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.
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).
The Structure of John 19:31–37
We see John’s intentionality in the structure of our passage:[2][3]
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).