John 21:20-23

The effort to introduce the passage now before us into organic unity with the rest of the chapter has certainly been attended with as much difficulty and as little success as in the case of the second paragraph. Without dwelling upon the opinions of others we apply the same principle as that applied to the second paragraph, and regard this third paragraph of the Epilogue of the Gospel as the counterpart of the third paragraph of the Prologue (chap. John 1:14-18). That paragraph is occupied with the coming of Him who in the second paragraph had been borne witness to before His Incarnation by Old Testament prophecy. He is indeed expressly spoken of in prophecy as ‘He who is to come;' and when He comes preparatory witnessing exists no more. Here in like manner Jesus in effect speaks of Himself as the One' who is to come;' at all events, twice over the words ‘until I come' are used (John 21:22-23). The coming is thus shown to be a prominent thought of the passage; and its correspondence with the ‘coming' of the Prologue must strike every one. The contents of this paragraph, therefore, are not to give us information about the future of John as an individual, information which they do not give; but they are designed to call our thoughts to the termination of Christian witnessing, which will at length, with all its labours and sufferings, close in the joy of the Second Coming of the Lord. The special interpretation of the verses will confirm this view.