21 Notable Misunderstandings in the Book of John
There are 21 notable misunderstandings in the Book of John.
Could these hold the clue to properly interpreting John’s Gospel regarding Jesus’s identity?
These misunderstandings reveal a formidable pattern where secondary characters frequently misinterpret Jesus’s statements. R. Alan Culpepper, in “Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel,” aptly discloses this motif, emphasizing that these instances offer an opportunity for Jesus or the narrator to provide clarifications. Notably, both non-believers and disciples fell prey to these misunderstandings.
These examples teach us that to truly understand Jesus, it is essential to pay close attention to Jesus’s explanations or those provided by the narrator rather than hastily reaching conclusions based on assumptions or false dilemmas.
Culpepper identified 18 of these misunderstandings:
- Literal Temple: “This temple” misunderstood as the literal temple instead of Jesus’s body (2:19–21).
- Natural Rebirth: “Born anew” mistaken as natural instead of spiritual rebirth (3:3–5).
- Physical Water: “Living water” misunderstood as physical water instead of spiritual (4:10–15).
- Literal Food: “Food” taken as literal instead of doing the will of the Father (4:31–34).
- Literal Bread: “The bread of heaven” misunderstood as literal bread instead of Jesus’s flesh (6:32–35, 51).
- Cannibalism: “My flesh” mistaken for cannibalism instead of doing the will of the Father (6:51–53, 57).
- Misunderstood Departure: “I go to him who sent me” misunderstood despite prior explanations (7:33–36 with 4:34; 5:23, 24, 30, 37; 6:38, 39, 44; 7:16, 18, 28).
- Repeated Misunderstanding of Departure: “I go away” misunderstood again (8:21–22).
- Freedom: “Make you free” taken as slavery instead of slavery to sin (8:31–35).
- Misunderstood Meaning of Death: “Death” misunderstood as physical death instead of hearing his word being life (8:51–53).
- Misunderstood “Day”: “To see my day” misunderstood as a personal, literal day (8:56–58).
- Literal Sleep: “Sleep” misunderstood as literal instead of Lazarus being raised (11:11–15).
- Future Rising: “Your brother will rise again” misunderstood as a future event instead of present (11:23–25).
- Misunderstood “Lifted up”: Misunderstood due to lack of understanding about Jesus’s resurrection (12:32–34).
- Misunderstood Departure (Again): “I am going” mistaken as somewhere the apostles could physically follow (13:36–38).
- Repeated Misunderstanding of Departure (Again): “Where I am going” misunderstood as somewhere they could follow (14:4–6).
- Mistaken Identity: “You…have seen him” misunderstood as identity rather than agency (14:7–9).
- Misunderstood Departure (Yet Again): “A little while… and you will see me no more” not understood as Jesus’s death and return (16:16–19).
List adapted from R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1983, pp. 161–162.
19 & 20. Thomas Gaston, in his book Dynamic Monarchianism (pp. 221–229), highlights two more misunderstandings that required correction on Jesus’ part. These are in John 5:17–18 and 10:30–33.
- John 5:17–18: Jesus’s opponents misunderstood his statement as claiming equality with God. But Jesus immediately corrected this: “The Son can do nothing of himself… I can of myself do nothing” (John 5:19, 30).
- John 10:30–33: “I and the Father are one” was misread as identity of being, but Jesus clarified it in terms of agency and mission, not essence — affirming subordination, not equality.
In these passages, Jesus’s opponents (identified as “the Jews”) misinterpret his statements as suggesting a “High Christology.” However, when read in context, these are clearly misunderstandings that Jesus corrected. The claims suggesting equality with God are clarified by Jesus as affirming his subordination. Even John 5:17–18, where Jesus is thought to equate himself with God, is immediately followed by Jesus saying: “The Son can do nothing of himself… I can of myself do nothing” (John 5:19, 30). When we apply the “misunderstanding” motif that John uses, we see Jesus was correcting, not endorsing, the conclusion that he was God or pre-existent.
This includes John 8:56, where “my day” is misunderstood as implying preexistence. But Hebrews 11:9–13 explains that Abraham saw Jesus’s future day by faith. Jesus reorients the conversation from being about “his person” to being about the awaited “day” of the Messiah.
The takeaway lesson for us is that those who jump to the conclusion of a “High Christology” are following in the footsteps of those who misunderstood Jesus. On the other hand, the absence of explicit statements about Jesus being God in John’s Gospel—alongside his repeated distinctions from God—leads the careful reader to a “low” Christology, emphasizing Jesus’s humanity.
In other words, there are no scriptures where Jesus is clearly explained or described as “God.” Rather, that mistaken idea must be read into the text using the same flawed logic as the others on this list: assuming a proof-text means something that is contradicted by Jesus’s own clarifications elsewhere. And that’s why you won’t find any place in the Bible that purposefully explains the Trinity or Modalist Oneness theology.
21. The final and greatest misunderstanding: John’s Prologue — “The Word was with God” and “the Word was made flesh” (John 1:1, 14). The sheer number of interpretations of these verses proves how misunderstood they are. It is the elephant in the room.
So what happens if we apply John’s misunderstanding motif here too? Do we find Jesus explaining that he is the “incarnation” of God’s Word? No. We find him denying personal identity with the Word and instead presenting himself as the one sent to deliver God’s Word, both by speaking it and by obeying it.
Let Jesus speak for himself:
John 7:16–18: “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone desires to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or if I am speaking from myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true…”
John 14:10: “…The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works.”
John 14:24: “The word (G3056 – logos) which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.”
John 8:26: “He who sent me is true; and the things which I heard from him, these I say…”
John 8:28: “…I do nothing of myself; but as my Father taught me, I speak these things.”
John 8:38, 40: “I say the things which I have seen with my Father… But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God.”
John 8:54–55: “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me… I know him, and keep his word.”
John 12:49–50: “For I spoke not from myself, but the Father… he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak… the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak.”
John 17:7–8: “Now… the words which you have given me I have given to them, and they received them…”
John 3:34–35: “For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God…”
Jesus consistently denied being the source of the Word. He said he was a man who spoke God’s Word.
2 Timothy 2:13: “He cannot deny himself.”
John 5:19: “The Son can do nothing of himself…”
John 5:30: “I can of myself do nothing.”
And there you have it. All misunderstandings and ambiguities are cleared up—by Jesus himself.
And all we have to do is listen to him, not what we assume he meant, or what others say he meant. What he means is simply what he said:
John 8:40: “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God.”
Acts 3:22–23: “22 For Moses indeed said to the fathers, ‘The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you. 23 It will be, that every soul that will not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people.’”
