Of the four canonical gospels, John takes the most care into elevating Jesus’s divinity and focuses more on the theological aspects of Jesus’s actions and words.  The Synoptics are primarily concerned with giving the historical account of Jesus’s life while John “has a chronology that is incompatible with that of the Synoptics and is more concerned with theology and symbolism” (White 347).  John’s audience was the newly Gentile Christian community that had recently become fully separated from Judaism which created tension within the two communities.  John’s gospel features major structural changes which involves the omission of Jesus’s temptation, Jesus casting out demons, or his transfiguration, it includes a significant amount of new and exclusive material such as Jesus’ traveling between Galilee and Jerusalem and the resurrection of Lazarus. Another key structural change is the fact that the Passover meal occurred after Jesus’s crucifixion and burial.  This change most likely contributes to the theology behind Jesus as the sacrificial lamb and the Lamb of God symbolism, therefore elevating his divinity.

The gospel of John invokes the use of “I am” discourses during Jesus’s preachings and in his speech.  Jesus is found using phrases such as “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12-58), which fully eliminates the secretive messiah complex and increases Jesus’s power, wisdom, and Christology.  This is in stark contrast with the synoptic gospels which account Jesus denying that he is the messiah.  In John 16: 28 Jesus says “I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father”; John leaves no room for interpretation as to who Jesus is and where he came from.  In John 1:1-18 Jesus is introduced as God, before any events of Jesus’ actual life occur, saying that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and that “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son”.  This passage introduces Jesus with high divinity, basically saying that he is God who came down to earth to live amongst us.  As Jesus’s death approaches, he leaves his followers with the gift of the Holy Spirit so that when the God on earth (Jesus) is physically gone, his people will not be orphaned and will continue to have God’s spirit with them.