“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.”
John 20:1-10 NIV
Woven into John’s story of Jesus, not only fact but interpretation, since John’s gospel became known as “the spiritual gospel”, is John’s own journey to faith. After all, if he were to convince his readers that Jesus is the Son of God and that salvation lies in believing in His name, then his story must bear witness to his own faith.
John did not easily identify his role in the story by name. He liked to call himself ”the disciple whom Jesus loved”. John was ever conscious of the dramatic change in him through his association with Jesus.
He began his career as a disciple as a young Jewish hothead, together with his brother, James. Jesus nicknamed them “Boanerges”
“Boanerges means “sons of thunder” and was a surname Jesus gave to the apostles James and John, the sons of Zebedee. This nickname was likely given due to their passionate and fiery temperaments, and it is recorded in the New Testament gospels of Mark and Matthew.” (Source: Google)
Perhaps Jesus saw in John a potentially good quality, passion, but that needed taming and refining. John’s zeal needed a worthy and divinely-directed purpose only possible through the power of a love greater than any earthly-initiated energy.
Slowly, as days turned into months and then years, John’s association with Jesus bore fruit. This young hothead eventually morphed into a mature disciple who became known as “the apostle of love.”
John wrote more about love than any of the other New Testament writers, linking God’s love for us to our love for Him in a symphony expressing our union with Him. His writings are an expansion of that union expressed by Jesus in His Upper Room discourse before the cross (John 14-16).
“Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
John 14:21 NIV
“John was originally known as one of the “Sons of Thunder,” a name suggesting an impetuous and fiery nature. A key example of this is when he and his brother wanted to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village that rejected Jesus. His eventual transformation into a compassionate, loving leader shows a profound change, moving from harsh zeal to a balanced, mature faith guided by Christ’s example.” (Source: Google)
What transformed John from “a son of thunder” to “the apostle of love”? Perhaps, in that riveting moment, when John saw the grave clothes, and especially the head cloth on the stone shelf as though the body had simple vanished, leaving the form of Jesus vaguely outlined in the burial cloths, everything fell into place.
Jesus’ words, His miracles, His actions, His prophecies, His very presence, all came alive in that “lightbulb” moment. John believed!
Apart from Paul, the apostles did not record their own conversion experience. Only John knew the exact second when his heart caved in to the truth he had lived with from the instant when Jesus called him, “Follow me!” By faith through the Holy Spirit, he came alive by the truth. The final impact awaited Pentecost, when the full force of the Holy Spirit’s coming cemented his transformation.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
1 John 4:10 NIV
The power of this love, a force so great that it changed John’s nature forever, became the motivation and the energy of his life.
“We love because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:19 NIV
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
1 John 4:11-12 NIV
So perfect is this love to which he responded that there was nothing left inside of him but to reciprocate with a love that reflected Jesus’ own love for him. Not to love like this would be evidence that no transaction had ever taken place in his spirit that replaced his natural fire with holy fire.
John concludes…
“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”
1 John 4:20-21 NIV
So it all came together when John saw…the empty tomb… the empty stone shelf… and the empty grave cloths!
“He (Peter) saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, (John), who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.”
To be concluded…