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John:  From Son of Thunder to the Apostle of Love

John, the writer of 1 John, must be understood before we begin to study the book of 1 John because, to understand the author is to understand the letter.

While at the Agape Cabin, God led me to study this book and I would begin our study by describing it as “The Epistle of Love written by the Apostle of Love.”

John, the writer of 1 John has one of the greatest resumes in history.

• John and his brother James were brothers who were fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, the second set of fisherman called by Jesus.  The first set were Simon and Andrew.
Matthew 4:18-22
• John was probably about 20 years old when he was called by Jesus, and at 20, he left everything to follow Jesus.

• John was one of Jesus’ original 12 disciples and was with Jesus daily for his public ministry.  John saw with his own eyes the power, ministry, and love of Jesus.

• There is speculation that John’s mother and Jesus’ mother, may have been sisters because John’s mother and Jesus’ mother are found together, traveling with the disciples, throughout the gospel accounts (see Mark 15:40 and Matt 27:55-56).

• Among the 12 disciples, John was one of the inner circle of three that had special times of fellowship with Jesus.

• It was John, James, and Peter that were the only disciples to see Jesus transfigured before their eyes on a mountain top.

• John was an instrumental part in the great revival that occurred in Jerusalem just after Pentecost in Acts 1-6.

• John wrote 5 books of the New Testament, second only to Paul in New Testament writings.  John wrote the Gospel of John, the Apocalypse or Revelation, and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John.

• John was promised by Jesus that John would rule on a throne in heaven.

• John, in his great vision in Revelation, was able to see that his name was etched on the foundations of the New Jerusalem.

• John was so trusted by Jesus that Jesus asked him to take care of his mother as he died on the cross.

John 19:26-27
When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold your son!" 27 Then He said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!" And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.

• John’s humility is almost legendary.  In one of the greatest literary works ever written, the Gospel of John, John never even mentions his own name, but simply refers to himself as “the disciple whom the Lord loved.”  He mentions this 5 times in the Gospel.

• But John didn’t start out with an understanding or revelation of God’s love.   Rather, John started out with a lot of ambition, brashness, and arrogance.

John a “Son of Thunder”
• John didn’t start out as the apostle of love.

• Just like Simon, whom Jesus renamed Peter, the Rock, Jesus saw the raw unsanctified man John, but he could also see the plan of how he would be transformed.

• Looking at John one day, Jesus renamed him “Boanerges” the Aramaic name for a “Son of Thunder.”

• Jesus saw the outspoken, brash, and intense personality of John.

• It was John who led the discussion about who was the greatest among the disciples.

• It was John who forbade a man from casting out demons because he was not in the inner circle of the disciples.

• John and his brother John were probably the most ambitious of all the disciples.

• They certainly had no scruples about making their intentions and ambitions known.

Mark 10:35-41
• Just do “whatever we ask” is the picture of arrogance and presumption.

• Then when Jesus challenged them if they understood what they were asking, they didn’t back off but said “we are able.

• Jesus answers them prophetically.

Mark 10:39
They said to Him, “We are able.”  So Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized with you will be baptized;”

• Jesus is speaking of the cup of suffering that He would suffer, that James and John would also drink from:

o James would be beheaded for his faith (Acts 12).

o John would endure incredible suffering when later in life he was exiled to the island of Patmos and also tortured by being boiled in oil.

• How many of us start out this way, full of ourselves, brash, egotistical, and ambitious?

• And yet Jesus had a vision for John.

o Jesus could see that love for God and the kingdom would replace lust for power and position.

o Can you imagine the incredible love Jesus had for John, that He would take this ambitious, even foolish man into His inner circle and so deeply love him?

• John never lost his personality as a Son of Thunder.  But instead of a passion for position, John was transformed into a Son of Thunder who became passionate for God’s love.

• John would be changed from being full of himself to being full of God’s love.

John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved”
• Somewhere in his journey, John was changed from being a “Son of Thunder” to becoming “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

• I believe John experienced the love of Jesus day after day, and this love of the Spirit chipped away at his ambition and lust.

• Constant exposure to the light of the agape love of Jesus gradually drove back the darkness in John’s life.

• It was so powerful that John would later write the greatest prologue in all of literature:

John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

• I believe this was autobiographical to John.  Jesus drove out darkness in his life.

• John had a great revelation of God’s love!

• John never identifies himself as a “Son of Thunder” in any of his writings.

