For the OneSample

Day 5: The Apostle John

When you study someone’s life and model your life after theirs, you naturally take on their characteristics and their passion. You see this happening frequently in the business world, education, or in other professions. People find someone they admire, and they pattern their lives after their mentor in order to have the same impact as the one they follow. 

John loved Jesus Christ. Jesus personally trained John to be the man and the great pastor that he would become.

I do not think there is a greater compliment than for someone to say of us what they said of Peter and John in Acts 4:13: “When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and recognized that they had been with Jesus.”

John is the disciple referred to as “the one Jesus loved.” He is not mentioned by name in his Gospel. His name means “God is gracious.” He was a fisherman, as was his brother James, and also his fishing partners, Andrew and Peter. His mother’s name was Salome who was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus; therefore, John and Jesus were first cousins.

John was more of a thinker, a mystic, a poet, and a seer. We read of his profound thoughts in the Prologue of the Gospel of John in John chapter 1. John served as a pastor at the church of Ephesus from around AD 66-95. He was exiled to Patmos for preaching Christ in AD 95 and it was while he was on this island, really a rock quarry, that he received the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, from Jesus Christ. 

John was the only one of the twelve Apostles who did not die a violent martyr’s death, but his life was very difficult, as he was sentenced to serve at Patmos, a Roman penal colony for hardened criminals

Lessons from John’s Life:

1. Even the greatest of Jesus’ disciples have to grow in grace. 

As we have seen with Peter, we see with John. He was not perfect, but Jesus shaped and molded him. Jesus saved John in a moment but sanctified him for the remainder of his life. 

That is true of us as well. This should make us more patient with others and ourselves. “He’s still working on me, to make me what I ought to be.”

It is good to keep in mind that even the greatest of men and women are still men and women and they must not be placed too high on a pedestal. 

2. Jesus calls people from their profession to His. 

Jesus takes our natural abilities and uses those abilities for the furtherance of the Gospel. John was an intelligent man, a thinker, a mystic, and a man of great intellectual abilities. God took those natural endowments that He had given John and used them for the ministry. 

3. To finish the Christian life well is the greatest service rendered to Jesus Christ. 

John shows us how to finish well. He is well into his nineties when he dies. Toward the end of his life, even after serving as one of the original twelve apostles, serving as the pastor of the church at Ephesus, writing the Gospel of John and the three Epistles of John, he writes the book of Revelation while exiled on the island of Patmos.

The older I become, the more determined I am to not only start well and serve well but, most of all, finish well.

John became one of God’s trophies of grace. God saved this fisherman with a great mind and short temper, and then called him into the ministry and used him powerfully for the kingdom of God. 

Questions:

1. What can we learn from John’s life that will enable us to finish well also?

2. How can you encourage those men and women today that God has called to serve Him in vocational ministry?

If you would like to learn more about how you can influence others for Christ, check out my new book, For the One, at  https://www.dfea.com.