Discovering the Young Church Chapter 8: John
Chapter 8. John
John was with his friend Andrew when they first heard about Jesus of Nazareth. They were both fishermen and they had been listening to John the Baptist down by the river Jordan where it enters the Dead Sea. John the Baptist had pointed them toward Jesus, and Jesus had invited them to come and follow him. Simon Peter was also called later that day, so these three fishermen, John, Andrew and Simon Peter, were the first disciples.
Later, back up along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus again came to them. This time John was working with his brother James and with Zebedee, his father, in their large fishing boats. Zebedee was fairly wealthy and employed a number of fishermen as well as servants. Jesus called them to leave their nets, follow him, and learn to ‘catch men’. And immediately they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and went with Jesus 1. John was not to know that that decision to leave his work as a fisherman was going to change the rest of his life and give him seventy years of incredible hardship and happiness.
John was high-spirited, zealous and impetuous. With his brother, they were nicknamed ‘the sons of thunder’ for their capacity to shout and lose their tempers. The two sets of brothers – Andrew and Simon Peter, and James and John – became the nucleus within the band of disciples.
Frequently scripture mentions that Peter, James and John went ahead with Jesus and they formed a close personal band. They were together at the transfiguration of Jesus when God revealed that Jesus was his Son. The three of them went with Jesus into the inner room of Jairus’ house when Jesus raised his little daughter from the dead.
It was the same three that were with Jesus in the last moments of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus needed close friends and John was his closest. John and Peter prepared the upper room for the Passover meal the night that Jesus was betrayed and, at the table, John sat next to Jesus.
The next day, when Jesus was crucified, only one disciple remained at the cross and that was John. It was into John’s care that Jesus entrusted his widowed mother Mary, and John took her into his own house 2. If John’s mother, Salome, was the same Salome who was with Mary at the cross, then she was the sister of Mary. It was therefore natural that Jesus should commit the care of his mother into the hands of John, and for John to care for his aunt 3. Tradition indicates that John cared for Mary throughout the rest of her life and she travelled with him to Ephesus, where he ministered. There is strong local tradition that Mary died there, and the supposed burial site has been sacred for centuries.
On the morning of the resurrection, Peter and John ran to the tomb on hearing that the great stone had been rolled away and that Jesus was not in the tomb. John got there first, but he did not go into the tomb. The older Peter rushed straight in and saw the empty shelf upon which the dead body of Jesus had lain. It was John who believed first in the resurrection and was first to recognise the risen Jesus on the seashore.
When the church was established on the day of Pentecost, John and Peter proclaimed that Jesus had risen from the dead and was able to forgive the sins of those that believed in him. Immediately they were imprisoned and this was the first of a lifetime of difficulties, the price of that witness.
Shortly after this, John’s brother, James, was murdered by Herod Agrippa the First, so becoming the first disciple to be martyred. John stayed in Jerusalem and continued to witness to his faith for a number of years, being known as one of the pillars of the church.
After the mention of his name in Act 8, John is not again mentioned in Acts, and is only once mentioned by Paul, soon after Paul’s conversion. Most of our knowledge of his life, writings and death comes from tradition recorded by early historians. They do not give us a great deal of factual information, although Theophylact indicates he was punished under the persecution of the Emperor Nero, and the most reliable of the historians – Irenaeus, Eusebius and Jerome – all attest to the fact that he was exiled on the island of Patmos during the persecution of the Emperor Domitian. Five consecutive emperors persecuted the church during the lifetime of John.
Pastor in Ephesus
Some years later, John travelled from Jerusalem to be the pastor of what became a powerful church in the city of Ephesus. Ephesus was one of the great Roman cities on the western shore of Turkey by the Aegean Sea.
Paul had established the church in Ephesus and had ministered there personally for three years, the longest of any of his ministries, from AD 52 to 55. From Ephesus, Paul sent out younger ministers to evangelise the surrounding valleys and the villages and towns along the nearby rivers. So systematic and sweeping was this outreach from Ephesus that ‘all the people who lived in the province of Asia, both Jews and Gentiles, heard the word of the Lord’ 4. Peter also had contact with the churches in the area, yet the records of the church historians all centre round the pre-eminence of John’s influence.
