The human character of Jesus is the theological key to the Gospel of John's Christology. The incarnation comes alive in the narrated life and death of Jesus, the Son of God, as a Jewish martyr. From this compassionate Christology there emerges a human Johannine soteriology that is plainly able to offer a wide variety of starting points for encountering the Word of God, that portrays deep crises of faith, and is marked out by God's fascinating aim of redemption. These ways of life converge onto the path cleared in this world by Jesus. And so it is that ecce homo is revealed as a narrative icon of human dignity in the midst of suffering.