John 1:51

1:51 He continued, ¹  “I tell all of you the solemn truth ²  – you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” ³ 

John 3:18

3:18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. ⁴  The one who does not believe has been condemned ⁵  already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only ⁶  Son of God.

John 3:29

3:29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly ⁷  when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. This then is my joy, and it is complete. ⁸ 

John 5:25

5:25 I tell you the solemn truth, ⁹  a time ¹⁰  is coming – and is now here – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

John 6:32

6:32 Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the solemn truth, ¹¹  it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but my Father is giving you the true bread from heaven.

John 6:53

6:53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, ¹²  unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ¹³  you have no life ¹⁴  in yourselves.

John 8:23

8:23 Jesus replied, ¹⁵  “You people ¹⁶  are from below; I am from above. You people are from this world; I am not from this world.

John 8:39

8:39 They answered him, ¹⁷  “Abraham is our father!” ¹⁸  Jesus replied, ¹⁹  “If you are ²⁰  Abraham’s children, you would be doing ²¹  the deeds of Abraham.

John 11:4

11:4 When Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness will not lead to death, ²²  but to God’s glory, ²³  so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ²⁴ 

John 12:3

12:3 Then Mary took three quarters of a pound ²⁵  of expensive aromatic oil from pure nard ²⁶  and anointed the feet of Jesus. She ²⁷  then wiped his feet dry with her hair. (Now the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfumed oil.) ²⁸ 

John 15:20

15:20 Remember what ²⁹  I told you, ‘A slave ³⁰  is not greater than his master.’ ³¹  If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they obeyed ³²  my word, they will obey ³³  yours too.

John 15:26

15:26 When the Advocate ³⁴  comes, whom I will send you from the Father – the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father – he ³⁵  will testify about me,

John 17:14

17:14 I have given them your word, ³⁶  and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, ³⁷  just as I do not belong to the world. ³⁸ 

John 19:25

19:25 Now standing beside Jesus’ cross were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. ³⁹ 

John 21:6

21:6 He told them, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” ⁴⁰  So they threw the net, ⁴¹  and were not able to pull it in because of the large number of fish.

[1:51]  ¹ tn Grk “and he said to him.”

[1:51]  ² tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[1:51]  ³ sn The title Son of Man appears 13 times in John’s Gospel. It is associated especially with the themes of crucifixion (3:14; 8:28), revelation (6:27; 6:53), and eschatological authority (5:27; 9:35). The title as used in John’s Gospel has for its background the son of man figure who appears in Dan 7:13-14 and is granted universal regal authority. Thus for the author, the emphasis in this title is not on Jesus’ humanity, but on his heavenly origin and divine authority.

[3:18]  ⁴ tn Grk “judged.”

[3:18]  ⁵ tn Grk “judged.”

[3:18]  ⁶ tn See the note on the term “one and only” in 3:16.

[3:29]  ⁷ tn Grk “rejoices with joy” (an idiom).

[3:29]  ⁸ tn Grk “Therefore this my joy is fulfilled.”

[5:25]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[5:25]  ¹¹ tn Grk “an hour.”

[6:32]  ¹³ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[6:53]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[6:53]  ¹⁷ sn Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood. These words are at the heart of the discourse on the Bread of Life, and have created great misunderstanding among interpreters. Anyone who is inclined toward a sacramental viewpoint will almost certainly want to take these words as a reference to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, because of the reference to eating and drinking. But this does not automatically follow: By anyone’s definition there must be a symbolic element to the eating which Jesus speaks of in the discourse, and once this is admitted, it is better to understand it here, as in the previous references in the passage, to a personal receiving of (or appropriation of) Christ and his work.

[6:53]  ¹⁸ tn That is, “no eternal life” (as opposed to physical life).

[8:23]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “And he said to them.”

[8:23]  ²⁰ tn The word “people” is supplied in English to clarify the plural Greek pronoun and verb.

[8:39]  ²² tn Grk “They answered and said to him.”

[8:39]  ²³ tn Or “Our father is Abraham.”

[8:39]  ²⁴ tn Grk “Jesus said to them.”

[8:39]  ²⁵ tc Although most mss (C W Θ Ψ 0250 Ë^1,13 33 Ï) have the imperfect ἦτε (hte, “you were”) here, making this sentence a proper second class condition, the harder reading, ἐστε (este, “you are”), is found in the better witnesses (Ì^66,75 א B D L 070 pc lat).

[8:39]  ²⁶ tc Some important mss (Ì⁶⁶ B* [700]) have the present imperative ποιεῖτε (poieite) here: “If you are Abraham’s children, then do,” while many others (א² C K L N Δ Ψ Ë^1,13 33 565 579 892 pm) add the contingent particle ἄν (an) to ἐποιεῖτε (epoieite) making it a more proper second class condition by Attic standards. The simple ἐποιεῖτε without the ἄν is the hardest reading, and is found in some excellent witnesses (Ì⁷⁵ א* B² D W Γ Θ 070 0250 1424 pm).