Since the earliest of times, there has been some confusion over the authorship of the Gospel, the epistles and Revelation. Tradition is strong that all the works emanated from Ephesus, although scholars assign the three works to various authors with little agreement except that different authors from the same circle or school under the influence of John the apostle may be involved.
Ephesus was the city of the Temple of Artemis, the largest building in the world. It had a beautiful natural harbour which has long since silted up. It was the major city and gateway into Asia and housed the largest bank in the empire. It had also been the centre of opposition to Paul and the riots against Paul and his co-workers.
The Evidence of History
In Ephesus John ministered among the people for decades, until advanced old age. All of the early church historians like Irenaeus, Eusebius, Papias and Dionysius, who wrote not long after John’s death, referred to his ministry in the great city. There is little doubt concerning the accuracy of this fact.
Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria at the end of the second century, argued that the John who names himself as the author of Revelation was a disciple of John the apostle who wrote the Gospel, and quoted as evidence that both of their tombs were in Ephesus.
Papias came from Pontus and was bishop of Hierapolis, in the Lycus Valley, not far from Ephesus, during the first half of the second century. He claimed to have been a hearer of John and a contemporary of Polycarp. His five volumes have been lost, but passages have been quoted by Eusebius and Irenaeus. Papias spoke of the ‘elders of the faith’, meaning those second generation Christians who were hearers of the words of the disciples, but includes among them John the Elder. He may be referring to the apostle who by advanced age was known as ‘the elder’ or to a separate John in Ephesus who had been a disciple of the apostle John.
Bishop Eusebius believed that there were two named John in Ephesus, one John the apostle and the other John the Elder. Clement of Alexandria indicated that the apostle John moved from Patmos to Ephesus after the Emperor Domitian’s death. Irenaeus who came from the area near Ephesus, claims to have heard Polycarp, who died a martyr in AD 156, saying he had been appointed as Bishop of Smyrna by the apostles, but particularly by John. Polycrates, who was bishop of Ephesus at the end of the second century, stated that the apostle John died in Ephesus where he was buried.
Certainly, by the time of Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, a large church was built upon the site of his burial. By the time of the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, Augustine was reporting the rumour that the ground over John’s grave moved and down in time to the saint’s breathing.
I have visited the huge remains of the basilica in Ephesus, built by Emperor Justinian (AD 527-565) to honour St John the Divine. It was built over an early church perhaps built by Constantine the Great, and beneath the foundations of this earlier church can still be seen the burial vault which lay beneath the original altar.
This custom of burying a saint beneath the altar was also observed in both of the original churches built over the burial places of Paul and Peter. When new basilicas were built, the remains of the saints were shifted to a new resting place beneath the main altar. This happened with St Peter’s, Rome, and recently remains of Peter’s tomb were uncovered during some reconstruction work beneath the main altar.
The evidence for the authorship of the Gospel, the epistles and Revelation is still the subject of contemporary debate. Professors C.H. Dodd, W.F. Howard, J. Massyngberde Ford, Oscar Cullmann, and C.K. Barratt have all written scholarly and differing interpretations in the last few decades.
Some see the apostle John as the author of Revelation with the epistles and the Gospel being written by members of his circle of disciples, one or more of whom may have also been called John the Elder. This John the Elder succeeded John the apostle and led the circle of Christian leaders influenced by the apostle in Ephesus.
Because the evidence and the scholarship is so divided on this issue of authorship, which lies outside the purpose of this book, we will use the term “John” to mean the author of all five books bearing his name, and identifying him with the apostle John. I prefer the view that they were written by a Johannine circle who wrote in the spirit of the apostle.
The Gospel of John
It was in Ephesus that ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, as John referred to himself, wrote the great Gospel that bore his name. It was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in AD 70. The Gospel was the result of John’s thirty or more years of mature thinking about those three years he spent travelling with Jesus listening to his teaching. He wrote with intimacy and personal knowledge of the events surrounding the life of Jesus.
His own Jewish background flows out of his writings as he speaks about key ideas from the Old Testament – about word, life, light, shepherd, spirit, bread, vine and love. There are many Semitic literary touches, such as the use of parallelisms, where a teaching is repeated paralleling the first presentation. He gives us a great deal of eyewitness detail and personal information on minor characters involved in the life of Jesus. He mentions every disciple by name except himself. He presents eyewitness details of the Last Supper.
