Moreover, the divine nature of Jesus is not merely implied in the Synoptic Gospels; there are times when it even becomes explicit. The relation of perfect mutual knowledge that exists between Jesus and the Father, Matt. 11:27, reveals a perfect unity of nature. The Jesus of the Synoptists, as well as the Jesus of John, might say, "I and the Father are one."
The Synoptic Gospels, therefore, imply everywhere exactly the same Jesus who is more expressly presented in the Gospel of John. If, then, there is a contradiction between the Synoptists and John, it can be concerned only with the manner of Jesus' teaching. The Synoptists as well as John present Jesus as a supernatural person, it is said, but unlike John they represent him as keeping his own person in the background.
Even here, however, maturer consideration shows that the difference does not amount to anything like contradiction. May not the same person have spoken the discourses of the Fourth Gospel and also those of the Synoptists? It must be remembered that the ministry of Jesus was varied, and that the first three evangelists confine themselves almost exclusively to one phase of it. In the public Galilean ministry, which the Synoptists describe, it was necessary for Jesus to keep even his Messiahship for a time in the background. Publication of it, owing to the false political conception which the Jews had of the Messiah's work, would have been fatal to Jesus' plan. Here, as so often, the Fourth Gospel explains the other three. After the feeding of the five thousand, John tells us, the crowd wanted to take Jesus by force and make him a king. John 6:15. Popularity was dangerous. Jesus could not proclaim himself publicly as the Messiah, until by explaining the spiritual nature of the kingdom he had prepared the people for the kind of Messiah which it was his mission to be.
Of course, it is difficult for us to understand at every point just why Jesus acted as he did. All that we are now maintaining is that the considerations just adduced, and others like them, show that it is perfectly conceivable that Jesus, before his intimate disciples and in Jerusalem and at a special crisis, John, ch. 6, adopted a method of teaching which in the greater part of the Galilean ministry he considered out of place. There is room in a true narrative of Jesus' life both for the Synoptists and for John.