It is now widely accepted that while Matthew wrote primarily for the Jews, Mark for the Romans, and Luke for the Greeks, John's more developed, less provincial thought led him to write the fourth Gospel for the benefit of the church as a whole. The breadth and scope of John's vision are suggested in the opening words of his Gospel, which at once take us back beyond the narrow limits of time and space to the beginning of all things: "In the beginning was the Word"—and he forthwith proceeds to identify Christ Jesus with this Logos or "Word" of God; whereas Matthew and Luke had chosen to record the human aspect of the Master's lineage. Indeed the term Logos itself provides evidence of the broad scope of John's thinking, for it was widely used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, while in the writings of Greek philosophers and others it had been used to mean either "Word" or "reason."
The universalism of John's Gospel is partly to be explained on the basis of its date, for it was composed about the close of the first century, being thus set down some fifteen or twenty years later than the latest of the Synoptic Gospels, that of Luke. The closing years of the first century saw widespread development in the Christian church, and John may be said to have set down the considered judgment of an aged apostle upon the import of the greatest career in history. His perspective is wider than that of those who preceded him. National lines disappear before the broad maturity of his understanding.
While it is he alone who preserves the saying that "the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans," it appears that he is not bound down by this local attitude of his fellow countrymen, for he does not hesitate to record the Master's conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well of Sychar, and the fact that, as a result of this encounter, many of the Samaritans embraced Christianity. Then, too, it is John who tells us how certain Greeks, whom a strict Jew would have spurned because of their Gentile background, were anxious to meet Christ Jesus, and were apparently received by him when introduced by Andrew and Philip. The universal scope of the fourth Gospel finds additional confirmation in the fact that from it we learn of the Messiah's description of himself as "the light of the world" (John 8:12; 9:5)—the term for "world" in these and some sixty other passages in John's Gospel being the broad term kosmos, which often means "universe."
