John 20
The passion narrative begins in John 18 with the identification of the location of Jesus’ arrest: “On the other side [of the Kidron Valley] there was a garden, and he and his disciples went to it” (18:1; see 18:3, 26). John is the only Gospel writer who mentions this setting, which recurs as the setting for Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection: “At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid” (19:41). Might John repeat this garden setting across his passion and resurrection narratives to encourage a “comparison with another garden”? 19 The setting of the creation account of Genesis 2 is a garden (Hebrew gan ), a repeated note across the chapter (Gen. 2:8, 9, 10, 15, 16; also in Gen. 3). In Genesis 2:8 we read, “Now the L ORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.” While John has a different Greek term for garden ( kēpos ) than Genesis does ( paradeisos ), kēpos is used in other Greek translations of Genesis 2– 3. 20 If John is intentionally highlighting a garden setting for the passion and resurrection narratives, he may do so to communicate that Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurate the time of new creation.
The word “man” translates the Hebrew adam , which in the Greek Septuagint is rendered anthrōpos . 21 So while Pilate is clueless about the identity of the one he interrogates, 22 John may be affirming through this brief evocation that Jesus is the new Adam, the locus of a new humanity who will tend the renewed creation.
At the resurrection, a new week in human history has begun. We read in Genesis 2:2– 3 that God rested on the seventh day of creation (the final day of the week). For John, a new “week” has begun: “John turns the clock ahead in his dual reference to [“the first day of the week”], thereby signaling that re-creation begins at the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Jesus’ resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene also includes another potential Genesis echo. When Mary sees the resurrected Jesus, she doesn’t recognize him. Instead, she mistakes him for the gardener ( kēpouros ; John 20:15). (Recall from 19:41– 42 that Jesus has been placed in a new tomb in a garden [ kēpos ].) Much like the scene with Pilate, John capitalizes on Mary’s mistaken identification for his own christological purposes. As Edwyn Hoskyns incisively queries, “Mary thinks that Jesus is the gardener. The real question is, is she right or wrong?” 25 It may be that John wants his reader to hear what is right about this misidentification: Jesus is analogous to that first gardener, Adam. He is the new Adam of the new creation. 26 As N. T. Wright concludes, “Mary’s intuitive guess, that he must be the gardener, was wrong at one level and right, deeply right, at another. This is the new creation. Jesus is the beginning of it… . Here he is: the new Adam, the gardener, charged with bringing the chaos of God’s creation into new order, into flower, into fruitfulness.”
A final intimation of Genesis 2 and so creation’s renewal comes in the scene where Jesus appears to his disciples (John 20:19– 23) and commissions them— breathing on them the gift of the Holy Spirit (20:22). This action evokes “the breath of life” that God breathes into adam in Genesis 2:7, making him “a living being.” The verb in the Septuagint for this act of God is emphysaō , a fairly unusual word in the Septuagint and the New Testament, 28 increasing the likelihood of its use as an echo of Genesis in John 20. 29 Jesus breathes upon his followers the Holy Spirit— who grants eternal life. This is John’s moment of re-creation. “The climax of the Fourth Gospel presents Jesus as ‘breathing’ upon the apostles after the pattern of the creating God who breathed upon the Edenic couple; now they receive the Spirit, and not simply the gift of life.”
We’ve explored a number of potential echoes and allusions of Genesis 2 in John 18– 20:
- Garden setting (John 18:1, 3, 26; 19:41)
- Pilate’s words, “Here is the man” (19:5)
- “First day of the week” setting (20:1, 19)
- Mary’s identification of Jesus as the “gardener” (20:15)
- Jesus “breathing” the Holy Spirit on his disciples (20:22)
v.17
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.‘“
v.21
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
Jesus is our greatest example of a Sender.
v.23
If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
The commission to forgive sins is phrased in an unusual construction. Literally it is: “Those whose sins you forgave have already been forgiven; those whose sins you do not forgive have not been forgiven” (similarly also Mt 16:19; see comments). God does not forgive people’s sins because we decide to do so, nor does he withhold forgiveness because we will not grant it. We announce it; we do not create it. This is the essence of salvation. And all who proclaim the Gospel are in effect forgiving or not forgiving sins, depending whether the hearer accepts or rejects the Lord Jesus as the Sin-Bearer.
v.28
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”