern. It also serves as the foundation of God’s salvific work, as well as the capstone of what God has been preparing throughout Scripture. Because God has been faithful in fulfilling the precedent set by this Scripture, we can be confident that he will bring to consummation the salvific edifice begun with Jesus.
In this context, certain statements Jesus makes in the latter part of Matthew assume the fulfillment of what he has predicted about his death and resurrection, and thus express his exaltation. He refers to his coming in glory and his role in the final judgment for vindication and condemnation (16:27; 19:28; 24:30; 25:31; cf. Mark 8:38 // Luke 9:26; Mark 13:26 // Luke 21:27). In 19:28 in particular he makes a point similar to his teaching after his first prediction of his execution and resurrection, in that he says his disciples will share in his exaltation as they share in his execution of judgment while sitting on their own thrones (cf. Luke 22:30). Such exaltation may also be implied in Jesus’s declaration to Jerusalem that the city will not see him again until they should say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (23:39 // Luke 13:35). Most directly, Jesus says in his trial, as the events he predicted are in the process of unfolding, that those in the court would see him seated at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven, merging allusions to Ps 110:1 and Dan 7:13–14 (26:64 // Mark 14:62; cf. Luke 22:69). In other words, he is expecting his exaltation.
As such, it is fair to infer that references to one or more of these events in the closing chapters of the Gospel implicitly entail the whole in the function of a narrative synecdoche. Certain events are emphasized for certain purposes, but the whole of the unfolding narrative is assumed. Jesus reminds his disciples that he will be handed over to be crucified in 26:2, which Matthew places in the context of describing the plot against Jesus (cf. 26:23–24 //Mark 14:21 // Luke 22:21–22). When he references his death again in 26:12 (par. Mark 14:8), it is because he is describing the woman who has anointed him with expensive perfume as preparing him for burial. He has already stated that this is not where his story or her part in his story will end, because he also notes, in light of that larger gospel story, that the gospel will be proclaimed throughout the world, for his resurrection and exaltation will follow his crucifixion (26:13 // Mark 14:9). Likewise, the institution narrative of the Eucharist obviously makes primary reference to his death, but the talk of him drinking from the fruit of the vine again in his Father’s kingdom obviously also entails his resurrection, given the context he has set for this statement to this point (26:26–29 // Mark 14:22–25 // Luke 22:15–20). Furthermore, when he speaks of the disciples falling away and being scattered and then speaks of what will happen after his resurrection, he is obviously also assuming his death from his preceding statement (26:31–32 // Mark 14:27–28).
Chapters 27 and 28 narrate two of the three central gospel events and so provide at least some of the larger narrative summarized by the basic statements that Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead. Matthew then closes this narration of the gospel with one of the clearest statements of Jesus’s exaltation, as he says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him (28:18). It is on this basis that he sends the disciples out on mission to make disciples of all the nations. And it is because of his resurrection and exaltation that he can say truthfully to his disciples that he is with them always, even to the denouement of the age, which will itself be only the beginning of the consummation of the kingdom of God in the new creation.
As indicated through Matt 6:10, Jesus’s goal—as one who shares God’s goal/will—is for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. Indeed, Jesus’s whole proclamation—as well as that of John before him and the disciples after him—is about the kingdom of heaven drawing near those who are on earth (3:2; 4:17; 10:7). Those who are poor in spirit and persecuted for the sake of righteousness will inherit the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus presents these expectations in parallel with the meek who will inherit the earth (5:3, 5, 10). The deeds done in the present time on earth indicate who will enter the kingdom of Jesus’s Father (5:19–20; 7:21; 18:3–4, 23–35; 19:23). There is continuity between what is bound and loosed on earth and what is bound and loosed in heaven (16:19; 18:18). Matthew’s climactic declaration of this eschatologically purposed heaven-and-earth linkage is in this climax of his Gospel, wherein Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him (28:18). Matthew further underlines the kingdom significance of this statement through the verbal links between it and the reception of the kingdom of God by the one like a son of man in Dan 7:13–14 (as Jesus’s preferred form of self-reference throughout the Gospels is as the Son of Man). As such, his resurrection foreshadows the cosmic union of heaven and earth by its union under the authority of Jesus, whose purpose is to implement the will and kingdom of God, for which reason he was resurrected and exalted after his death to the right hand of God.
