5  Common Men, Uncommon Calling—Part 4: John  (Luke 6:14d)

John (6:14d)

When God chooses people for His salvation purposes, He does not do so based on human standards.” The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples,” Moses reminded the children of Israel, “for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:7–8). Moses also downplayed his own qualifications for leadership, saying “to the Lord, ‘Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue’“ (Ex. 4:10; cf. 6:12). Jeremiah reacted in dismay to his call to be a prophet (Jer. 1:5), exclaiming, “Alas, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth”(v6).

No one was more greatly used by God in the spread of the gospel than the apostle Paul (cf. Rom. 15:19; 1 Cor. 15:10). Yet even he was not chosen because of any human qualifications he possessed. He regarded himself as “the very least of all saints” (Eph. 3:8), and “the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because [he had] persecuted thechurch of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). By his own admission Paul had been “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor” (1 Tim. 1:13; cf. Acts 8:3; 22:4–5; 26:9–11; Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6), and viewed himself as the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). His opponents contemptuously said of him, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible” (2 Cor. 10:10), since Paul lacked the public persona and polished skills of a Greek orator (cf. 11:6).

Paul did have impressive religious qualifications from a human perspective (Acts 26:24; 2 Cor. 11:5, 22–33; Gal. 1:13–14; Phil. 3:4–6). But the trials he endured taught him the lesson that God’s “grace is sufficient … for power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). In 2 Corinthians 2:16 he asked the rhetorical question, “Who is adequate for these things?” and gave the answer in 3:5: “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.” No one is able in his own strength to properly serve almighty God. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, those whom God calls to salvation and service include “not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which arestrong” (1 Cor. 1:26–27).

The Twelve, like all believers, were not chosen by the Lord because of any superior spirituality they possessed. As has been noted in earlier chapters of this volume, they were common men—fishermen, tax collectors, political revolutionaries. Paul described himself and his fellow apostles as “men condemned to death … a spectacle to the world … fools for Christ’s sake … weak … without honor…. hungry and thirsty … poorly clothed … roughly treated … homeless … working with [their] own hands … reviled … persecuted … slandered … the scum of the world, the dregs of all things” (1 Cor. 4:9–13). The Twelve were also scorned as uneducated and untrained Galileans (Acts 2:7;4:13).

The only explanation for the gospel’s impact is the power of God. He chooses to put the priceless truth of the glorious gospel in simple, ordinary, clay pots (2 Cor.4:7) so that all the glory is His. The world is filled with people too consumed with their own interests, importance, and abilities to be used by God. But when He chose the men who would be the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20), God did not choose learned scholars, eloquent orators, or self-righteous religious leaders. He chose twelve ordinary men, whose lives and ministries would forever change the course of history.

Having introduced Peter, Andrew, and James, Luke identified the fourth on his list of the twelve apostles, John. After examining his background, we will consider the two things that were the consuming passion of John’s life: truth and love.

JOHN’S BACKGROUND

As noted in the previous chapter of this volume, John and his brother James were sons of Zebedee, the owner of a prosperous fishing business on the Sea of Galilee. The two brothers were partners in the enterprise with Peter and Andrew (Luke 5:10). John was likely the younger of the two, since James is usually listed first when they are mentioned together. His mother was Salome (see the discussion of Matt. 20:20–24 in chapter 4 of this volume), one of the women who ministered to Jesus (Matt. 27:55–56), possibly financially (cf. Luke 8:2–3).As was also noted in the previous chapter of this volume, Salome was likely the sister of Jesus’ mother, Mary In that case John would have been Jesus’ cousin.

With the exception of Peter, John is the apostle about whom most is known. He was a member of the innermost group of the Twelve, those closest to Jesus, along with Peter, James, and Andrew. Only Peter, James, and John were present at the healing of the synagogue official’s daughter (Mark 5:37), the transfiguration (Matt. 17:1), and went inside Gethsemane with Jesus (the other disciples apparently waited at the gate; cf. Matt. 26:36–37). In fact, the designation of John as the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20) suggests that he may have been the closest of all the apostles to the Savior.

John had been a follower of John the Baptist (John 1:35) and, along with Andrew, was the first of the Twelve to encounter Jesus (vv. 36–40). He eventually returned to fishing on the Sea of Galilee, became a part-time follower of Jesus (Matt. 4:21), then a full-time disciple (Luke 5:10–11), and finally was chosen by the Lord to be a life-long apostle.