• But 5 times in his Gospel he self identifies as “the one whom Jesus loved.”

• John mentions God’s love 26x in his gospel, almost more than all the other three gospels combined

• John mentions God’s love 36x in 1 John, more than any other book in the entire Bible!  Even more than the Psalms or Song of Solomon

• One writer has said that “John was transformed from being a ‘Son of Thunder in the flesh’ to a ‘Son of Thunder in the Spirit.’”

• John was transformed from being a “Son of Thunder in Ambition” to being a “Son of Thunder in Love.”

The Thunder of God’s Heart
• The thunder of John’s heart was expressed in his fleshly personality, in his lust for power and his ambitious spirit.

• But the thunder of God’s heart is expressed in how he loved John.

• The young, energetic, arrogant, prideful John became the loving, caring, sacrificial John.

• From the Apostle of Ambition to the Apostle of Love.

• From the Son of Thunder to the Apostle of Love.

• As an old man, at 90 years old, John wrote his signature of how he wanted to be remembered:

John 21:20
Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on His breast at the supper…

• John wanted to be remembered, not for what he had done for Jesus, but rather how he related to Jesus.

• John’s identity was based in his relationship with Jesus, not his ministry for Jesus.

• John wanted to be remembered as:

o The one whom Jesus loved, and
o The one who leaned on Jesus’ heart on that final night

• The thunder of God’s heart is love

o Jesus didn’t die of asphyxiation while on the cross.  Jesus didn’t die from shock on the cross.  Jesus died of a broken heart.

o Jesus has loved each of us with an eternal love.  The eternal love of God was most profoundly expressed at the cross.

o Mother Teresa, that great woman of God of Calcutta once wrote:

Our vocation is the conviction that ‘I belong to Him.’ Because I belong to Him, He must be free to use me.  I must surrender completely.  When we look at his cross, we understand his love.  His head is bent down to kiss us.  His hands are extended to embrace us.  His heart is wide open to receive us.  This is what we have to be in the world today.  We too must have our head bent down to our people—they are Jesus in disguise…He said, “You did it to Me.  I was hungry…I was naked…I was homeless.” Let us not make the mistake of thinking that the hunger is only for a piece of bread.  The hunger today is much greater; it is a hunger for love, to be wanted, to be cared for, to be somebody.

Mother Teresa: Contemplative at the Heart of the Word by Angelo Devananda

• All of us are hungry for this love; it is the true longing, the true desire of our lives.

• We all need a revolution of love.  John knew this love, and he wrote 1 John so that we would understand with our heart that each of us can be renamed, “the disciple whom Jesus loves” present tense.

• We can be “the disciples whom Jesus loves.”

• Jesus’ arms are open wide to embrace you!  Jesus’ heart is wide open to bless you!

• Jesus wants your heart.

• John Eldredge writes:

What [God] is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts.  Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, “their hearts were far from Me” (29:13)  How few of us really believe this.  We’ve never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long.  The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true.

The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge

• God wants your heart!  He wants to know you deeply just for the fact that He created you and really loves you.

• This is a revolution of love; this is a revolution of your heart.

• Come back to God’s love.

• Some of us have deeply hurtful stories of never feeling love, and it is difficult to think that God really does love us just the way we are.

• You may have grown up having to pose, perform, and be perfect for people to love you.

• One author explains it this way:

Our story of love is a very tangled story about the most precious thing in our lives (our longing for love).  It’s a hard story to tell for two reasons. For one thing, we’re too close to it too often have any clarity at all.  Can’t see the forest for the trees.  More deeply, it’s a heartbreaking story, and we’re not sure we want to revisit the painful details.  That’s why we’re ambivalent about love.  Oh, we yearn for it.  We want to be loved.  But we hide from it too, building defenses against it, fortressing ourselves (agreements) from being hurt again.

Then we wonder why it’s hard to connect with the love of God, let it in so deep that it heals us and remain in His love.

I don’t want to give my heart to just anything that looks like hope, so I turn my thoughts to God, knowing, at least intellectually, that the only safe place for my heart is in the love of God.  Love. It’s about love remember?  I say to my heart, “Come back to love, my heart. To the love of God.” My self talk helps, in that I begin to realign my heart with God. 

Walking with God by John Eldredge

• Come with me on a journey into the heart of God and discover the love of God in the coming weeks.

1 John 3:1
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

1 John 3:11
For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

1 John 3:18
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
 
1 John 4:7
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.