Breakthrough

The first time I witnessed what I would later call a spiritual breakthrough was not in a classroom or a seminary. It happened during a worship service in a small church in the village of Soraganen, just outside Yogyakarta in Central Java, Indonesia.

The congregation was small and the church was still young. During the service a man in his twenties quietly asked if he could share something with the people. He walked to the front carrying a recently acquired Bible translated into his own mother tongue, Javanese. Although most Indonesian Christians read the Scriptures in Bahasa Indonesia, the country’s national language, this Bible spoke to him in the language of his childhood.

He explained that he had discovered a passage in Revelation that had deeply moved him and wanted to read it aloud. The text was Revelation 4:11:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

To understand what happened next, one must understand something about Javanese culture. In Javanese tradition, poetry is not simply read—it is chanted. For centuries the great stories of the Ramayana have been performed in all-night shadow puppet plays. The puppeteer, known as the dalang, chants the poetic lines while bringing the leather puppets to life. Every Javanese child grows up recognizing this unique style of storytelling.

So when this young Christian reached Revelation 4—a passage written in poetic form—he instinctively did what came naturally. He began to chant the words.

At first a few people smiled. Some even chuckled quietly because they had never heard Scripture presented that way. But then something remarkable happened. 

The laughter faded.

A deep silence settled over the congregation.

Several people began to weep.

In that simple moment the Gospel broke through barriers that had stood for generations. The worship of the living God no longer sounded foreign or imported. It spoke with the rhythms and beauty of their own language and culture. The Scriptures had become unmistakably their own.

I have never forgotten that morning. It was a holy moment.

It was a breakthrough. That experience has shaped the way  I read John’s Gospel. Long before Christianity spread across Europe or reached the shores of America, another breakthrough occurred in the ancient city of Ephesus. There, too, the Gospel crossed a cultural boundary. There, too, people began to think differently because of Jesus Christ.

More than forty years had passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus when the Apostle John became the leader of the Christian community in Ephesus. Peter and Paul had already been martyred in Rome. Paul’s letters had circulated throughout the growing churches from Jerusalem to Rome. Matthew, Mark, and Luke had each written accounts of Jesus’ life. John was the last surviving apostle.

As an old man, he faced a challenge unlike that of the earlier Gospel writers. Matthew wrote primarily for Jews. Mark and Luke also assumed readers who understood Israel’s history and the promises of the Old Testament. John, however, was living among people whose minds had been shaped not by Abraham and Moses but by Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. His congregation was Greek. 

That difference changed everything.

John did not need merely to tell the story of Jesus again. He needed to explain Jesus in language that made sense to people whose worldview had been formed by Greek philosophy, Greek politics, Greek literature, and Greek religion.

In many ways, John’s Gospel is the story of Christianity learning to speak a new language without changing its message.

That is one reason John’s Gospel feels so different from the other three.

There is no Christmas story with shepherds or wise men. There is no manger, no guiding star, and no angels announcing Christ’s birth. Instead, John opens with words that stretch beyond Bethlehem to the very beginning of creation:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The differences continue throughout the book. While Matthew, Mark, and Luke often portray Jesus teaching large crowds, John focuses on personal encounters. Nicodemus comes by night with his questions. A Samaritan woman meets Jesus beside a well. A crippled man waits beside the Pool of Bethesda. A man born blind receives both sight and faith. Martha and Mary grieve the death of Lazarus.

These are not merely miracle stories. They are conversations that invite people to rethink everything they thought they knew about God, truth, and life itself. John also emphasizes eternal life far more than the Kingdom of God, the dominant theme of the other Gospels. Nearly half of his Gospel is devoted to the final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry, slowing the pace so readers can listen carefully to Christ’s final words.

Why?

Because John was not simply recording history. He was helping a Greek world discover Christ. That matters because, whether we realize it or not, we have inherited much of the same Greek way of thinking.

Our ideas about democracy, education, philosophy, architecture, public debate, individual rights, and even the organization of our cities all bear the fingerprints of ancient Greece. When America’s founders searched history for a model of self-government, they looked far more to Athens than to the monarchies of Europe.

In many respects, we are heirs of the same intellectual tradition that shaped the people of Ephesus.

That means John’s Gospel was written not only for them.

It was written for us. To understand why John’s opening words carried such extraordinary power, we must first understand the remarkable city in which he lived and ministered.