Mark
Because so much of Mark overlaps with Matthew, what I have said about Matthew, where I have cited Markan parallels, also applies. What is peculiar to the consideration of the three-stage gospel narrative in Mark is how to describe it in light of the Gospel’s ending. If, as is the majority view in biblical scholarship, we accept that Mark 16:8 is the original ending, the narration of the gospel events stops short of what appears in the other Gospels, and the resurrection of Jesus is declared by the angels and confirmed by the empty tomb. His appearances would not follow, but such is clearly expected beyond the narrative scope of Mark (9:9–10; 14:28; 16:7). If the original ending was lost, perhaps it included some of the stories of the appearances, including one to Peter referenced in Luke 24:34 and 1 Cor 15:5, and perhaps it may have even included a statement affirming Jesus’s exaltation akin to Matt 28:18, but such things are simply unknown if the ending is, in fact, lost. If it should be the case that Mark 16:9–20 is the original ending, this ending features not only resurrection appearances, but also a statement of Jesus’s exaltation, this time in the standard language of referring to his place at the right hand of God (16:19).
I plan to review the debate about how Mark ends another time. But the question is only about where the narrative scope of what Mark actually wrote extends to. As it stands, the Gospel clearly anticipates at multiple points the fullness of the three-stage gospel narrative. Although the exaltation is less pronounced here compared to Matthew, Jesus still anticipates it at key junctures, such as after his first prediction of his death and resurrection (8:38), his Olivet Discourse (13:26), and his statement at his trial (14:62). It is also anticipated that the resurrection follows the crucifixion and that this will involve appearances, as noted above. And clearly the gospel message—as encapsulated by reference to the three key events—got out somehow, even if the story as such in Mark’s narration might have ended at 16:8.
Luke
Luke’s build-up to the key gospel events is likewise covered by the parallels with Matthew (he also has some more distant foreshadowing in his own infancy narrative, such as Simeon’s words to Mary in 2:34–35). There are some (often subtle) redactional differences between the texts that need not concern us here (I hope to address such in a book I have planned). Luke also notably structures his Gospel in such a way that there is an extensive lead-up to his going to Jerusalem, beginning with the note in 9:51.
But of the additions he makes, three are significant for the purposes of this analysis. The first is Luke’s unique reference to Jesus’s remarks about Herod, who the Pharisees told Jesus was trying to kill him. In so many words, Jesus says that he will do what he will do and press on towards his goal, which is to reach Jerusalem, where he will die, because that is where prophets go to die (13:32–33). Again, it must be remembered that such is not all Jesus expects to happen to him, as this journey to Jerusalem follows the prediction of his death and resurrection.
The second is the foreboding note at the end of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man insists to Abraham that his brothers will repent if someone from the dead (specifically Lazarus) should warn them, but Abraham says that if they do not already listen to Moses and the Prophets, even someone rising from the dead will not convince them (16:30–31). The resonances of this statement with the gospel events, and the subsequent response to the gospel that Luke narrates in Acts, are obvious.
The last significant addition is in the more immediate build-up to the gospel events as Jesus is speaking with his disciples after the Last Supper. Uniquely in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus directly references Isa 53, specifically v. 12, to describe what is going to happen to him (22:37). As seen at several points already (especially in Matthew), and as one will see many more times in Acts, the gospel events are connected with the fulfillment of Scripture. This use of the text most directly invokes his death, and the context of the quote particularly stresses this event as a death on behalf of others and because of the sins of others. Furthermore, as noted in my post on Isa 53 in my series on resurrection in the OT, the immediate context is also suggestive of resurrection, as is consistent with what we have noted of his predictions of what he expects to happen to him.
But most distinctive of all is Luke’s actual resurrection narrative in ch. 24. Here (24:7), what the angels tell the women who visit Jesus’s tomb is at once both a refence back to Jesus’s predictions (as the language represents a combination of the first and second predictions in 9:22, 44) and a functional summary of how the early Christians proclaimed the gospel according to the summaries in Acts and 1 Cor 15:3–4.
Luke is also distinctive in that, more than any other Gospel resurrection narrative, ch. 24 draws particular attention to the fact that the gospel events have fulfilled Scripture. In Jesus’s appearance to the disciples on the Emmaus Road, before they know who he is, he tells them that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer all the things they had told him about (vv. 19–24), and then to enter into his glory, at which point he expounds the Scriptures to them (vv. 25–27). Jesus applies the Scripture to the beginning and end of the progression of events in this summary and the event in between, particularly his resurrection, is also entailed as a fulfillment of Scripture, since that is indeed part of what Jesus explains. He makes much the same points when he appears to the disciples in vv. 44–49, although there the summary is more extensive and it prepares the way for what the earliest Christians will proclaim in Acts by Jesus’s reference to how repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem, alongside the narration of these events. The apostles are sent out as witnesses of these things, as they attest to the gospel events and all that led up to them (as well as what proceeds from them, such as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit) by their testimony.
