John 21:25 Commentary and Bible Study

Do you think that is hyperbole, exaggeration? If you are an engineer and you are very literal in your outlook, you will purse your lips, and you will say how could that possibly be? Is it conceivable that if everything that Christ ever said and did on earth was written down, the world would not be room enough for them all? The world would be full of the books? Is this just wonderful, poetic exaggeration? Well you are looking at it too literally. And yet, if every act of Christ, every healing, every life breath, every prayer uttered, every thought ever read by the Saviour, every word spoken, even the secret things, every attack of Satan that he repelled; if absolutely everything connected with the life of Christ was in the Bible, the Bible would be enormous, many times bigger than it is, and the exposition of those events would be multiplied also. What would it have been if the entire life of Christ and all its consequences had been revealed in print? There are so many incidents included in the New Testament, and yet we know only a small part of what happened because the Spirit of God has made a selection of what to reveal to us. We hear of Christ healing thousands, quite apart from those that are recorded in detail, so that even at that level there are many things that could be added. Then John might also have recorded the biographies of all those people who were healed and the tremendous difference made in their lives by those healings. Then there were all the people saved and their lives that were changed and their families blessed and their descendants given new life, all arising from the words of Christ. There were the disciples that were transformed and all the work that they would do. And of course the Scriptures were given, the record of Christ which followed on in the time of the apostles. If you could think of every single copy of the word of God, ever written by hand laboriously in ancient times, or printed since the invention of the press, and the hundreds and thousands and thousands of copies in different hands and the miracles of grace that are wrought through them. If you could understand every step he took to fulfil the eternal plan of God and how perfectly he fulfilled prophecy and all his Father’s will! If you could innumerate or write about the consequences of Calvary on that multitude which no man can number, the vast number of people for whom he died and what he planned and had in store for them! If you could see the eternal praise that will follow from men and angels in all eternity because of his work, then you would like John have difficulty evaluating all the books that would be written. What Christ did! Of course we don’t know these things, for they are invisible to human sight. There is nothing in the world could generate so much glorious literature as the record of the ministry, the work, the person, the being of Jesus Christ. And you will see all those books one day. You will see them. When you see him – they may not be printed – but you will spend eternity, as it were, reading the books of grace and looking in.