I thought that I knew a bit about John because he is the disciple that I can most relate to, but as I began to write this post, my reading and research helped me to understand so much more about his character.
That is why I absolutely love writing this blog. Because it inspires me to learn so much more. Each post is a learning experience for me – I have my own ‘love’ experiences with the Lord but researching and writing each blog post is a journey to greater knowledge. It makes me feel so alive. Every fibre of my being twitches with the enthusiasm to know more – so let’s learn together, in a way that is interesting and every-day. Not highly theoretical, but absolutely real! And above all else lets continually trust that God guides us to the absolute truth.
So, what about John then.
He and his brother James were the sons of Zebedee, who was a well-respected man in the Jewish community.
But even though John was brought up well entrenched in the Jewish faith, he was not one to follow unquestionably that which he could not completely understand.
He was a compassionate man, hungry for the truth. A big man with a big heart.
When John the Baptist came as a prophet preaching in the wilderness John, son of Zebedee, was intrigued to hear his message. It was not a message that the Jews took well too. They believed that as long as they were living by the law, they were above reproach. But their law had become so tainted by man-made statutes and their pride did not allow them to see beyond this.
John had a heart that wanted to know His Jehovah, and head that wanted to know the truth.
John loved God as well as he could according to his understanding of him, but that understanding was rooted in his concept of his father – as any sons would be. His love for his father was so intermingled with fear and resentment and this tainted his understanding of God so much so that he kicked strongly against his father and the God he represented.
What John understood about God seemed to be a contradiction. He was a God of love and of retribution. Love and justice go hand in hand but although John loved God, he felt oppressed by all the rules of the Jewish religion. It seemed that one had to be superhuman to stay free from breaking all of the impossible rules and it seemed that God showed more punishment than mercy in most cases.
But still he could not ignore the love and reverence that he felt for God. So one day, he stole away, to go and hear the message of John the Baptist for himself. At first he hid in the background, just taking in the words. The message was simple. Repent. Deep, sincere repentance was the underscore of his urgent appeal. Not just an educational change of mind. Not just regret or remorse. John the Baptist spoke about repentance being a radical turning from sin and a walking towards a life of fruitful righteousness. And being Baptised was an outward expression of this inward decision. Similar to that of a purification ritual in the Old Testament. But this was the new and ultimate act of repentance.
John embraced this message wholeheartedly. He wanted to genuinely, inwardly and outwardly become a faithful man of God.
So John began to follow John the Baptist and became one of his faithful disciples, until the day that John met Jesus and then everything changed!
In the portion of scripture below, John is John the Baptist and John the apostle was one of the two disciples mentioned in the first line.
John 1:35-42
The First Disciples
35 The following day John was again standing with two of his disciples.36 As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” 37 When John’s two disciples heard this, they followed Jesus.
38 Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.
They replied, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
39 “Come and see,” he said. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they went with him to the place where he was staying, and they remained with him the rest of the day.
Both John and his brother were feisty AND passionate AND zealous.
In fact Jesus nicknamed them the ‘sons of thunder’ because they asked Jesus to call down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritan villages who refused to welcome Jesus.
So fiercely loyal they were towards Jesus.
John, James and Peter were the closest disciples to Jesus during his time on earth and all three were privileged enough to witness some events that none of the other disciples got to see;
- They were there when Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead. (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51)
- They were present at the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1; Mark. 9:2; Luke 9:28)
- They were with Christ in Gethsemane before his arrest. (Matthew 26:37; Mark 14:33).
But over and above all of that, John was the one disciple who really knew how much Jesus loved him.
He was the only apostle who wrote about Jesus washing the disciples feet in John 13:4-16, possibly because he understood how this was a display of such deep love and humility from Jesus.
It was John, whom Jesus asked on to take care of his mother after he would die on the cross and John went on to become a pillar in the Jerusalem church because of his great understanding of Christ’s love for his church.
John is the author of five New Testament books: the gospel of John, the three short epistles that also bear his name (1, 2, and 3 John) and the book of Revelation.
So John wrote about the beginning of time with Jesus (when Jesus actually walked on the earth) and the end of time – when Jesus will come again.
He had a great understanding of both the natural and the supernatural. Life on earth and life in heaven. What a privilege to have those experiences, those insights and those understandings.
We can only learn from him and trust God to give us our own insights and understandings.
Our relationship with God is all about personal experience.
It is hard to believe because of someone else’s experience but when we have an experience of our own – that is when your heart and life are changed forever.
Let me tell you about my experience when I truly came to understand Gods love for me.
It was about 10 years ago, maybe more. I had known the Lord for a very long time but it was all based on head knowledge. I had no understanding of his deep love for me, because like John, my concept of God’s love was bound by my concept of my own fathers love which was mostly conditional and very much based on behaviour and achievement.
But that all changed one night when a prophet from England visited our little church. There only about 15 of us meeting on that Sunday evening, eager to hear from God.
At some point during the evening, he asked each of us to tell him our name. When it was my turn and I spoke out my name, I could see that he was visibly taken aback. He asked me to repeat my name and when I said Linda a little louder than before, he said that the Lord had told him that he wanted to give Linda in Cape Town a special message. He did not know yet what the message would be so he called me to the front so that he could pray with me.
As he began to pray, it was as if my whole life lay transparent before him. He knew all the details of my life – all my hurts and insecurities. And he said that Jesus has loved me even in all those broken places. Loved me with an unconditional love. He said that I have had three men in my life who have all deeply wounded me, but that His love, Gods love, is not like that. He loves me, he loves he loves me and he will never let me down.
The flood gates opened and I cried a river of tears as I lay my life bare before the Lord and opened up my heart to receive the fullness of this love that He spoke about.
He loved me enough to send a man all the way from England to tell me so.
This love changed my life and my whole understanding of God the father.
I didn’t have to strive to receive His love, I just had to be, because he loves me unconditionally.
Lamentations 3:22
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;