The Gospel of John has been examined from many different perspectives, but a comprehensive treatment of the theme of worship in this Gospel has not yet appeared. John Paul Heil offers a contribution toward a remedy of this deficiency by analyzing the entire Gospel of John from the perspective of its various dimensions of worship. The aim is to illustrate that three different but complementary dimensions of worship–confessional, sacramental, and ethical–dominate this Gospel. Indeed, these different types of worship represent the ways one expresses and demonstrates the faith that includes having divine life eternal, which is the stated purpose for writing the signs Jesus did in this Gospel–‘that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31).
About the author
John Paul Heil is Professor of New Testament at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is the author most recently of 1-3 John: Worship by Loving God and One Another to Live Eternally (2015).