<p>20:31- see on Jn. 17:20.</p><p><em>But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in his name</em>- See on :30. John&rsquo;s Gospel was written for the specific purpose of bringing others to faith- like most of the New Testament, it is essentially a missionary document. The gospel preached by John is what is transcripted here. We must ask then whether any other theology is actually part of the Gospel message. Jn. 20:31 makes it clear that the purpose of John's Gospel was to bring unbelievers to faith in Christ: &quot;This has been written in order that you may hold the faith that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that, holding this faith, you may possess life by His name&quot;. C.H. Dodd comments: &quot;The tense of the verbs... the aorists... would necessarily have implied that the readers did not so far hold the Christian faith or possess eternal life&quot;. The gift of eternal life in John refers to the present receipt of the gift of the Spirit, the life and spirit of live lived by the Lord Jesus, the life we shall eternally live. This is why life is &quot;in his name&quot;. There may be reference to baptism into His Name, but the &quot;name&quot; of a person refers to the summation of their character and being. Life is lived in &quot;His name&quot;, living, thinking, feeling and acting as He did and does.</p><p>&ldquo;That ye might believe&rdquo; implies John intended his readership to be unbelievers rather than believers in the first instance. Jn. 19:35 implies that the community for whom John was writing had John as the basic source of their knowledge about Jesus, and was highly respected as their spiritual father. 'John' is therefore his inspired write-up of the Gospel he had taught his converts, and therefore it has various specific features highly relevant to them. Acts likewise seems to be written as a preaching document, recording the speeches of basic apologetics which were made to both Jews and Gentiles. The early preachers would have gone around telling the good news about Jesus Christ, and in so doing would have recited time and again His teaching and life story. John seems to suggest that he chose which miracles to record so that &quot;ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name&quot; (Jn. 20:31). The implication is that he wrote his Gospel with the intention of it being used as a preaching document.</p><p>The Gospel records are transcripts of the original preaching of the Gospel delivered by e.g. Matthew or John. Thus John wrote down his gospel &ldquo;<em>that you may believe </em>that Jesus is the Christ, the <em>Son of God</em>, and that by believing you may have <em>lif</em>e in his <em>name</em>&rdquo; (Jn. 20:31). His first letter was written, it seems, to the converts which his Gospel preaching had made: &ldquo;I write these things to <em>you who believe</em> in the <em>name </em>of the <em>Son of God</em> so that you may know that you have eternal <em>life</em>&rdquo; (1 Jn. 5:13). It has even been suggested that John was writing in order to win converts to Christianity from a specific synagogue somewhere in the Diaspora. Another suggestion is that John is aiming at converting Samaritans or at least, a group of Gentiles perhaps associated with a synagogue. For John records how Samaritans came to Jesus, how &ldquo;the world&rdquo; includes them and not just Jews (Jn. 4:42); how physical descent from Abraham is irrelevant now (Jn. 8:33-41); how the true Israelite is anyone who has been born again (Jn. 1:47; 3:3-8), and John stresses that the true sheep of Jesus for whom he died are not just Jews (Jn. 10:16; 11:51,52). John records Jesus&rsquo; explaining that He has already done the sowing, but the reaping of the Samaritans / Gentiles is up to us the reapers (Jn. 4:35-38). The lesson is that we must each preach the Gospel to others in a way that is relevant to them, not compromising the basic message, but articulating it in ways that connect with their needs and situation. The New Testament is simply full of encouragement and example in this.</p><p>But it could also be that John was writing to confirm the faith of those who had heard his preaching of the Gospel and been baptized. For they would have largely been illiterate and would need some way of being reminded of that in which they had believed. It is possible to translate: &quot;That you may continue to believe&quot;.</p>