1. BEGINNINGS
John 1:29-51.
The section of the Gospel history above
indicated, possesses the interest peculiar to the beginnings of all things that
have grown to greatness. Here are exhibited to our view the infant church in
its cradle, the petty sources of the River of Life, the earliest blossoms of
Christian faith, the humble origin of the mighty empire of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
All beginnings are more or less obscure in
appearance, but none were ever more obscure than those of Christianity. What an
insignificant event in the history of the church, not to say of the world, this
first meeting of Jesus of Nazareth with five humble men, Andrew, Peter, Philip,
Nathanael, and another unnamed! It actually seems almost too trivial to find a
place even in the evangelic narrative. For we have here to do not with any
formal solemn call to the great office of the apostleship, or even with the
commencement of an uninterrupted discipleship, but at the utmost with the
beginnings of an acquaintance with and of faith in Jesus on the part of certain
individuals who subsequently became constant attendants on His person, and
ultimately apostles of His religion. Accordingly we find no mention made in the
three first Gospels of the events here recorded.
Far from being surprised at the silence of the
synoptical evangelists, one is rather tempted to wonder how it came to pass
that John, the author of the fourth Gospel, after the lapse of so many years,
thought it worth while to relate incidents so minute, especially in such close
proximity to the sublime sentences with which his Gospel begins. But we are
kept from such incredulous wonder by the reflection, that facts objectively
insignificant may be very important to the feelings of those whom they
personally concern. What if John were himself one of the five who on the
present occasion became acquainted with Jesus? That would make a wide
difference between him and the other evangelists, who could know of the
incidents here related, if they knew of them at all, only at second hand. In
the case supposed, it would not be surprising that to his latest hour John
remembered with emotion the first time he saw the Incarnate Word, and deemed
the minutest memorials of that time unspeakably precious. First meetings are
sacred as well as last ones, especially such as are followed by a momentous
history, and accompanied, as is apt to be the case, with omens prophetic of the
future.[1.1] Such omens were not wanting in connection with the first meeting
between Jesus and the five disciples. Did not the Baptist then first give to
Jesus the name "Lamb of God," so exactly descriptive of His earthly mission and
destiny? Was not Nathanael's doubting question, "Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth?" an ominous indication of a conflict with unbelief awaiting the
Messiah? And what a happy omen of an opening era of wonders to be wrought by
divine grace and power was contained in the promise of Jesus to the pious,
though at first doubting, Israelite: "Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and
the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man"!
That John, the writer of the fourth Gospel,
really was the fifth unnamed disciple, may be regarded as certain. It is his
way throughout his Gospel, when alluding to himself, to use a periphrasis, or
to leave, as here, a blank where his name should be. One of the two disciples
who heard the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of God was the evangelist himself,
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, being the other.[1.2]
The impressions produced on our minds by these
little anecdotes of the infancy of the Gospel must be feeble, indeed, as
compared with the emotions awakened by the memory of them in the breast of the
aged apostle by whom they are recorded. It would not, however, be creditable
either to our intelligence or to our piety if we could peruse this page of the
evangelic history unmoved, as if it were utterly devoid of interest. We should
address ourselves to the study of the simple story with somewhat of the feeling
with which men make pilgrimages to sacred places; for indeed the ground is
holy.
The scene of the occurrences in which we are
concerned was in the region of Persia, on the banks of the Jordan, at the lower
part of its course. The persons who make their appearance on the scene were all
natives of Galilee, and their presence here is due to the fame of the
remarkable man whose office it was to be the forerunner of the Christ. John,
surnamed the Baptist, who had spent his youth in the desert as a hermit, living
on locusts and wild honey, and clad in a garment of camel's hair, had come
forth from his retreat, and appeared among men as a prophet of God. The burden
of his prophecy was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In a short
time many were attracted from all quarters to see and hear him. Of those who
flocked to his preaching, the greater number went as they came; but not a few
were deeply impressed, and, confessing their sins, underwent the rite of
baptism in the waters of the Jordan. Of those who were baptized, a select
number formed themselves into a circle of disciples around the person of the
Baptist, among whom were at least two, and most probably the whole, of the five
men mentioned by the evangelist. Previous converse with the Baptist had
awakened in these disciples a desire to see Jesus, and prepared them for
believing in Him. In his communications to the people around him John made
frequent allusions to One who should come after himself. He spoke of this
coming One in language fitted to awaken great expectations. He called himself,
with reference to the coming One, a mere voice in the wilderness, crying,
"Prepare ye the way of the Lord." At another time he said, "I baptize with
water; but there standeth One among you whom ye know not: He it is who, coming
after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to
unloose." This great One was none other than the Messiah, the Son of God, the
King of Israel.
