Every gospel account reports both Jesus’s death and then his subsequent burial involving Joseph of Arimathea (Matt 27:57; Mark 15:43; Luke 23:51; John 19:38). Between these events, however, each evangelist reports something unique to their account over against Mark’s account (cf. Mark 15:38–41 with Matt 27:51–56; Luke 23:47–49; John 19:31–37).[1] In this article, we will focus on the paschal perspective from which John uniquely depicts Jesus’s lamblike death. After observing the structure of John 19:31–37, we will consider what is seen (narrated events) and how it is supported (fulfilled texts).
1. Matthew includes details about the earthquake, rocks splitting, tombs opening, etcetera (Matt. 27:51–53). Although Matthew also includes the centurion calling Jesus “Son of God,” Mark’s account is unique in that this is the first human to identify Jesus this way in the narrative since Mark did in 1:1 (the disciples proclaim this about Jesus in Matt. 14:33). Luke says that people “returned home beating their breasts” (Luke 23:48), intentionally recalling the repentant attitude of the tax collector in Luke 18:13, who “beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” John includes the episode of John 19:31–37, which is the subject of this article.
The Structure of John 19:31–37
We see John’s intentionality in the structure of our passage:[2][3]
2. This structure is adapted from David Vincent Christensen, “The Lamblike Servant: The Function of John’s Use of the OT for Understanding Jesus’s Death,” Themelios 48.3 (2023): 532. The paragraph narrates two events (A)/(B) and two corresponding citations (A′)/(B′) which together bookend a remarkable sight (C) and a sighter’s remark (C′). Putting (C)/(C′) in the center both emphasizes and clarifies the testimony. The end of the second bookend ([A′]/[B′]) also signals the end of the literary unit.
3. The labels of identity and action are intended to show how the identity and action pairs in the Baptist’s testimony (John 1:29–34) are testified by John here as fulfilled. In John 1:29–34, the Baptist identifies Jesus as the Lamb who does the action of taking away sin, and he identifies him as the Chosen One who baptizes with the Spirit.
Although we might expect John to continue his earlier pattern of citing the OT immediately after the event which fulfills it,[4] he withholds the citations for the space of a verse (John 19:35). The result is an arresting interruption in which John declares (1) the truthfulness of his testimony and (2) its purpose—the saving faith of his audience. This is all the more jarring when the reader realizes that John is directly addressing you in the “you all” of 19:35.[5] It is as though John stops narrating the events to look directly into your eyes to personally invite you to trust in Jesus for forgiveness of sins so that you would “not come into judgment, but [pass] from death to life” (John 5:24).[6]
In addition to highlighting the fact that John 19:31–37 is John’s personal, eyewitness testimony about Jesus directed at you, there are six reasons we should understand this testimony to function as a testimonial bookend of Jesus’s life along with John 1:29–34. First, only John 1:34 and 19:35 report others using horaō (I see) and martureō (I testify) about Jesus. Second, John the evangelist calls both the Baptist’s testimony and his own testimony alāthās (true: John 10:41; 19:35), exemplifying Jesus’s observation from the Law: “the testimony of two people is true [alāthās]” (John 8:17; cf. 5:31).[7] Third, both testimonies are given for the same goal—that the audience might respond with saving faith (John 1:6–7; 19:35).
4. He does this in the previous scene (John 19:23–24 citing Ps. 22:18) and in the triumphal entry (John 12:14–15 citing Zech. 9:9).
5. None of the other 410 uses of the second person pronoun in John address the readers. In the parallel purpose statement of John 20:31, two verbs are second person and refer directly to the reader (the only two of 553 such verbs in John). The only other comparable instance of an author speaking directly to their readers in the gospels is Luke 1:3–4 where Luke addresses Theophilus. (These statistics exclude the frozen use of the imperative “behold” as an attention getter.)
6. On the interpretation of John 5:24, see Ardel B. Caneday, “God’s Incarnate Son as the Embodiment of Last Day Resurrection: Eternal Life as Justification in John’s Gospel,” SBJT 18.4 (2014): 67–88.
7. We should note that, within these bookends, John also describes the Father’s testimony about his Son and Jesus’s self-testimony as true (John 5:32; 8:14).
Fourth, since this goal is the explicit purpose of the Gospel (John 20:31), we are warranted to regard the testimonial bookends of the Baptist’s testimony (John 1:29–34) and John’s testimony (John 19:31–37) as our author’s intentional frame for his portrait of Jesus’s life and death. Fifth, as I highlighted in the structural diagram, the identities seen and supported are, respectively, that of a lamb (A/A′) and a suffering figure (B/B′). These are the same two identities, in the same order, that the Baptist identifies Jesus with in John 1:29 and 1:34.[8] Sixth, I understand “blood and water” (C′: 19:34b) to refer symbolically, in that same order, to the Lamb of God’s atoning death which takes away sin and the Spirit with whom he will baptize being the Messiah who has the Spirit without measure (John 3:34 cf. 1:33–34).
