Think about how many times you’ve heard the story about Peter denying Jesus three times before the rooster crowed. Or about how the three fell asleep when Jesus asked them to pray. Or about what happened when the ladies visited the empty tomb. For anybody who has followed Jesus for a minute (or even attended a few Easter services), these are fairly well-known stories.
During my bible-in-a-year listening yesterday, I was struck by something I don’t remember thinking about before: scripture records only one of the 12 watched Jesus die. Everybody scattered at Gethsamane and then a couple followed Him to the trial area, but only one trekked up to Golgotha.
Only one watched Jesus, his friend and his God, be nailed to the cross. He saw a sign nailed to that cross that was intended for mockery but actually spoke eternal truth.
Only one watched Jesus raised as a common criminal, knowing full well that he had never seen Him commit one sin.
Only one saw Jesus’ clothes divided in a game of chance and knew that hanging above them was their only Chance to truly win.
Only one heard Jesus relentlessly derided by the criminal on one side…and saw Him turn the other cheek; only one saw the contrition and repentance of the criminal on the other side…and heard Jesus’ forgiveness and promise of eternity.
Only one was there to be given the honor of caring for Jesus’ mother – His last pre-resurrection request, a compassionate action on a human concern – and it was this disciple’s honor alone.
Only one of the 12 was present for Jesus’ final words – to hear the pain of physical expiration and the anguish of supernatural separation, to see the execution of the most wonderful and most terrible rescue plan in the history of mankind.
Thinking about this gave me a whole different appreciation for the apostle John. Maybe it was this devotion that allowed him to be able to live out his days longer than the others, maybe to be the one given the sneak peek into the supernatural that is recorded in Revelation. Maybe.
Or maybe the presence of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was exactly what was intended. After all, “greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
John writes about love like no one else in the Bible. He mentions it 57 times in his gospel alone – more than the other 3 gospels combined! The word “love” appears 46 times in his first letter alone!
John understood love with every driven nail – each hammer stroke represented more sins that he could count and all of them covered only by the love of God.
John understood love through the sight of Jesus on the cross – heaven’s perfection willfully sacrificed for all the world’s failures.
John understood love through Jesus’ withholding of wrath for one criminal and His granting of saving grace to the other.
John understood genuine, pure, sacrificial love in the most incredibly horribly significantly intimate moment ever - between a Father and His Son, in a relationship with no beginning and no end but was to suffer a time of division and isolation…and why? All to issue an invitation to join in that relationship to John and to you and to me and to all who, like the reticent criminal, just humble themselves to admit their brokenness and to recognize His lordship and to commit themselves to Him for their eternal joy and His eternal glory.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8. Y’all, the man can’t help himself! 😊
God…is…love. John witnessed the fullness of it, in both flesh and spirit. May each of us seek to leave anything that is NOT love on that cross and do all we can to “love one another” as Jesus did and does.
Well said and something I have never thought about before. It is incredible what the disciples did during Christ’s crucifixion and during the first few days after His resurrection. I know that it is so easy to look at all of the events that happened 2000 years afterward and question what they were doing, but to have done life with him for 3 years and to not walk with him to the end is pretty disappointing; but John saw it to the finish.