In the last two decades, it has been revealed that John shares with the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls some parallel texts, which is understandable since he and they had access to the Old Testament. Like the Essenes, John knew the land well and the religious-cultural milieu in which they lived.
The Dead Sea Scrolls have many teachings that are not compatible with New Testament teachings. The disciples believed that Jesus was the Messiah who had come as a suffering servant to redeem Israel, whereas the Essenes were looking to the fulfilment of Mosaic Law by an all-conquering messiah. Salvation for the Essenes was only for a few who were the elect because they were children of the light, whereas the disciples preached salvation by faith in Jesus as Christ.
The Scrolls have many similar features to that of the Gospel of John in that they emphasise sin, repentance and baptism by water and by spirit. This is, of course, reflected in the teaching of John the Baptist who probably came from this community, and who was baptising in the Jordan only a few kilometres to the northeast. John’s Gospel gives the fullest account of the teaching of The Baptist.
The Essenes also saw the world as a scene of the conflict between good an evil, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, all themes developed in John’s Gospel. Their concepts of dualism between the sons of light and the sons of darkness go far beyond the emphasis found in the Gospel or the epistles, but they are still there and in conflict with each other, as are the forces of truth and falsehood. John’s use of the themes of ‘the light of life’ and ‘the sons of light’ are both phrases found among the Essene writings.
What can be made of this is that in the time when Jesus came preaching, there was a widespread community interest in a vital religious truth and in reinterpreting the Old Testament. The vital interpretation of religious truth in the Jewish community indicates that earlier attempts of scholars to align New Testament teaching with Greek traditions are utterly unnecessary.
John’s prologue to his Gospel, one of the finest pieces of religious writing known, parallels the Essene beliefs that light, truth and wisdom were there in the beginning of creation with God. John went further to indicate that these concepts were the eternal Christ himself.
The oldest manuscripts in existence that quote the Gospel, even if in fragment, attest to John’s authorship: the Rylands Papyrus 457 and the Egerton Papyrus (both written before AD 150). Early Gnostic writers knew John as the author, as did all of the early church historians.
John stated quite clearly his purpose in writing: ‘these have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him, you may have life’ 5 . The whole point of John’s writing was that people would understand that Jesus was the Word of God made flesh, the Messiah, the Son of God, and that those who heard this news might obey and live him as did John and the other disciples.
The Gospel he wrote was carefully structured. He mentions seven miracles which were signs that Jesus was sent by God to be the Messiah and seven ‘I am’ passages. Of all Gospels, this is the one with the greatest spiritual understanding and teaching.
The Epistles of John
John wrote three letters from Ephesus. He writes as ‘the Elder’, one of the pieces of internal evidence that suggests the author is different from that of the Gospel. The letters may have been written by another John in Ephesus who was close to John the apostle but who used the term ‘the Elder’ to differentiate himself.
He writes to protect the younger believers who are his ‘beloved little children’. The time is urgent because there are some false teachers who are active in the fellowship and some false prophets and deceivers who are attempting to lead the believers away from the path of truth. He writes forcefully, pointing out the errors of those teachers who deny that Jesus is the Son of God who came in flesh to save humankind. He speaks against false prophets, deceivers, ‘anti-Christs’, and incorrect teaching that denies Jesus’ pre-existence, real incarnation and the provision of his salvation.
The last two of the three letters were shorter notes, just long enough to fill a standard piece of papyrus. One was written to a church and the other to a church leader concerning matters of personal relationships that troubles the members of a local church.
The Revelation of John
The persecutions that swept across the Roman world following Nero, under the leadership of Roman emperors like Vespasian and Domitian, caused much suffering and anguish for the early Christians and for John himself. Nero’s persecution had been confined to Rome itself, but the succeeding emperors launched a persecution that covered the empire. The persecutions of Nero had been sporadic, but those that followed were systematic. Even to claim the name of Christ was enough to bring execution during the period of bitter persecutions.
John suffered greatly, being dropped into a vat of boiling oil but, according to the early historian Tertullian, he survived without serious injury. John was then sent into exile on the island of Patmos, a windswept rocky island off the coast of Turkey. The emperor Domitian banished his nice Flavia Domitilla to a small island, Pontia, and executed her husband because they had been converted. Her nobleman husband from the royal household may be the ‘most excellent Theophilus’ to whom Luke wrote his Gospel and Acts.
