Life in his name: water, the Spirit and the covenant people of God in the Gospel of John

This study examines the pneumatological use of the water symbol in the Gospel of John in light of the OT covenant. It offers an overview of the Sinaitic covenant, the use and meaning of water, and the presentation of the Spirit and his anticipated work in the new covenant in the OT, followed by an examination of the water-Spirit texts of John’s Gospel. It argues that:

(i) John’s water symbol alludes to the promises in the OT prophetic literature of the Spirit and his work in the new covenant, in which the Spirit’s life-giving work is understood specifically as the bringing about and sustaining of new covenant life for God’s chosen people, i.e., the people’s entering into and permanent continuation of new covenant relationship with Yahweh.

(ii) It is therefore not only the descriptions of the Spirit in John’s Paraclete texts in chs. 14-16 that reflect the OT covenant, as scholars have demonstrated, but John’s pneumatological water texts. These texts symbolically convey the more explicit descriptions of the Spirit’s new covenant work in chs. 14-16, rooting them in the OT Scriptures through the water symbol. Covenant is therefore a vital factor that brings unity and cohesion to the gospel’s pneumatology.

(iii) Since through the water symbol John roots these OT promises of the Spirit in Jesus, the symbol contributes to the gospel’s broader presentation of the true covenant people of God being anyone with faith in Jesus rather than ethnic Israel. As was the case in the OT, faith and obedience are the essential criteria for being counted among God’s covenant people but in the messianic age this is expressed through acceptance of the one sent by God, Jesus.