By Dean Deppe

When I was a child, every evening after dinner my family would read one chapter of the Bible to fill our spiritual stomachs. Reflecting on this procedure later, I wondered whether we treated the chapter markers too reverently. Who said the story of the blind man ended at the end of John 9 and not 10:21? Did we interpret the Nicodemus narrative wrongly because we began reading at chapter 3 rather than 2:23?

Sometimes we fail to realize that the Bible’s chapter divisions were added in 1205 by Stephen Langton, a professor in Paris who later became Archbishop of Canterbury (although some credit Cardinal Hugo de Santo Care as having done so in 1248). The verse divisions came even later, in 1551, when Robert Stephanus, a Parisian book printer, affixed them to the text as he was riding on horseback from Paris to Lyons. The hypotheticalness of 28 chapters in Matthew, for instance, is demonstrated by the fact that Codex Vaticanus of the fourth century separated out 170 chapters for Matthew, while Codex Alexandrinus from the fifth century included 68 chapters. Certainly we should agree with A.T. Robertson when he comments, “The first step in interpretation is to ignore the modern chapters and verses.”

Let me attempt to demonstrate from three passages in the writings of John how our system of chapter divisions can fall short of doing justice to the inherent units of Scripture.

Focusing on Grace

First John 1 concludes with a negative statement whose positive counterpart was regretfully placed by Stephen Langton in chapter 2. The chapter now ends, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” This negative truth must be balanced with the even greater and more gracious statement in 2:1, “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” If we conclude our table reading at chapter 1, we might spend all night thinking about ourselves, how we have made God into a liar. But certainly John intends to end this passage at 2:2 and have us focus on Jesus Christ, our defense lawyer who pleads our case and wins so that miraculously we are proclaimed righteous.

If you look closely at the literary structure of 1 John 1:6-2:2, you’ll notice that there are three sets of “if . . . then” statements (vv. 6-7, 8-9, and 1:10-2:2) with a negative confession of sin trumped each time by a positive affirmation of God’s loving character and action. I am convinced that our inner reflections and outward lifestyle would be dramatically affected if we located the chapter division at 1 John 2:3 rather than at its uninspiring place in our present editions.

More to Nicodemus

Even within chapters we can misinterpret breaks. Each time we read around the family dinner table about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, I pictured Nicodemus as a model Christian who was born again of water and the Spirit. However, because we ended our devotions at 3:15, where Nicodemus seems to disappear, I neglected to allow the ending in 3:19-21 to interpret Nicodemus’s coming at night: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but [people] loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” The Pharisees represented by Nicodemus loved darkness rather than light and would be replaced in the kingdom of God by other leaders who were born again. The Jewish parties (3:1-17), the disciples of John the Baptist (3:22-4:3), the Samaritans (4:4-42), and the Gentiles (4:43-54) must all give up their religious convictions and be born again through Jesus.

More to the point, I did not perceive that John was already preparing for Nicodemus in 2:24 when he declares, “Jesus would not entrust himself to them because he knew all people” (nrsv). The person Jesus would not entrust himself to was Nicodemus. Throughout the gospel Nicodemus is on a journey from one who represents the Jewish leaders (3:1; 7:50), to a secret disciple who remains with the synagogue (19:38-39), to one who speaks out for Jesus (7:51) and finally comes out of the closet to publicly stand with Jesus (19:40).

Two characters in the story, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, represent all secret disciples who must journey into the light and become a model for all John’s readers who, according to 12:42-43, “would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue, for they loved praise from [people] more than praise from God.”

The Blind Man Meets the Shepherd

John 10 also makes clear the need to consider passages beyond the confines of chapter divisions. As a young boy listening to a chapter of the Bible after dinner, I would never have associated the parable of “The Shepherd and His Flock” (10:1-6) with the story of the blind man in chapter 9. Yet the real ending to the passage (10:21) clearly indicates that this parable is a reflection on having our eyes opened like the blind man’s.

Throughout chapter 9 the blind man’s confession of faith continually deepens as he sees Jesus more clearly. First the person who healed him is “the man they call Jesus” (9:11), then he becomes “a prophet” (9:17) and the “godly one” who is “without sin” (9:25, 31). But only after he is thrown out of the synagogue does the blind man have new eyes to see Jesus as the transcendent Son of Man (9:35) and as God himself, who alone deserves worship (9:38).

With that as background Jesus speaks a parable. God as the watchman of Israel opens the gate of the sheepfold only to the true Shepherd, Jesus Christ. Jesus as Shepherd leads his own sheep out of the sheepfold, and only they listen to his voice (10:3). In other words, Jesus will lead his sheep out of the synagogue, as the blind man experienced, and they will be blind to Jesus’ true identity until they renounce being secret disciples and proclaim—as Thomas does in the climactic passage of John (20:28)—that Jesus is God himself.

If we as readers do not connect the shepherd leading the sheep out of the sheepfold (10:3) with the blind man coming out of the synagogue (9:34), then we remain blind to the true identity of Jesus as the heavenly Son of Man who deserves all worship and adoration. The commitment demanded of the disciple is radical—and only clearly seen if we read 9:1-10:21 as one unit.

So let the inspired writings speak loudly and clearly. Let them shape our lives in the early dawn and at the evening dinner table. But sometimes to clearly hear the original meaning, we must first silence the chapter markers and pay closer attention to where we begin and end our time of devotions.