Twelve Ordinary Men by John MacArthur

Author:John MacArthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

5

JOHN—THE APOSTLE OF LOVE

Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.

— JOHN 13:23

THE APOSTLE JOHN IS FAMILIAR TO us because he wrote so much of the New Testament. He was the human author of a Gospel and three epistles that bear his name, as well as the book of Revelation. Aside from Luke and the apostle Paul, John wrote more of the New Testament than any other human author. Scripture is therefore full of insights into his personality and character. In fact, most of what we know about John we extract from his own writings. We see through his Gospel how he views Christ. We observe in his epistles how he dealt with the church. And in the book of Revelation we even see the future through the visions God gave him.

Both Scripture and history record that John played a major role in the early church. Of course, he was a member of the Lord's most intimate inner circle, but he was by no means the dominant member of that group. He was the younger brother of James, and although he was a frequent companion to Peter in the first twelve chapters of Acts, Peter remained in the foreground and John remained in the background.

But John also had his turn at leadership. Ultimately, because he outlived all the others, he filled a unique and patriarchal role in the early church that lasted nearly to the end of the first century and reached deep into Asia Minor. His personal influence was therefore indelibly stamped on the primitive church, well into the post-apostolic era.

Almost everything we observed about the personality and character of James is also true of John, the younger half of the Boanerges Brothers' duo. The two men had similar temperaments, and as we noted in the previous chapter, they were inseparable in the Gospel accounts. John was right there with James, eager to call down fire from heaven against the Samaritans. He was also in the thick of the debates about who was the greatest. His zeal and ambition mirrored that of his elder brother.

Therefore it is all the more remarkable that John has often been nicknamed "the apostle of love." Indeed, he wrote more than any other New Testament author about the importance of love—laying particular stress on the Christian's love for Christ, Christ's love for His church, and the love for one another that is supposed to be the hallmark of true believers. The theme of love flows through his writings.

But love was a quality he learned from Christ, not something that came naturally to him. In his younger years, he was as much a Son of Thunder as James. If you imagine that John was the way he was often portrayed in medieval art—a meek, mild, pale-skinned, effeminate person, lying around on Jesus' shoulder looking up at Him with a dove-eyed stare—forget that caricature. He was rugged and hard-edged, just like the rest of the fishermen-disciples. And again, he was every bit as intolerant, ambitious, zealous, and explosive as his elder brother.

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