John’s Gospel distinguishes itself among the four Gospels by its thorough discussions of single topics and by embedding its teaching material in conversations. Its approach allows for detailed exposition of doctrines and concepts, and also for practical application to the reader’s life.
Richard Phillips highlights the apostle’s chief focus on the deity of Christ, the gospel witness of the church, and salvation through faith in Jesus. He shows the person and work of Christ with biblical clarity and pastoral insight and demonstrates how evangelistic appeals should be modeled. His scholarly, sequential study of each passage is ideal help for preparing sermons, while the nontechnical language makes the book suitable for Bible teachers and devotional reading.
As are all the books in the Reformed Expository Commentary series, this exposition of John in two volumes is accessible to both pastors and lay readers. Each volume in the series provides exposition that gives careful attention to the biblical text, is doctrinally Reformed, focuses on Christ through the lens of redemptive history, and applies the Bible to our contemporary setting.
Richard D. Phillips (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the senior minister of Second Presbyterian Church of Greenville, South Carolina. He is a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, chairman of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, and coeditor of the Reformed Expository Commentary series.