Journey Through the Gospel of JohnSample

 Key Words in the Gospel of John  

When we read the Bible, it’s always a good idea to highlight or underline words that are used frequently. Emphasis comes from repetition. Sometimes you’ll find related terms like “belief” and “faith”, which are synonyms. Occasionally, these are different translations of the same words from the original Hebrew or Greek. Repetition is one way a biblical author keeps you focused on the main themes and focused on how those themes relate to each other. 

Below you’ll see a list of some of the most used words in the Gospel of John. They give you an idea of what's important to John. We’ve included the Greek word in parentheses. You’ll also see how common these words are in other New Testament books.

• Believe (pisteuo): 98 times (of 292 times in New Testament)
• World (cosmos): 78 times (of 254 times in the Bible)
• Life (zoe): 57 times
• Amen (amen): 50 times
• True/truth (alethes, alethia): 49 times
• Love (agape, agapo): 47 times
• Witness (martyras): 47 times  
• Word (logos): 45 times
• Glory/glorify (doxa, doxazo): 40 times

There are some other words that don't occur quite as often, but they're also very important to John's Gospel. For example, “name” is something that Jesus will talk about quite a bit. Also “light” and the phrase “my Father.”  

If you do a word search on the word “father” in the Bible, you're going to find it everywhere because many people are literal fathers in Bible stories: Jacob's father, Isaac's father, etc. But you cannot mistake the fact that in John’s Gospel Jesus keeps talking about “The Father” and more annoyingly for his skeptics and opponents, “my Father.”  

John uses words with laser-like accuracy and intent. Jesus is going to be accused of blasphemy because of the words he uses. They will pick up rocks to stone him because of what he says about himself. For example, we’ll find that two of the simplest words Jesus uses of himself—“I am …”—are among the most profound and provocative words in the Gospel.

Open up your Bible to the Gospel of John and read the first chapter, highlighting as many of these key words as you can find.