Such discourses were likely to result, and by the
man of God who uttered them they were intended to result, in the disciples of
the Baptist leaving him and going over to Jesus. And we see here the process of
transition actually commencing. We do not affirm that the persons here named
finally quitted the Baptist's company at this time, to become henceforth
regular followers of Jesus. But an acquaintance now begins which will end in
that. The bride is introduced to the Bridegroom, and the marriage will come in
due season; not to the chagrin but to the joy of the Bridegroom's
friend.[1.3]
How easily and artlessly does the mystic bride,
as represented by these five disciples, become acquainted with her heavenly
Bridegroom! The account of their meeting is idyllic in its simplicity, and
would only be spoiled by a commentary. There is no need of formal introduction:
they all introduce each other. Even John and Andrew were not formally
introduced to Jesus by the Baptist; they rather introduced themselves. The
exclamation of the desert prophet on seeing Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world!" repeated next day in an abbreviated
form, was the involuntary utterance of one absorbed in his own thoughts, rather
than the deliberate speech of one who was directing his disciples to leave
himself and go over to Him of whom he spake. The two disciples, on the other
hand, in going away after the personage whose presence had been so impressively
announced, were not obeying an order given by their old master, but were simply
following the dictates of feelings which had been awakened in their breasts by
all they had heard him say of Jesus, both on the present and on former
occasions. They needed no injunction to seek the acquaintance of one in whom
they felt so keenly interested: all they needed was to know that this was He.
They were as anxious to see the Messianic King as the world is to see the face
of a secular prince.
It is natural that we should scan the evangelical
narrative for indications of character with reference to those who, in the way
so quaintly described, for the first time met Jesus. Little is said of the five
disciples, but there is enough to show that they were all pious men. What they
found in their new friend indicates what they wanted to find. They evidently
belonged to the select band who waited for the consolation of Israel, and
anxiously looked for Him who should fulfil God's promises and realize the hopes
of all devout souls. Besides this general indication of character supplied in
their common confession of faith, a few facts are stated respecting these first
believers in Jesus tending to make us a little better acquainted with them. Two
of them certainly, all of them probably, had been disciples of the Baptist.
This fact is decisive as to their moral earnestness. From such a quarter none
but spiritually earnest men were likely to come. For if the followers of John
were at all like himself, they were men who hungered and thirsted after real
righteousness, being sick of the righteousness then in vogue; they said Amen in
their hearts to the preacher's withering exposure of the hollowness of current
religious profession and of the worthlessness of fashionable good works, and
sighed for a sanctity other than that of pharisaic superstition and
ostentation; their conscience acknowledged the truth of the prophetic oracle,
"We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken
us away;" and they prayed fervently for the reviving of true religion, for the
coming of the divine kingdom, for the advent of the Messianic King with fan in
His hand to separate chaff from wheat, and to put right all things which were
wrong. Such, without doubt, were the sentiments of those who had the honor to
be the first disciples of Christ.
Simon, best known of all the twelve under the
name of Peter, is introduced to us here, through the prophetic insight of
Jesus, on the good side of his character as the man of rock. When this disciple
was brought by his brother Andrew into the presence of his future Master,
Jesus, we are told, "beheld him and said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou
shalt be called Cephas"--Cephas meaning in Syriac, as the evangelist explains,
the same which Petros signifies in Greek. The penetrating glance of Christ
discerned in this disciple latent capacities of faith and devotion, the
rudiments of ultimate strength and power.
What manner of man Philip was the evangelist does
not directly tell us, but merely whence he came. From the present passage, and
from other notices in the Gospels, the conclusion has been drawn that he was
characteristically deliberate, slow in arriving at decision; and for proof of
this view, reference has been made to the "phlegmatic circumstantiality"[1.4]
with which he described to Nathanael the person of Him with whom he had just
become acquainted.[1.5] But these words of Philip, and all that we elsewhere
read of him, rather suggest to us the idea of the earnest inquirer after truth,
who has thoroughly searched the Scriptures and made himself acquainted with the
Messiah of promise and prophecy, and to whom the knowledge of God is the summum
bonum. In the solicitude manifested by this disciple to win his friend
Nathanael over to the same faith we recognize that generous sympathetic spirit,
characteristic of earnest inquirers, which afterwards revealed itself in him
when he became the bearer of the request of devout Greeks for permission to see
Jesus.[1.6]
The notices concerning Nathanael, Philip's
acquaintance, are more detailed and more interesting than in the case of any
other of the five; and it is not a little surprising that we should be told so
much in this place about one concerning whom we otherwise know almost nothing.
It is even not quite certain that he belonged to the circle of the twelve,
though the probability is, that he is to be identified with the Bartholomew of
the synoptical catalogues--his full name in that case being Nathanael the son
of Tolmai. It is strongly in favor of this supposition that the name
Bartholomew comes immediately after Philip in the lists of the apostles.[1.7]
Be this as it may, we know on the best authority that Nathanael was a man of
great moral excellence. No sooner had Jesus seen him than He exclaimed, "Behold
an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" The words suggest the idea of one
whose heart was pure; in whom was no doublemindedness, impure motive, pride, or
unholy passion: a man of gentle, meditative spirit, in whose mind heaven lay
reflected like the blue sky in a still lake on a calm summer day. He was a man
much addicted to habits of devotion: he had been engaged in spiritual exercises
under cover of a fig-tree just before he met with Jesus. So we are justified in
concluding, from the deep impression made on his mind by the words of Jesus,
"Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw
thee." Nathanael appears to have understood these words as meaning, "I saw into
thy heart, and knew how thou wast occupied, and therefore I pronounced thee an
Israelite indeed." He accepted the statement made to him by Jesus as an
evidence of preternatural knowledge, and therefore he forthwith made the
confession, "Rabbi! Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel"--the
King of that sacred commonwealth whereof you say I am a citizen.
