Ever wondered why the Apostle John used the phrase, 'the disciple whom Jesus loved'? Initially when I was much younger in age as well as a Christian, I used to think that the Apostle was being prideful until recently when Pastor Prince shed some light on this phrase.
The Apostle John was the only disciple who ever used that phrase to describe himself; none of the other apostles used the term. Also it should be noted that the apostle used that term to describe himself, no one gave him that term. Was John conceated then?
Well, John was one of the three disciples Jesus had handpicked as His inner circle of disciples - Peter, James and John. Peter is the Greek word for 'rock' or Law while James correlates to Jacob or 'surplanter' and of course John in Hebrew is Johanan or 'grace'. And so even the three names tell a very interesting message that our Lord wants to illustrate - The Law had been replaced (surplanted) by grace.
The Apostle grasped that rather quickly and decided that he will internallize Abba's love for him and keep reminding himself that he was 'the disciple that Jesus loves'. What an awesome revelation and what awesome results and blessings came his way just because of his confession of faith. And as he did that, even the storms of life could not deter him.
Sadly you have failed to heed the Biblical admonition to "prove all things". Surely one should not be presenting an idea AS IF it were Biblical if they cannot cite even a single verse that would justify teaching that idea. Yet here you do just that.
ReplyDeleteFor even though there is not a single verse in scripture that would justify teaching the idea that John was the one whom "Jesus loved" you assume that this man-made tradition cannot be wrong and then interpret scripture to fit this idea. But if you will heed Ps. 118:8 then the NON-BIBLE sources on which this tradition is based need to give way to the facts stated in scripture which prove that John was not this anonymous author.
TheDiscipleWhomJesusLoved.com has a free Bible-only based study that compares what the Bible says about John with what it says about "the disciple whom Jesus loved" - and the Biblical evidence proves that whoever this person was he was not John because the Bible cannot contradict itself.