John the Apostle

“ All but superficial readers must perceive that in the writings and character of St. John there is from time to time a tonic and wholesome severity. Art and modern literature have agreed to bestow upon the Apostle of love the features of a languid and inert tenderness. It is forgotten that St. John was the son of thunder; that he could once wish to bring down fire from heaven; and that the natural character is transfigured not inverted by grace. The Apostle uses great plainness of speech. For him a lie is a lie, and darkness is never courteously called light. ”

“ And I have chosen you to do this for me, John, because you are the youngest and will therefore very likely outlive these other apostles.
“Once we called you and your brother sons of thunder. You started out with us strong-minded and intolerant, but you have changed much since you wanted me to call fire down upon the heads of ignorant and thoughtless un- believers. And you must change yet more. You should become the apostle of the new commandment which I have this night given you. Dedicate your life to teaching your brethren how to love one another, even as I have loved you.” ”

“ But these notes imply no apostolic claim on the part of the author, and, although their author is anonymous, the likelihood is that their composition by the great Asiatic presbyter John led afterwards to their incorporation in the “instrumentum” of John the apostle’s writings, when the prestige of the latter had obscured the former. All hypotheses as to their pseudonymity or composition by different hands may be dismissed. They would never have floated down the stream of tradition except on the support of some primitive authority. ”

“ Nor are they John’s, if John means the son of Zebedee. The latter conclusion depends upon the particular hypothesis adopted with regard to the general Johannine problem, yet even when it is held that John the apostle (q.v.) survived to old age in Ephesus, the second and third epistles may be fairly ascribed (with Erasmus, Grotius, Credner, Bretschneider, Reuss, &c.) to John the presbyter [1] , as several circles in the early church held (“Opinio a plerisque tradita,” Jerome: De vir. ill. 18) . An apostle indeed might call himself a presbyter (cf. 1 Pet. v. 1) . ”

“ John the Evangelist, the Apostle who is distinguished in Holy Scripture as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and who is represented as leaning on the bosom of the Lord at the Last Supper. Now, we may ask what is the reason the Lord showed this marked preference and especial affection for St. John above the other Apostles? It must have been because St. John was more like the Lord than any of the others, for God must always love us in proportion as we approach His divine image and likeness. ”

“ Listen to a tale, which is not a mere tale, but a narrative [10] concerning John the apostle, which has been handed down and treasured up in memory. For when, after the tyrant’s death, [11] he returned from the isle of Patmos to Ephesus, he went away upon their invitation to the neighboring territories of the Gentiles, to appoint bishops in some places, in other places to set in order whole churches, elsewhere to choose to the ministry some one [12] of those that were pointed out by the Spirit. ”

“ After this angel had communicated to John many great and important events yet to transpire, the Apostle was so overawed by his presence that he fell at his feet to worship him; whereas the angel said, "See that thou do it not; I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have kept the testimony of Jesus: worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." (Rev., xix, 10.) In other words, he had held the holy Priesthood on the earth and had officiated therein; he had been subjected to all the obloquy, contumely and reproach which the Prophets of God generally suffered. ”

“ John was with Jesus in Bethany in Peræa, when there came the sad, brief, confiding message from Mary and Martha, "Lord, behold, he whom Thou [Pg 122] lovest is sick." Doubtless it touched the heart of the apostle as well as that of his Master, whose response he records: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby." We are reminded of John's own words concerning the change of water into wine: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory." ”

“ Keep yourselves from idols. . .An admonition to the newly converted Christians, lest conversing with heathens and idolaters, they might fall back into the sin of idolatry, which may be the sin unto death here mentioned by St. John.
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE The Apostle commends Electa and her family for their steadfastness in the true faith and exhorts them to persevere, lest they lose the reward of their labours. He exhorts them to love one another. But with heretics to have no society, even not to salute them. ”

“ John with a stern reverence for the accuracy of historical truth, and tells us what, in the estimation of those who were near him in time, the Apostle thought of the lawfulness of ideological religious romance. It was said that a presbyter of Asia Minor confessed that he was the author of certain apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla—probably the same strange but unquestionably very ancient document with the same title which is still preserved. The man's motive does not seem to have been selfish. ”

“ John is the least likely to fall into the exaggeration of libelling the flesh as essentially evil. Is it not he who, whether in his Gospel, or in his Epistles, delights to speak of the flesh of Jesus, to record words in which He refers to it? [192] Still the flesh brings us into contact with all sins which are sins that spring from, and end in, the senses. Shall we ask for a catalogue of particulars from St. John? Nay, we cannot expect that the virgin Apostle, who received the virgin Mother from the Virgin Lord upon the cross, will sully his virgin pen with words so abhorred. ”

“ John is no mere doctrinalist he is yet the greatest theologian the Church has ever seen. (3) Once more; if the Apostle's Christianity is no mere humanitarian sentiment to encourage the cultivation of miscellaneous acts of good-nature, yet it is deeply pervaded by a sense of the integral connection of practical love of man with the love of God. ”

“ Eating the book symbolizes an intimate union with the Holy Ghost by which the mind of the Apostle is illuminated with the spirit of prophecy. St. John finds the book sweet to the taste because it announces mercy to the elect and the final triumph of the Church. It is bitter in so far as it predicts dire persecution for the Church and terrible punishment for the wicked.
11. The angel commands St. John to announce to all the prophecy communicated to him concerning the reign of Antichrist, the subsequent triumph of the Church, and the final persecution under Gog and Magog. ”

