Come and see
The first thing Christ says to anybody in John’s Gospel is a question, and it is not the one you would expect.
They are taken from across each volume rather than the front of it, so you can see the range: the invitation, the cost, and what it means to remain.
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Book 1 · Encounter
Come and See
Five of its fifty-two weeks, free and in full.
My yoke is easy
Come to Me, all you who are weary. What He offers is rest — and a yoke, in the same breath.
The sower
A parable printed whole, never cut before the ending. Four kinds of ground, and only one of them is about the seed.
The lost sheep
Ninety-nine left in the open to go after one. Told not to comfort the lost, but at people annoyed that the lost are welcomed.
Who do you say that I am?
The last week of the volume. The question that cannot be answered from a distance.
Book 2 · Discipleship
Follow Me
Five of its fifty-two weeks, free and in full.
Count the cost
Sit down first and work out whether you can finish. He says it to a crowd that is already following Him.
When you pray
The Lord’s Prayer, and the instruction that comes with it: go into your room and shut the door.
Seventy-seven times
Peter offers seven, thinking himself generous. Then the parable, which is not about arithmetic at all.
The Prodigal Son
The longest reading in the free set, and the one most people think they already know. The elder brother is still outside when it ends.
The narrow gate
Where the series takes its name. Small is the gate, and only a few find it.
Book 3 · Communion
Abide in Me
Five of its fifty-two weeks, free and in full.
The vine and the branches
The volume’s title passage. One word occurs seven times in eight verses — and the first thing it is used of is not a person.
I am the way, the truth, and the life
The most exclusive sentence in the Gospels, and it is not said to a crowd or in an argument.
Today you will be with Me in Paradise
A promise whose whole meaning has been made to hang on a comma no Greek manuscript of the period contains.
The sheep and the goats
Nobody in this passage is condemned for anything they did. Neither side saw it coming.
What is that to you? Follow Me.
The last week of the last volume. Peter, restored on a beach, turns round to ask about somebody else.
That is fifteen of a hundred and fifty-six
The three volumes run from come and see to what is that to you? You follow Me. Every royalty goes toward building a church for a mission that has none.