JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE.
My Lord, my Love! in pleasant pain
How often have I said,
"Blessed that John who on thy breast
Laid down his head."
It was that contact all divine
Transformed him from above,
And made him amongst men the man
To show forth holy love.
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
Love is regenerating the world. It is the love of God that is working
this mighty transformation. The world was cold and loveless before
Christ came. Of course there always was love in the
race,--father-love, mother-love, filial love, love for country. There
have always been human friendships which were constant, tender, and
true, whose stories shine in bright lustre among the records of life.
Natural affection there has always been, but Christian love was not in
the world till Christ came.
The incarnation was the breaking into this world of the love of God.
For three and thirty years Jesus walked among men, pouring out love in
every word, in every act, in all his works, and in every influence of
his life. Then on the cross his heart broke, spilling its love upon
the earth. As Mary's ointment filled all the house where it was
emptied out, so the love of God poured out in Christ's life and death
is filling all the world.
Jesus put his love into human hearts that it might be carried
everywhere. Instantly there was a wondrous change. The story of the
Church after the day of Pentecost shows a spirit among the disciples of
Christ which the world had never seen before. They had all things
common. The strong helped the weak. They formed a fellowship which
was almost heavenly. From that time to the present the leaven of love
has been working. It has slowly wrought itself into every department
of life,--into art, literature, music, laws, education, morals. Every
hospital, orphanage, asylum, and reformatory in the world has been
inspired by the love of Christ. Christian civilization is a product of
this same divine affection working through the nations.
Perhaps no other of the Master's disciples has done so much in the
interpreting and the diffusing of the love of Christ in the world as
the beloved disciple has done. Peter was the mightiest force at the
beginning in the founding of the Church. Then came Paul with his
tremendous missionary energy, carrying Christianity to the ends of the
earth. Each of these apostles was greatest in his own way and place.
But John has done more than either of these to bless the world with
love. His influence is everywhere. He is likest Jesus of all the
disciples. His influence is slowly spreading among men. We see it in
the enlarging spirit of love among Christians, in the increase of
philanthropy, in the growing sentiment that war must cease among
Christian nations, all disputes to be settled by arbitration, and in
the feeling of universal brotherhood which is softening all true men's
hearts toward each other.
It cannot but be intensely interesting to trace the story of the
friendship of Jesus and John, for it was in this hallowed friendship
that John learned all that he gave the world in his life and words. We
are able to fix its beginning--when Jesus and John met for the first
time. One day John the Baptist was standing by the Jordan with two of
his disciples. One of these was Andrew; and the other we know was
John--we know it because in John's own Gospel, where the incident is
recorded, no name is given. The two young men had not yet seen Jesus;
but the Baptist knew him, and pointed him out as he passed by, saying,
"Behold the Lamb of God!"
The two young men went after Jesus, no doubt eager to speak with him.
Hearing their footsteps behind him, he turned, and asked them what they
sought. They asked, "Rabbi, where abidest thou?" He said, "Come, and
ye shall see." They gladly accepted the invitation, went with him to
his lodgings, and remained until the close of the day. We have no
account of what took place during those happy hours. It would be
interesting to know what Jesus said to his visitors, but not a word of
the conversation has been preserved. We may be sure, however, that the
visit made a deep impression on John.
Most days in our lives are unmarked by any special event. There are
thousands of them that seem just alike, with their common routine.
Once or twice, however, in the lifetime of almost every person, there
is a day which is made forever memorable by some event or
occurrence,--the first meeting with one who fills a large place in
one's after years, a compact of sacred friendship, a revealing of some
new truth, a decision which brought rich blessing, or some other
experience which set the day forever apart among all days.
John lived to be a very old man; but to his latest years he must have
remembered the day when he first met Jesus, and began with him the
friendship which brought him such blessing. We may be sure that as at
their first meeting the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul, so at this first meeting
the soul of John was knit with the soul of Jesus in a holy friendship
which brought unspeakable good to his life. There was that in Jesus
which at once touched all that was best in John, and called out the
sweetest music of his soul.
"Thou shall know him when he comes
Not by any din of drums,
Nor the vantage of his airs;
Neither by his crown,
Nor by his gown,
Nor by anything he wears.
He shall only well-known be
By the holy harmony
That his coming makes in thee!"
John calls himself the "disciple whom Jesus loved." This designation
gives him a distinction even among the Master's personal friends.
Jesus loved all the apostles, but there were three who belonged in an
inner circle. Then, of these three, John was the best beloved. We are
not told what it was in John that gave him this highest honor. He was
probably a cousin of Jesus, as it is thought by many that their mothers
were sisters. This blood relationship, however, would not account for
the strong love that bound them together. There must have been certain
qualities in John which fitted him in a peculiar way for being the
closest friend of Jesus.