Therefore, we may understand these two testimonial bookends respectively as an anticipation and fulfillment—what the former predicts the latter depicts. Let’s turn now to John’s paschal perspective on Jesus’s death.[9]
The Narrated Event and Earlier Anticipation
John refers to Passover more frequently and pervasively than all the other gospels.[10] Our focus here is on Passover pointers in the narrative of Jesus’s arrest to crucifixion (John 18:28–19:37). We may observe at least five: First, John 13:1 sets the context by connecting the theme of Jesus’s hour—which has reverberated in earlier scenes like a death-knell—with the arrival of Passover.[11] Second, when the Jewish leaders refuse to enter Pilate’s Praetorium, John tells us they did this “so that they would not be defiled but could eat the Passover” (18:28). The irony is that, while they are taking pains to be able to eat the Passover commemorating God’s deliverance in the exodus, God is orchestrating the sacrifice of the Passover lamb of the New Exodus for a deliverance that they are blind to (John 9:39–41).
8. See Christensen, “Function,” 528–30.
9. For a discussion of the use of Zechariah in John 19:37, see David Vincent Christensen, “The Lamblike Servant: Exodus Typology and the Death of Jesus in the Gospel of John” (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, PhD diss, 2021), 116–64.
10. John uses “Passover” (pascha) ten times and “feast” (heortā) nine times with reference to Passover (πάσχα: 2:13, 2:23, 6:4, 11:55 [2×], 12:1, 13:1, 18:28, 18:39, 19:14; heortā: 2:23, 4:45, 5:1, 6:4, 11:56, 12:12, 12:20, 13:1, 13:29). For additional details on Passover in John, see Paul M Hoskins, “Deliverance from Death by the True Passover Lamb: A Significant Aspect of the Fulfillment of the Passover in the Gospel of John,” JETS 52.2 (2009): 285–99; “Freedom from Slavery to Sin and The Devil: John 8:31–47 and the Passover Theme of the Gospel of John,” TrinJ 31.1 (2010): 47–63; Paul S. Coxon, Exploring the New Exodus in John: A Biblical Theological Investigation of John Chapters 5–10 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014); Stanley E. Porter, John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 198–224.
11. His “hour” is referred to in John 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:24, 28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 16:32; 17:1.
Third, John foregrounds the time of Pilate’s custom of returning a prisoner “during Passover” (John 18:39 cf. Matt 27:15 [“at the feast”]; Mark 15:6 [“at the feast”]; Luke 23:18–25). Fourth, when Jesus is given sour wine, John tells us that a “hyssop branch” was used (John 19:29), which calls to mind the use of hyssop in the original Passover (Exod. 12:22).
Fifth and finally, in John 19:31–33, John narrates another ironic scene. The Jewish leaders wish to keep the Law’s requirement that corpses of the condemned not remain overnight, so that the land won’t be defiled during Passover (Deut. 21:22–23). The irony is that they are unintentionally obeying Exodus 12:10 (cf. Num. 9:12), which states concerning the Passover lamb, “You shall let none of it remain until the morning.” Of course, Jesus has already died, so they do not take his life from him (cf. John 10:18), and his bones are unbroken. This last fact, John testifies, fulfills Scripture—the unbroken bones signal unbroken faithfulness.
Unbroken Bones Fulfilled and Explained
What passage, then, does John say this fulfills? I am persuaded that John has Exodus 12:46 in mind primarily when he says, “No bone of his shall be broken” (John 19:36), and he understands it pointing forward typologically to Christ.[12] Sometimes ancient books outside the Bible can shed light on categories that biblical authors employ. The wording “shall not be broken” may reflect the concept of divine preservation also found in the second-century BC book of Jubilees 49:13–15 (similar to Ps. 34:19–20). Jubilees makes “a causal connection” between the preservation of the bones of the lamb and God’s preservation of his people; the one whose literal bones are spared—the lamb—is not spared death, so that God’s people may be delivered from death.[13] All who believe pass “from death to life” (John 5:24 cf. 8:21–24) because Jesus passed from life to death in our place as the Passover Lamb of the New Exodus.
12. There is a debate about this, of course. See Christensen, “Lamblike Servant,” 132–37.
13. Maarten J. J. Menken, Old Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form, Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 15 (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), 164. This is the difference with Ps 34:20, where Hamilton understands David to say something similar (James M. Hamilton Jr., “John,” in John–Acts, ed. Iain M Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, ESV Expository Commentary 9 [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019], 290). In Ps 34:20, the one whose bones are not broken is also spared death—not so in Jubilees or John; however, I am not suggesting dependence upon Jubilees, only similarity of nuance.
God Does Not Simply Pass Over Sin
In this short study, we have seen how John the Baptist’s testimony anticipates what the Evangelist’s testimony demonstrates. These testimonial bookends frame John’s portrait of Jesus, the Lamblike Servant, who is the Passover Lamb of the New Exodus. In the Gospel which calls attention to how Jesus reveals the Father (John 1:18; 14:7–11; 17:1), we may ask, how does this Passover theme reveal the Father? John’s Passover theme teaches us that God does not simply pass over sin as though his name and glory were worthless (cf. John 5:44; 12:43). Jesus continued to reveal God’s glory and name on the cross (John 1:14; 12:28; 17:26): God is both “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness . . . forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exod. 34:6 cf. John 1:14) and “yet not exonerating the guilty” (Exod. 34:7; cf. John 8:24). Therefore, the death of Jesus, our Lamblike Servant, reveals how God is both “just and the justifier of the one who trusts in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). This is why, when heaven erupts with praise for our risen Lord, they give the following reason: “Worthy are you [O Lamb] to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9)!