The entrance into his glory (v. 26) is a reference to his exaltation and it is the clearest such reference to it in Luke’s ending, although it is also implied via physical action in his ascension into heaven in v. 51. It is because of that ascension and exaltation that the apostles and other evangelists receive the Holy Spirit (“what my Father has promised” in v. 49) for the proclamation of the gospel and the foundation of the Church. But these are points to which Luke will return in Acts.
John
John as narrator is less subtle in his build-up to the key gospel events than Matthew, Mark, or Luke, especially since his Gospel is characterized by more direct narrator comments than the other Gospels. The first such case is in Jesus’s first encounter with the Jewish leaders at the temple (2:18–22). When Jesus takes it upon himself to clear the temple courts, the Jews ask him how he can show—namely, by a sign—his authority to do what he has done. It is in this context that he makes a statement that was used against him at his trial (per Matt 26:60–61 // Mark 14:57–58). His sign is that he will raise the temple in three days when it is destroyed, but John makes clear to his audience that the temple he spoke of was his body. John knows this now because the gospel events have happened and the resurrection made clearer the Scriptures and the words Jesus had spoken. Much like his predictions of his death and resurrection, this statement by Jesus is a proclamation of the gospel events in advance, albeit in more indirect fashion.
As in the cases of Jesus’s direct predictions, the placement of this statement is significant, as it is part of the framing of Jesus’s ministry, particularly in reference to the conflict that will be instrumental in bringing the gospel events to pass. This expectation of resurrection thus illuminates Jesus’s broader discourse, including in his teaching on eating his flesh and drinking his blood in ch. 6. He says that doing such will give everlasting life and Jesus will raise up such a person on the last day (6:39–40, 44, 54–58). What illuminates this teaching is Jesus’s own expectation of resurrection. Those who are in union with him, sharing in his flesh and blood, will also share in his resurrection life.
Moreover, this framing animates one of the key christological statements in the Gospel in 11:25–26, wherein Jesus declares, “I am the resurrection and the life.” As Jesus is the Word of God, the gospel of God in person, so too is he the resurrection in person, as there is an absolute integrity linking who he is and what he does. By virtue of the gospel events, including his own resurrection, he will accomplish God’s salvific purpose in communicating resurrection life to others. Of this statement, I cannot say better than the words of Andrew T. Lincoln:
“I am the resurrection and the life” sums up the christological focus of the resurrection message of the Fourth Gospel. But because that message is christological, it also has both Trinitarian dimensions and consequences for humanity. Resurrection life has its source in the Logos, who is one with the Creator God; it is manifested in the body of Jesus, the incarnate Logos; and it is mediated through the risen Jesus’ bestowal of the Spirit. Faith in Jesus as the Christ, who has this unique relationship to God, makes life now available to believers. And just as for the incarnate Logos divine life overcame death in a bodily resurrection, so for believers, too, eternal life will triumph over physical death through resurrection.1
As for the role of the exaltation, we must turn to the conversation subsequent to the event at the temple that Jesus has with Nicodemus (in the context of which the most famous Bible verse appears), wherein Jesus tells Nicodemus about the events to come. Here, he adumbrates the V-pattern that plays out over the course of the gospel story, as the Word/Son of Man comes down from heaven to earth then returns to heaven from earth (although the latter is only anticipated, never narrated in this Gospel). He establishes his authority as one who testifies of heavenly things as the one who came from heaven, which fits a theme throughout this Gospel that most people do not know whence Jesus came and that those who would follow him must have faith in who sent him and where he comes from (1:9, 11, 14–15; 3:17, 30–31; 6:32–60; 7:25–43, 52; 8:14–18, 22–24, 42–47; 9:28–33; 13:1–3; 15:26; 16:27–30; 17:8, 18–21). As such, he can say truthfully that the only means by which one can be born from above—and thus have everlasting life/enter the kingdom (3:3, 5, 15)—is the lifting up of the Son of Man (as Moses lifted up the bronze snake in the wilderness).
