Verse Mapping – A New Study in John

If you’ve been here for very long, you know I love to study the Word. Reading it by chapter and verse doesn’t do it for me, but I’d run out of words to study–at least ones that incited any excitement.

A few weeks ago, a fellow writer posted on her Facebook page about verse mapping. I’d never heard of it before, so I went and looked it up. I found it on the Proverbs 31 website here.  I actually wound up watching a lot of their Bible Study Skills videos. They’re very good. I went to another site…that of my fellow writer. She posted pictures of her forays into verse mapping. It was awesome, and I knew it was something that would pull ME further into the Word.

So I started. I’ve been reading The Gospel of John, but I went back to the beginning so I could really dig in and learn about John and about Jesus.

John 1:1 looked lonely, so I did the first five verses. But before I did that, I researched the writer.IMG_1416

We have a study Bible, so I flipped to John’s gospel and read what those before me have studied. Here’s what I learned (and what you probably can’t read on this picture.  –>

  • John wrote the book “so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.” (John 20:31, NLT)
  • John was one of the sons of Zebedee. Jesus called him and James, his brother, the sons of thunder
  • John also wrote 1, 2, 3 John and Revelation.
  • The gospel of John was believed to have been written in the early 90s (not the 1990s, the 0090s 🙂 )
  • In my study Bible it lists seven signs of Jesus revealed in John
    • turning the water to wine –> source of life
    • the healing of the nobleman’s son –> master of distance
    • the healing of the lame man –> master of time
    • feeding the five thousand –> bread of life
    • walking on water & stilling of the storm –> master of nature
    • healing of the blind man –> light of the world
    • raising Lazarus from the dead –> power over death

I turned the page and began with chapter 1. It took me two days to do the first five verses, but…wow…I loved it.

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This is incredibly hard to read, but you can see my little notes and highlights, covering the two pages.

I found Biblehub.com (thanks to one of the two sites mentioned above), which gives cross-references, interlinear (I like to study the original language), and a host of other study tools. All of the notes below come from their site.

My plan for Monday Musing is to bring you along as I study verses that speak to me in John. So here we go…

John 1:1-5, “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”

Verse 1 & 2: “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God.”

  • Word – Logos (Greek) – a word, being the expression of a thought; a saying
  • God – Theos (Gr) – God, the Creator and owner of all things
  • In the beginning – a starting point.
    • Proverbs 8:23 (I = wisdom)
      I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
    • Genesis 1:1
      In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
    • Colossians 1:17
      He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
    • Revelation 19:13
      He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.

Verse 3: ” God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.”

  • were made – ginomai (Gr) – to emerge, become, transitioning from one point (realm, condition) to another
  • Colossians 1:16
    For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

Verse 4: “The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone.”

  • life – zoe(Gr) –  All life, throughout the universe, is derived – i.e. it always (only) comes from and is sustained by God’s self-existent life.
  • light – phos(Gr) – light, the manifestation of God’s self-existent life; divine illumination to reveal and impart life, through Christ.
  • John 8:12
    When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
  • John 12:46
    I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.
  • John 14:6
    Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Verse 5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”

  • extinguish – katalambanó(Gr) –  to grasp something in a forceful (firm) manner; (figuratively) to apprehend (comprehend) (Most often translated here comprehend)
  • 1 Corinthians 2:14
    But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.

***All emphasis mine

I know this was long, and it will probably much shorter in the future, but I pray it has blessed you as much or more than it blessed me when I worked on it this past week.

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