Such punishment may have been confiscation of all property and civil rights and banishment from family and friends for life known in later centuries as ‘transportation for the term of his natural life’. It this was so, then John would have been free to move round the island, to earn a living, and to study, write and pray. Some significant political prisoners were treated in this fashion.
This small, volcanic island in the southeast Aegean is only forty kilometres in circumference. It is fairly barren. On the south side of the island is the traditional cave where John is believed to have written his revelation. Above it today lies the monastery of St John the Divine. Looking out from the cave, one can see the sea stretching to the horizon, and beyond it to the east lies Turkey, sixty kilometres away. The sea plays a significant part in John’s writings, and in Revelation the sea is mentioned twenty-five times.
On the island of Patmos John was separated from the Christians in Turkey who were also suffering for their faith. It was while he was there he had a vision of Jesus risen from the dead who was still lord of history and who would triumph over the Romans and all the worst that they could do.
His main concern, therefore, was to convey a message of encouragement to others who were suffering persecution and to remind them to be faithful and to live with hope. But apart from calling the believers to be faithful under persecution, John also wanted to correct the rise of doctrinal error and immoral behaviour. The churches were under internal threat as well as external persecution.
John’s letter had a special message for the Christians in the seven churches that were established in the main cities within a radius of 150 miles of Ephesus. He said:
I am John, your brother, and as a follower of Jesus I am your partner in patiently enduring the suffering that comes to those who belong to his kingdom. I was put on the island of Patmos because I had proclaimed God’s word and the truth that Jesus revealed. On the Lord’s Day the Spirit took control of me, and I heard a loud voice that sounded like a trumpet, speaking behind me. It said, ‘write down what you see, and send the book to the churches in the seven cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea 6.
His book was visionary, like a dream of what would be happening in the future, and underlining it all was the tremendous insight into how God is in control.
After some years of exile, John was released from the island of Patmos and allowed to return to Ephesus. This probably happened at the end of the reign of Domitian when Nerva became for a brief period emperor and acted with more clemency towards people who had been imprisoned during his predecessor’s reign.
The old man, now in his nineties, returned to the people whom he had encouraged during the dark days of persecution. He was to live for several more years, dying peacefully during the time of Trajan, which meant some time after AD 98.
One of the early church historians, Irenaeus, said that in advanced old age and weakness, he was frequently carried to meetings where he could always greet the believers with the statement, ‘little children, love one another’. The grand old apostle of love had come a long way from the time when, as a young man, he and his brother were named ‘sons of thunder’.
Each of the Gospel writers was given a symbol representing their special contribution to the life of the church. The symbol of John has always been an eagle. Many large, brass eagle Bible stands are in churches around the world. John was given the eagle because it was said of all creatures the eagle is the only one to be able to look directly into the face of the sun without blinking. So John the apostle, in the most spiritual writing of all the Gospels, looked directly into the face of the Son of God and wrote for us eternal truth.
Endnotes:
1. Mark 1:17-20
2. John 19:26
3. Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:4041; 16:1; Luke 8:3; John 19:26
4. Acts 19:10
5. John 20:31
6. Revelation 1:9-11
For personal reading
Theme: An apostle remembers
Monday: John’s call (John 1:35-37, Mark 3:13-19)
Tuesday: After the resurrection (John 20:1-10, 21:20-23)
Wednesday: John’s test of righteousness (1 John 1:5 – 2:6)
Thursday: Victory through faith (1 John 5:1-4)
Friday: John in exile (Revelation 1:1-10)
Saturday: Strength during persecution (1 Peter 4:12-19)
Sunday: John’s test of love (1 John 2:7-17)
For group study
Topic: The apostle of love
1. From the Gospel accounts, what picture emerges of the sort of person that John was?
2. What arguments does John use in the Gospel to show that Jesus was who he claimed he was?
3. What was the key emphasis in John’s ministry?
4. According to 1 John 2:7-17, what is the test of true faith?
5. How would you react to the suffering endured by John and the other Christians during the reign of Nero and the following emperors?