This use of the term ὑψσόω, a verb otherwise used for exaltation (it is applied to Jesus also in Acts 2:33; 5:31), is peculiar to John. It is typically translated as “lift up” here in v. 15, as well as 8:28 and 12:32–34. Most obviously, this refers to the manner of Jesus’s death by crucifixion, as made clear in John’s narrator comment in 12:33, and as is strongly implied in 8:28 (cf. 18:32). This is not a case of John deliberately avoiding crucifixion language, as it is abundant in the actual Passion narrative in ch. 19. Rather, this language is used because of its suggestive ambiguity. The Son of Man will be lifted up in his death by crucifixion, but that act of lifting up will also turn out to be an act of exaltation, as God takes up the lethal rejection of the Word and makes it the means by which the Word is exalted and his will for the salvation of his creation is achieved. By this “lifting up,” God will make the crucified Jesus the crucified-and-resurrected-and-exalted Jesus, in confirmation that it is this one whom the world crucified who is the Word of God made flesh. The “lifting up” most directly refers to the crucifixion, but because of its double entendre character, this term also encapsulates the entirety of the gospel events as a narrative of the exaltation of Christ, despite the human intentions of the crucifixion. Such a use of this exaltation language fits with how much of John, especially Jesus’s speech in John, operates on two (or more) levels of discourse.
These points are further confirmed in 7:33–34, wherein Jesus again implies the V-pattern of the gospel narrative. After the time has passed, he will go to the one who sent him, which is to say, he will go back to heaven (cf. 8:21–24; 13:33; 14:28–29; 16:10; 17:11–13). This is most directly a reference to his ascension, but it also implies his exaltation. His death and resurrection are also further articulated (again, in a way peculiar to John) in terms of Jesus laying down his life for his sheep and taking it up again (10:15, 17–18).
Although the narrator comment in 11:51–53 only references Jesus’s death, since it is focused on the plot to kill Jesus and how Caiaphas has become an instrument of God’s will in spite of himself, this comment further demonstrates the multi-level discourse at which John operates. What Caiaphas intended to be a statement with rhetorical force to bring about a death to save the Jews from the wrath of the Romans, God makes true in a way Caiaphas did not intend (hence the description of Caiaphas prophesying in spite of himself). Instead, Jesus’s death becomes by the will of God a death on behalf of others, the means of saving the Jews and the scattered children of God from sin and for everlasting life.
Most remarkably, one of the statements of Jesus talking about his being “lifted up” is part of a larger statement that he is going to be glorified (12:23–33). The crucifixion is thus presented as necessary to the exaltation or glorification of Jesus. This is so because the gospel events fulfill God’s salvific will, and so, just as the “death” of a kernel is necessary to production of the larger plant that produces more seeds, Jesus’s death, resurrection, and exaltation are necessary for others to receive everlasting life. As he makes clear in vv. 25–26 in particular, the gospel events are how he lays out the salvific narrative in which his followers participate by their union with him, so that those who share in this faithfulness unto death will also share in his resurrection. By extension of this same logic, this same path will also lead to the exaltation/glorification of Jesus’s followers in sharing in his own exaltation.
Jesus’s Farewell Discourse in chs. 14–16 also builds up to the gospel events. Mostly, this is by the implicit references to Jesus going to the Father, which I have already noted. In 16:4–7 Jesus elaborates further to say that his going to the Father (his ascension and exaltation) is necessary for the Advocate/Holy Spirit to come to them. After all, the indwelling presence and action of the Holy Spirit is a function of the promises of the kingdom, promises that Christ fulfills and executes through the three-stage narrative of crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation to take his place at the right hand of God in exercise of royal authority and priestly function. His later exposition in vv. 16–24 also makes this point indirectly through his expectation that the disciples will see him no more and grieve because he will die, but after a little while they will see him again and rejoice because of his resurrection.
In John’s narration of Jesus’s execution in ch. 19 he draws more explicit attention through his narrator comments than the other Gospel authors in their Passion narratives to how Jesus’s death fulfills Scripture (19:24, 28, 36–37). He also makes such connections to the resurrection, as in ch. 2, when he remarks how the Beloved Disciple believed when he saw that the tomb was empty, but that he and the others did not yet understand from Scripture that it was necessary for Jesus to rise from the dead (20:8–9). And although it is beyond the scope of this book’s narration, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene that he is ascending to the Father (20:17). The ascension is, as noted, the physical attestation of his exaltation, but it is also attested through Thomas’s declaration that Jesus is “My Lord and my God” (20:28). Likewise, it is implied in his statement that there is some time in the future when he will come again (21:22).
Andrew T. Lincoln, “‘I Am the Resurrection and the Life’: The Resurrection Message of the Fourth Gospel,” in Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), 143.