The Gospel According to St. John: With Notes Critical and Practical (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Gospel According to St. John: With Notes Critical and Practical

Jesus. That he should have been not merely one of those who heard John, and were baptized by him, but that he should have been of the select few who became attached to him as his disciples, argues a deep religious feeling; and that he should have left John, and followed Jesus, apparently on the single word that Jesus was the Lamb of God, seems to indicate in him some sense of personal need of such a Saviour as the title Lamb of God implies.

Though not as yet permanently attached to the Lord as one of the twelve, he certainly accompanied Him in His earliest ministry, and was present at the miracle in Cana, and the first cleansing of the Temple, for the account of both these bears every mark of having been written by an eye-witu ess; and the same may be said of the Lord's interview with Nicodemus, for it is never so much as hinted that our Lord and the inquiring Pharisee were absolutely alone. He must have been one of the disciples who were with the Lord at Sychar. After this, he resumed his occupation of a fisherman, not from any want of belief or desire to draw back, but because he and the other disciples had no other means of getting their living, not having been yet called to live entirely with the Lord as Apostles.

When the Lord set him apart to the Apostleship, He gave to him, and to his brother James, the name of Boanerges, sons of thunder. This seems, at first sight, not to be in harmony with that view of him which we gather from the few hints in the Scriptures respect ing his character, and which all tradition confirms, as being loving, retiring, contemplative rather than active, and somewhat feminine in gentleness. And yet there are unmistakeable indications of another side of his character, as, for instance, his forbidding one to cast out devils in the Lord's Name, because he belonged not to the Apostolic company (mark ix. 38) and, along with his brother, praying Jesus that they might call down fire from heaven upon the Samaritan village which would not receive the Lord (luke ix.

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