We know that John's personality was very winning. He was only a
fisherman, and in his youth lacked opportunities for acquiring
knowledge or refinement. If Mary and Salome were sisters, the blood of
David's line was in John as well as in Jesus. It is something to have
back of one's birth a long and noble descent. Besides, John was one of
those rare men "who appear to be formed of finer clay than their
neighbors, and cast in a gentler mould." Evidently he was by nature a
man of sympathetic spirit, one born to be a friend.
The study of John's writings helps us to answer our question. Not once
in all his Gospel does he refer to himself by name; yet as one reads
the wonderful chapters, one is aware of a spirit, an atmosphere, of
sweetness. There are fields and meadows in which the air is laden with
fragrance, and yet no flowers can be seen. But looking closely, one
finds, low on the ground, hidden by the tall grasses, a multitude of
little lowly flowers. It is from these that the perfume comes. In
every community there are humble, quiet lives, almost unheard of among
men, who shed a subtle influence on all about them. Thus it is in the
chapters of John's Gospel. The name of the writer nowhere appears, but
the charm of his spirit pervades the whole book.
In the designation which he adopts for himself, there is a fine
revealing of character. There is a beautiful self-obliteration in the
hiding away of the author's personality that only the name and glory of
Jesus may be seen. There are some good men, who, even when trying to
exalt and honor their Lord, cannot resist the temptation to write their
own name large, that those who see the Master may also see the Master's
friend. In John there is an utter absence of this spirit. As the
Baptist, when asked who he was, refused to give his name, and said he
was only a voice proclaiming the coming of the King, so John spoke of
himself only as one whom the Master loved.
We must note, too, that he does not speak of himself as the disciple
who loved Jesus,--this would have been to boast of himself as loving
the Master more than the other disciples did,--but as the disciple whom
Jesus loved. In this distinction lies one of the subtlest secrets of
Christian peace. Our hope does not rest in our love for Jesus, but in
his love for us. Our love at the best is variable in its moods.
To-day it glows with warmth and joy, and we say we could die for
Christ; to-morrow, in some depression, we question whether we really
love him at all, our feeling responds so feebly to his name. A peace
that depends on our loving Christ is as variable as our own
consciousness. But when it is Christ's love for us that is our
dependence, our peace is undisturbed by any earthly changes.
Thus we find in John a reposeful spirit. He was content to be lowly.
He knew how to trust. His spirit was gentle. He was of a deeply
spiritual nature. Yet we must not think of him as weak or effeminate.
Perhaps painters have helped to give this impression of him; but it is
one that is not only untrue, but dishonoring. John was a man of noble
strength. In his soul, under his quietness and sweetness of spirit,
dwelt a mighty energy. But he was a man of love, and had learned the
lesson of divine peace; thus he was a self-controlled man.
These are hints of the character of the disciple whom Jesus loved, whom
he chose to be his closest friend. He was only a lad when Jesus first
met him, and we must remember that the John we chiefly know was the man
as he developed under the influence of Jesus. What Jesus saw in the
youth who sat down beside him in his lodging-place that day, drank in
his words, and opened his soul to him as a rose to the morning sun, was
a nature rich in its possibilities of noble and beautiful character.
The John we know is the man as he ripened in the summer of Christ's
love. He is a product of pure Christ-culture. His young soul
responded to every inspiration in his Master, and developed into rarer
loveliness every day. Doubtless one of the qualities in John that
fitted him to be the closest friend of Jesus was his openness of heart,
which made him such an apt learner, so ready to respond to every touch
of Christ's hand.
It would be interesting to trace the story of this holy friendship
through the three years Jesus and John were together, but only a little
of the wonderful narrative is written. Some months after the first
meeting, there was another beside the sea. For some reason John and
his companions had taken up their fishing again. Jesus came by in the
early morning, and found the men greatly discouraged because they had
been out all night and had caught nothing. He told them to push out,
and to cast their net again, telling them where to cast it. The result
was a great draught of fishes. It was a revealing of divine power
which mightily impressed the fishermen. He then bade them to follow
him, and said he would make them become fishers of men. Immediately
they left the ship, and went with Jesus.
Thus John had now committed himself altogether to his new Master. From
this time he remained with Jesus, following him wherever he went. He
was in his school, and was an apt scholar. A little later there came
another call. Jesus chose twelve men to be apostles, and among them
was the beloved disciple. This choice and call brought him into yet
closer fellowship with Jesus. Now the transformation of character
would go on more rapidly because of the constancy and the closeness of
John's association with his Master.
