Curiosity keeps us asking, learning, Googling.
We want to know more about the bad stuff sometimes: the gossip, the bad news, someone’s dirty secrets. Other times we want to know about good things like the intricacies of creation or the complexities of God’s Word.
When it comes to Jesus, we might also be curious. What was it like for him to grow up in Nazareth? How did He get along with his siblings? You can Google “childhood stories of Jesus” and find a whole collection of apocryphal tales. About his ministry too, we’re curious: What was Jesus really like? We know that He cried—but did He laugh? Or what was He doing between the day that He arose from the dead and when He ascended?
If we can’t let go of such questions, we should read John 21:25. There John writes,
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
This verse comes at the very end of the Fourth Gospel as an editorial aside. John wants us to know something about the story that he’s told as a witness of Jesus’s ministry. He acknowledges that in telling the story, he has had to be selective. When it came time to put pen to papyrus, he had to pick and choose.
When we place John’s Gospel alongside Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see how accurate his comment is. For among these four Gospels, John’s is quite different. For instance, he records only seven specific miracles, while the others record many more. There are important things absent from John’s gospel, like Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, and his parables, the first Lord’s Supper and the risen Jesus’s departure from earth.
Compared to the other three Gospels, it’s obvious that John is only a partial account.
This is even more obvious when we set John’s 21 chapters alongside Jesus’s life. Just consider how long Jesus’s ministry was: roughly three years, more than a thousand days. Jesus used those years as full of opportunities to do his Father’s will: teaching, healing, helping, interacting with his disciples and crowds and Jewish leaders.
And taken together, how do you measure the amount of helping? How do you possibly transcribe all those words of teaching? How do you effectively record the stilling of a storm, or adequately describe the raising of the dead? As John says, a complete record of Jesus’s ministry would be impossible. To write them down one by one would be a mammoth task.
John could’ve recounted another seven miracles—or another seventy. He could’ve included dozens of volumes of sermons, like we have for Charles Spurgeon and some of the other great preachers. If he wanted to, John could have told us what Jesus was like as a child: “He did many other things…” Yet John has told us about what is most important: the saving work of Jesus.
For as often as we read Scripture, God wants our eyes open for Christ. We should always be asking: What does this passage tell us about our Saviour? How can this text strengthen my faith in Christ? How will it increase my delight in him? That’s the core to which we must always drill deep: What has God done for us in the work of Jesus? Nothing is more important than that.
Looking back on Jesus’s ministry, John says that if it all “were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” He confesses that, try as he might, his subject is beyond his ability—it’s beyond him to express fully.
It’s also true that Christ is always working (John 5:17). He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, where He has all authority to constantly carry on his work.
Through every year and century of world history, the labours of Jesus have progressed.
As the church has grown, as it has deformed and then returned to the truth, as the church has suffered persecutions, as she has divided and reunified, Christ has never stopped looking after those whom He purchased with his blood.
In the lives of millions of Christians, in countries all across this globe, in every time and in place, Christ has worked out his gift of salvation. Think of the countless Christians who have lived over the last 2000 years, all with their own sorrows, their own joys, their own shameful sins, their own daily burdens—in all of us, and for all of these, without fail and without ceasing, Christ has carried on his labour of love.
As John asks: Who could write it all down? Who could record every deed of Christ, every blessing, every new mercy every new morning? He is still in the business of turning sinners into saints, bringing the dead to life, shining light into darkness, binding up wounds and freeing captives. This makes us realize that his power is much higher than we understand. The dimensions of his love are greater than we can express. His gifts are more than we can count.
The reason that John wrote his Gospel, he says, is so that we would believe in Jesus, and that by believing we would have life in his name (20:30-31). So put your trust in Christ, knowing that He will do marvelous things in your life too.
It’ll be better than you can imagine. It’ll be more than you ever asked for.
When we believe in Christ with heart and soul, we will find that his blessings are too many to declare—that even the world itself couldn’t contain all the books that would be written.
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