[11:4]  ²⁵ tn Grk “This sickness is not to death.”

[11:4]  ²⁶ tn Or “to God’s praise.”

[11:4]  ²⁷ sn So that the Son of God may be glorified through it. These statements are highly ironic: For Lazarus, the sickness did not end in his death, because he was restored to life. But for Jesus himself, the miraculous sign he performed led to his own death, because it confirmed the authorities in their plan to kill Jesus (11:47-53). In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ death is consistently portrayed as his ‘glorification’ through which he accomplishes his return to the Father.

[12:3]  ²⁸ tn Or “half a liter”; Grk “a pound” (that is, a Roman pound, about 325 grams or 12 ounces).

[12:3]  ²⁹ tn Μύρον (muron) was usually made of myrrh (from which the English word is derived) but here it is used in the sense of ointment or perfumed oil (L&N 6.205). The adjective πιστικῆς (pistikh") is difficult with regard to its exact meaning; some have taken it to derive from πίστις (pistis) and relate to the purity of the oil of nard. More probably it is something like a brand name, “pistic nard,” the exact significance of which has not been discovered.

[12:3]  ³⁰ tn Grk “And she.” Because of the difference between Greek style, which often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” and English style, which generally does not, καί (kai) has not been translated here.

[12:3]  ³¹ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author. With a note characteristic of someone who was there and remembered, the author adds that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfumed oil. In the later rabbinic literature, Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7.1.1 states “The fragrance of good oil is diffused from the bedroom to the dining hall, but a good name is diffused from one end of the world to the other.” If such a saying was known in the 1st century, this might be the author’s way of indicating that Mary’s act of devotion would be spoken of throughout the entire world (compare the comment in Mark 14:9).

[15:20]  ³¹ tn Grk “Remember the word that I said to you.”

[15:20]  ³² tn See the note on the word “slaves” in 4:51.

[15:20]  ³³ sn A slave is not greater than his master. Jesus now recalled a statement he had made to the disciples before, in John 13:16. As the master has been treated, so will the slaves be treated also. If the world had persecuted Jesus, then it would also persecute the disciples. If the world had kept Jesus’ word, it would likewise keep the word of the disciples. In this statement there is the implication that the disciples would carry on the ministry of Jesus after his departure; they would in their preaching and teaching continue to spread the message which Jesus himself had taught while he was with them. And they would meet with the same response, by and large, that he encountered.

[15:20]  ³⁴ tn Or “if they kept.”

[15:20]  ³⁵ tn Or “they will keep.”

[15:26]  ³⁴ tn Or “Helper” or “Counselor”; Grk “Paraclete,” from the Greek word παράκλητος (paraklhto"). See the note on the word “Advocate” in John 14:16 for discussion of how this word is translated.

[15:26]  ³⁵ tn Grk “that one.”

[17:14]  ³⁷ tn Or “your message.”

[17:14]  ³⁸ tn Grk “because they are not of the world.”

[17:14]  ³⁹ tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”

[19:25]  ⁴⁰ sn Several women are mentioned, but it is not easy to determine how many. It is not clear whether his mother’s sister and Mary the wife of Clopas are to be understood as the same individual (in which case only three women are mentioned: Jesus’ mother, her sister Mary, and Mary Magdalene) or as two different individuals (in which case four women are mentioned: Jesus’ mother, her sister, Mary Clopas’ wife, and Mary Magdalene). It is impossible to be certain, but when John’s account is compared to the synoptics it is easier to reconcile the accounts if four women were present than if there were only three. It also seems that if there were four women present, this would have been seen by the author to be in juxtaposition to the four soldiers present who performed the crucifixion, and this may explain the transition from the one incident in 23-24 to the other in 25-27. Finally, if only three were present, this would mean that both Jesus’ mother and her sister were named Mary, and this is highly improbable in a Jewish family of that time. If there were four women present, the name of the second, the sister of Jesus’ mother, is not mentioned. It is entirely possible that the sister of Jesus’ mother mentioned here is to be identified with the woman named Salome mentioned in Mark 15:40 and also with the woman identified as “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” mentioned in Matt 27:56. If so, and if John the Apostle is to be identified as the beloved disciple, then the reason for the omission of the second woman’s name becomes clear; she would have been John’s own mother, and he consistently omitted direct reference to himself or his brother James or any other members of his family in the Fourth Gospel.

[21:6]  ⁴³ tn The word “some” is not in the Greek text but is implied. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.

[21:6]  ⁴⁴ tn The words “the net” are not in the Greek text but are implied. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.