Like his brother James, John had a tempestuous, forceful personality, prompting the Lord to name them “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). John’s volatile temperament expressed itself in his desire, along with James, to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who rejected Jesus (Luke 9:54). His aggressiveness and ambition are also seen in his and his brother’s attempt to exploit their family ties to Jesus to obtain positions of honor and privilege in the kingdom (Matt.20:20–23).

As He did with the rest of the Twelve, Jesus molded and shaped John into the man He wanted him to be. That involved learning that his zeal for the truth needed to be balanced with love, and indeed, those two things eventually came to characterize him.

That balance is hard to come by Many Christians do not seem to understand its importance, and camp on one or the other. The result is either a cold, lifeless orthodoxy leading to prideful indifference, or a shallow, superficial sentimentality leading to tolerance of error. But both truth and love are essential to the kingdom of God and therefore inseparable. Paul made that clear in Ephesians 4:11–15. God gives gifted men(v. 11) to equip believers for the mutual edifying of the body of Christ (v. 12), which results in spiritual maturity and Christlikeness (vv. 13–14). Then the apostle succinctly summarized spiritual maturity as “speaking the truth in love” (v. 15; cf. 1 Cor. 13:6; 1 Peter 1:22). Mature believers not only are firmly grounded in sound doctrine (1 Tim. 4:6; Titus 1:9; 2:1), but also manifest the fruit of the Spirit, love (Gal. 5:22; cf.v. 13; Rom.5:5; 12:9).

JOHN’S COMMITMENT TO TRUTH

John’s passionate concern for the truth permeates his writings; he uses the word “truth” forty-six times. For John, divine truth was supremely embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ; He was full of truth (John 1:14) and in Him God’s salvation truth was fully revealed (v. 17). Those who profess to know Christ but do not obey Him are devoid of the truth (1 John 2:4; cf. 1:6, 8). Nothing brought John greater joy than to hear of Christians walking in the truth (3 John 4; cf.v.3;2 John 4).

His deep concern for the truth caused John to be black and white; to see things in stark contrast; to express himself in absolutes and opposites. He set light against darkness (John 1:5; 1 John 2:8–9), life against death (John 5:24; 1 John 3:14), the kingdom of God against the kingdom of the devil (John 3:3, 5; 8:44), the children of God against the children of Satan (1 John 3:10), the judgment of the righteous against the judgment of the wicked (John 5:24; Rev.20:11–15), the resurrection of life against the resurrection of judgment (John 5:29), receiving Christ against rejecting Him (John 1:11–12), fruit against fruitlessness (John 15:2), obedience against disobedience (John 3:36). People either walk in the light, or in the darkness (John 12:35; 1 John 1:7), and are either of God, or of the world (1 John 2:15).Those born of God cannot sin (1 John 3:9), and those who reject Christ do not have God (John 5:23; 1 John 2:23), those who do good are of God, but those who do evil have not seen God (3 John 11).

John’s passionate devotion to the truth also prompted him to warn against the danger of false teachers, who twist and pervert the truth. In his first epistle John listed three characteristics of such teachers (whom he labels “antichrists” [1 John 2:18] because they distorted and denied the truth about Jesus Christ). First, they arose within the church, but then left, taking their followers with them. As John noted, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19).Second, they “denie[d] that Jesus is the Christ,” thereby” [denying] the Father and the Son” (v. 22). Those who deny Jesus Christ’s true nature as God incarnate also denythe Father, who testified to the Son (5:9–10; John 5:32–38; 8:19). Finally false teachers try to deceive the faithful (1 John 2:26; cf.3:7; Rom. 16:18; 1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim.3:13; Titus 1:10; 2 John 7), as does their father (John 8:44), the devil (2 Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9).

John instructed his readers to avoid being deceived by those religious charlatans:

Christians must carefully compare any teaching purporting to come from God with the Bible. They must be like the Bereans, who were “examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). At the core of every false system of belief is a denial of the truth regarding Jesus Christ. Therefore John cautioned that “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2–3). The mark of false teachers is that they reject the doctrine of the apostles as revealed in Scripture. But the apostles, as John wrote, “are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error”(v.6).

In his second epistle, John again warned that “many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh” (v. 7). He reminded his readers that such false teachers” [go] too far and [do] not abide in the teaching of Christ.” As a result, they “[do] not have God,” because only “the one who abides in the teaching [about Christ] has both the Father and the Son” (v. 9). Apostate false teachers are not to be given Christian hospitality, since doing so aids the spread of their heretical teaching (vv. 10–11).

John’s frequent use of the word “testify” (Gk., marture?) also reveals how important truth was to him. He wrote of the witness of John the Baptist (John 1:6–8), of the Father (John 5:37; 8:18), of the Scriptures (John 5:39); of the works Jesus did (John 10:25), of the Holy Spirit (John 15:26), of the disciples (John 15:27), and of Jesus (John 18:37).