It is remarkable that this man, so highly endowed
with the moral dispositions necessary for seeing God, should have been the only
one of all the five disciples who manifested any hesitancy about receiving
Jesus as the Christ. When Philip told him that he had found the Messiah in
Jesus of Nazareth, he asked incredulously, "Can there any good thing come out
of Nazareth?" One hardly expects such prejudice in one so meek and amiable; and
yet, on reflection, we perceive it to be quite characteristic. Nathanael's
prejudice against Nazareth sprung not from pride, as in the case of the people
of Judea who despised the Galileans in general, but from humility. He was a
Galilean himself, and as much an object of Jewish contempt as were the
Nazarenes. His inward thought was, "Surely the Messiah can never come from
among a poor despised people such as we are--from Nazareth or any other
Galilean town or village!"[1.8] He timidly allowed his mind to be biased by a
current opinion originating in feelings with which he had no sympathy; a fault
common to men whose piety, though pure and sincere, defers too much to human
authority, and who thus become the slaves of sentiments utterly unworthy of
them.
While Nathanael was not free from prejudices, he
showed his guilelessness in being willing to have them removed. He came and
saw. This openness to conviction is the mark of moral integrity. The guileless
man dogmatizes not, but investigates, and therefore always comes right in the
end. The man of bad, dishonest heart, on the contrary, does not come and see.
Deeming it his interest to remain in his present mind, he studiously avoids
looking at aught which does not tend to confirm his foregone conclusions. He
may, indeed, profess a desire for inquiry, like certain Israelites of whom we
read in this same Gospel, of another stamp than Nathanael, but sharing with him
the prejudice against Galilee. "Search and look," said these Israelites not
without guile, in reply to the ingenuous question of the honest but timid
Nicodemus: "Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he
doeth?" "Search and look," said they, appealing to observation and inviting
inquiry; but they added: "For out of Galilee ariseth no prophet"[1.9--a dictum
which at once prohibited inquiry in effect, and intimated that it was
unnecessary. "Search and look; but we tell you beforehand you cannot arrive at
any other conclusion than ours; nay, we warn you, you had better not."
Such were the characters of the men who first
believed in Jesus. What, now, was the amount and value of their belief? On
first view the faith of the five disciples, leaving out of account the brief
hesitation of Nathanael, seems unnaturally sudden and mature. They believe in
Jesus on a moment's notice, and they express their faith in terms which seem
appropriate only to advanced Christian intelligence. In the present section of
John's Gospel we find Jesus called not merely the Christ, the Messiah, the King
of Israel, but the Son of God and the Lamb of God--names expressive to us of
the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, the Incarnation and the Atonement.
The haste and maturity which seem to characterize
the faith of the five disciples are only superficial appearances. As to the
former: these men believed that Messiah was to come some time; and they wished
much it might be then, for they felt He was greatly needed. They were men who
waited for the consolation of Israel, and they were prepared at any moment to
witness the advent of the Comforter. Then the Baptist had told them that the
Christ was come, and that He was to be found in the person of Him whom he had
baptized, and whose baptism had been accompanied with such remarkable signs
from heaven; and what the Baptist said they implicitly believed. Finally, the
impression produced on their minds by the bearing of Jesus when they met,
tended to confirm John's testimony, being altogether worthy of the Christ.
The appearance of maturity in the faith of the
five brethren is equally superficial. As to the name Lamb of God, it was given
to Jesus by John, not by them. It was, so to speak, the baptismal name which
the preacher of repentance had learned by reflection, or by special revelation,
to give to the Christ. What the name signified even he but dimly comprehended,
the very repetition of it showing him to be but a learner striving to get up
his lesson; and we know that what John understood only in part, the men whom he
introduced to the acquaintance of Jesus, now and for long after, understood not
at all.[1.10]
The title Son of God was given to Jesus by one of
the five disciples as well as by the Baptist, a title which even the apostles
in after years found sufficient to express their mature belief respecting the
Person of their Lord. But it does not follow that the name was used by them at
the beginning with the same fulness of meaning as at the end. It was a name
which could be used in a sense coming far short of that which it is capable of
conveying, and which it did convey in apostolic preaching--merely as one of the
Old Testament titles of Messiah, a synonyme for Christ. It was doubtless in
this rudimentary sense that Nathanael applied the designation to Him, whom he
also called the King of Israel.
The faith of these brethren was, therefore, just
such as we should expect in beginners. In substance it amounted to this, that
they recognized in Jesus the Divine Prophet, King, Son of Old Testament
prophecy; and its value lay not in its maturity, or accuracy, but in this, that
however imperfect, it brought them into contact and close fellowship with Him,
in whose company they were to see greater things than when they first believed,
one truth after another assuming its place in the firmament of their minds,
like the stars appearing in the evening sky as daylight fades away.