A peculiar designation is given to the brothers James and John. Jesus
surnamed them Boanerges, the sons of thunder. There must have been a
meaning in such a name given by Jesus himself. Perhaps the figure of
thunder suggests capacity for energy--that the soul of John was
charged, as it were, with fiery zeal. It appears to us, as we read
John's writings, that this could not have been true. He seems such a
man of love that we cannot think of him as ever being possessed of an
opposite feeling. But there is evidence that by nature he was full of
just such energy held in reserve. We see John chiefly in his writings;
and these were the fruit of his mellow old age, when love's lessons had
been well learned. It seems likely that in his youth he had in his
breast a naturally quick, fiery temper. But under the culture of Jesus
this spirit was brought into complete mastery. We have one
illustration of this earlier natural feeling in a familiar incident.
The people of a certain village refused to receive the Master, and John
and his brother wished to call down fire from heaven to consume them.
But Jesus reminded them that he was not in the world to destroy men's
lives, but to save them.
We know not how often this lesson had to be taught to John before he
became the apostle of love. It was well on in St. Paul's old age that
he said he had learned in whatsoever state he was therein to be
content. It is a comfort to us to know that he was not always able to
say this, and that the lesson had to be learned by him just as it has
to be learned by us. It is a comfort to us also to be permitted to
believe that John had to _learn_ to be the loving, gentle disciple he
became in later life, and that the lesson was not an easy one.
It is instructive also to remember that it was through his friendship
with Jesus that John received his sweetness and lovingness of
character. An old Persian apologue tells that one found a piece of
fragrant clay in his garden, and that when asked how it got its perfume
the clay replied, "One laid me on a rose." John lived near the heart
of Jesus, and the love of that heart of gentleness entered his soul and
transformed him. There is no other secret for any who would learn
love's great lesson. Abiding in Christ, Christ abides also in us, and
we are made like him because he lives in us.
John's distinction of being one of the Master's closest friends brought
him several times into experiences of peculiar sacredness. He
witnessed the transfiguration, when for an hour the real glory of the
Christ shone out through his investiture of flesh. This was a vision
John never forgot. It must have impressed itself deeply upon his soul.
He was also one of those who were led into the inner shadows of
Gethsemane, to be near Jesus while he suffered, and to comfort him with
love.
This last experience especially suggests to us something of what the
friendship of John was to Jesus. There is no doubt that this
friendship brought to John immeasurable comfort and blessing, enriching
his life, and transforming his character. But what was the friendship
to Jesus? There is no doubt that it was a great deal to him. He
craved affection and sympathy, as every noble heart does just in the
measure of its humanness. One of the saddest elements of the
Gethsemane sorrow was the disappointment of Jesus, when, hungry for
love, he went back to his chosen three, expecting to find a little
comfort and strength, and found them sleeping.
The picture of John at the Last Supper, leaning on Jesus' breast, shows
him to us in the posture in which we think of him most. It is the
place of confidence; the bosom is only for those who have a right to
closest intimacy. It is the place of love, near the heart. It is the
place of safety, for he is in the clasp of the everlasting arms, and
none can snatch him out of the impregnable shelter. It was the darkest
night the world ever saw that John lay on the bosom of Jesus. That is
the place of comfort for all sorrowing believers, and there is
abundance of room for them all on that breast. John _leaned_ on Jesus'
breast,--weakness reposed on strength, helplessness on almighty help.
We should learn to lean, to lean our whole weight, on Christ. That is
the privilege of Christian faith.
There was one occasion when John seems to have broken away from his
usual humility. He joined with his brother in a request for the
highest places in the new kingdom. This is only one of the evidences
of John's humanness,--that he was of like passions with the rest of us.
Jesus treated the brothers with gentle pity--"Ye know not what ye ask."
Then he explained to them that the highest places must be reached
through toil and sorrow, through the paths of service and suffering.
Later in life John knew what the Master's words meant. He found his
place nearest to Christ, but it was not on the steps of an earthly
throne; it was a nearness of love, and the steps to it were humility,
self-forgetfulness, and ministry.
It must have given immeasurable comfort to Jesus to have John stay so
near to him during the last scenes. If he fled for a moment in the
garden when all the apostles fled, he soon returned; for he was close
to his Master during his trial. Then, when he was on the cross, Jesus
saw a group of loving friends near by, watching with breaking hearts;
and among these was John. It lifted a heavy burden off the heart of
Jesus to be able then to commit his mother to John, and to see him lead
her away to his own home. It was a supreme expression of
friendship,--choosing John from among all his friends for the sacred
duty of sheltering this blessedest of women.
The story of this beautiful friendship of Jesus and John shows us what
is possible in its own measure to every Christian discipleship. It is
not possible for every Christian to be a St. John, but close friendship
with Jesus is the privilege of every true believer; and all who enter
into such a friendship will be transformed into the likeness of their
Friend.