“ There is love in its energy and reality; in its effort and sincerity—active and honest, without indolence and without pretence. We may well be reminded here of another familiar story of St. John at Ephesus. When too old to walk himself to the assembly of the Church, he was carried there. The Apostle who had lain upon the breast of Jesus; who had derived from direct communication with Him those words and thoughts which are the life of the elect; was expected to address the faithful. The light of the Ephesian summer fell upon his white hair ”

“ John, or rather with the life of St. John himself, who addresses them under the warning of removal for their failure. The throne at Jerusalem being gone, there was still, by him who had been there with the Lord, a recognition of the churches as something upon earth: there was nothing sealed in this. But if we take the Apostle as the mystic representative of the dispensation in its condition after the departure of St. Peter and St. Paul, [2] then it is the protraction of that state of things, till the Church, as a dispensation, is spued out of Christ’s mouth ”

“ John's style. Can it be that something (possibly the glorious death of martyrdom by which Timothy died) led St. John to use words which were probably familiar to Ephesian Christians?
However this may be, let us live by and learn from those lovely words. Our poverty wants grace, our guilt wants mercy, our misery wants peace. Let us ever keep the Apostle's order. Do not let us put peace, our feeling of peace, first. The emotionalists' is a topsy-turvy theology. ”

“ The invisible Person who is the Light of men, makes Himself known to that organ which is created to receive His light. His life, His peace, are as near to us as they were to those to whom He showed Himself alive after His Passion. Our knowledge that He is risen may be as certain as theirs, and essentially of the same kind.
With this sign to the unbelieving Apostle, I suppose St. John's narrative originally closed; for he adds immediately: 'And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. ”

“ John was the only one who had not entirely abandoned his Master; he had followed Him to the midnight trial, he had been present at the Crucifixion, and been the recipient of a pathetic commission thereat—namely, to take care of Jesus's mother. Peter now felt that John was a worthier leader of the Apostolic Church than he himself could hope to be. No doubt the arrest of Jesus had drawn them more closely together. John had done him the service of obtaining his admission to the house of Caiaphas. ”

“ No; the dispensation of the fullness of times has got to be restored to introduce all that has been spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world was. The Apostle John, when banished to the Isle of Patmos says that he saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people. ”

“ Every pilgrim of time in the continuous course of his daily walk, outward and inward, has by the possession of that Gospel contracted an obligation to be walking by the one great life-walk of the Pilgrim of eternity. The very depth and intensity of feeling half hushes the Apostle's [Pg 119] voice. Instead of the beloved Name which all who love it will easily supply, [167] St. John uses the reverential He, the pronoun which specially belongs to Christ in the vocabulary of the Epistle. [168] "He that saith he abideth in Him" is bound, even as He once walked, to be ever walking. ”

“ To this period of his life, are referred those stories of his miracles and actions, with which the ancient fictitious apostolic narratives are so crowded,――John being the subject of more ancient traditions than any other apostle. Some of those are so respectable and reasonable in their character, as to deserve a place here, although none of them are of such antiquity as to deserve any confidence, on points where fiction has often been so busy. The first which follows, is altogether the most ancient of all apostolic stories, which are not in the New Testament ”

“ Tradition records the fondness of one of the twelve apostles—the loved apostle John—for animals. Every one has heard of the tame partridge he took pleasure in feeding. He was seen tending his bird by a passing hunter, who expressed his surprise to see the apostle, so renowned for his age and sanctity, thus employing his time. ”

“ The time came when there was no longer occasion for the other ten apostles to be "moved with indignation concerning James and John," because of their pride and ambitious seeking. This John is the disciple whom, with all his imperfections, Jesus loved most of all; this the man known as the most lovable [Pg 119] of men; this the one who well-nigh reached human perfection through his ardent and ever increasing love for Jesus; this the one who is called the Apostle of Love.
[Pg 120]
CHAPTER XVIII John and the Family of Bethany
"He entered into a certain village ”

“ John himself, recount his personal reminiscences of the great Apostle; another, who held this very see of Ephesus, and writing less than a century after the Apostle's death was linked with the past by a chain of relatives all bishops in the Christian Church; a third who also flourished about the close of the century and numbered among his teachers an old man from this very district--are the principal, because the most distinct ”

“ It was enough that Christ had suffered and died for them, in his boundless love, and that their souls would be saved in consequence. And as to doctrines, all they sought to know was what our Lord and his apostles said. Hence there was among them no system of theology, as we understand it, beyond the Apostles' Creed. But in the early part of the second century Justin Martyr, a converted philosopher, devoted much labor to a metaphysical development of the doctrine drawn from the expressions of the Apostle John in reference to the Logos, or Word, as identical with the Son. ”

“ But, says the apostle, "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual." In his letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 6:14) , he enumerates them as the girdle of truth, the breast-plate of righteousness, the preparation of the gospel of peace for sandals, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. This is the "whole armour of God" which, "the people of the holies" are permitted to use. The two-edged sword of the spirit is the only offensive weapon they are allowed to wield in combat with the Beast. ”