JOHN’S COMMITMENT TO LOVE

No one was more committed to the truth than the apostle Paul. Yet he understood that devotion to the truth is of little value apart from love, as he wrote in his first inspired letter to the Corinthians:

The pivotal turning point in which John, the Son of Thunder, began to see the importance of love came in the only incident in the Gospels in which he alone speaks. After the overwhelming experience of the transfiguration (Mark 9:1–10), the disciples got involved in another episode of their long-running debate over which of them was the greatest (vv. 33–34). Jesus gently rebuked the disciples, reminding them, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all” (v. 35). He then took a child in His arms and used him to illustrate the point that the disciples needed to receive each other as they would Him (v. 37).

Convicted by the Lord’s rebuke, John confessed to another instance of the disciples’ misguided zeal: “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us” (v 38).This was sectarianism, an expression of intolerance toward those outside of their group. John’s confession elicited another rebuke from Jesus, who told the disciples, “Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is for us” (vv. 39–40).

John was characterized by courage, ambition, drive, passion, boldness, and a strong devotion to the truth, and people with those qualities are vital to the kingdom of God. But John’s zeal for the truth had been deficient in love and compassion for people. If love without truth is characterless hypocrisy, truth without love is indecent brutality. This confession and the Lord’s rebuke began moving him toward a proper balance of truth and love. Although never wavering in his fierce devotion to the truth, John learned the importance of love and emphasized it in his writings—so much so that he became known as the “apostle of love.”

John used the word “love” more than one hundred times in his writings. He taught that God is love (1 John 4:8), that the Father loves the Son (John 3:35; 5:20) and the Son loves the Father (John 14:31), that Godloves all people in general (John 3:16) and Christ’s disciples in particular (John 14:21, 23; 16:27; 17:23), that Jesus loves those who believe in Him (John 13:1; 15:9) and that the supreme example of that love was His sacrificial death on their behalf (John 15:13; 1 John 3:16), that Jesus commanded believers to love one another (John 13:35; 15:12; cf. 1 John 3:11, 23; 2 John 5), that God’s true spiritual children will love Jesus Christ (John 8:42) and that that love will manifest itself in obedience (John 14:15, 21, 23–24; 15:10; 1 John 2:5; 5:3; 2 John 6), that God’s love motivated His adoption of believers as His children (1 John 3:1), that true love will manifest itself in actions (1 John 3:18), that love for other believers is a mark of genuine salvation (1 John 4:7–8, 20), that the supreme manifestation of God’s love for His people was His sending Christ to be the propitiation for their sins (1 John 4:9–10), that love removes fear of punishment (1 John 4:18), and that God’s love motivates Him to discipline believers (Rev. 3:19).

John’s life after the close of the gospel accounts reflects his continuing commitment to both truth and love. As was the case in the Gospels, he was closely connected with Peter in the book of Acts (Acts 3:1–11; 4:13–20; 8:14–25) in proclaiming the truth—so much so that Paul referred to him as one of the pillars of the Jerusalem church (Gal. 2:9). John’s unwavering, unceasing preaching of the truth eventually led to his exile to the rocky barren island of Patmos, off the coast of Asia Minor. It was there that he received the amazing, incomparable series of visions that comprise the book of Revelation (Rev. 1:1, 4, 9; 22:8).

According to early Christian writers, John spent the last decades of his life in Ephesus, overseeing the churches in that region (Clement of Alexandria, Who Is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved?, 42). According to Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 3.3.4), John lived until the time of the emperor Trajan (A–D. 98–117). He was the last of the apostles to die. Two vignettes from his years at Ephesus reveal that the apostle of love had lost none of his zeal for the truth. According to Polycarp, the second-century bishop of Smyrna who had been a disciple of the apostle John, “John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving [the heretic] Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, ‘Let us fly lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within’“ (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.4). Clement of Alexandria relates how at the risk of his own life John fearlessly entered the camp of a band of robbers and led its captain, who had once professed faith in Christ, to true repentance (Who Is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved?, 42).

But John also never ceased to emphasize the importance of love. Nearing the end of his life, the apostle became so weak that he could no longer preach and had to be carried to church. According tothe fourth-century church father Jerome, he constantly exhorted the congregation to love one another. When they finally asked him why he kept repeating that John replied, “It is the Lord’s command, and if only this be done, it is enough” (Alfred Plummer, The Epistles of St. John [Reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980], xxxv).