As I sit here with John, I am quickly realizing that this undertaking is not going to be as easy as I once believed.
I have read the Gospel of John, as well as 1 John, 2 John, and Revelation. Revelation will have to wait for another day. There is so much imagery packed into it that I know I need to slow down and understand what John was seeing, what those images meant, and how much of it reaches backward into the Old Testament.
But even without tackling Revelation completely, I am beginning to see John.
Or at least I think I am.
That is one thing this pilgrimage through the apostles is teaching me. I cannot walk into their lives assuming that I already know who they are.
Some of them have quite a bit written about them but very few words of their own recorded. Others appear once or twice and never speak at all. And then there are those who, as I like to say, do not know when to be quiet. They are quite verbose.
Peter certainly gave me plenty to work with.
John is different.
As I stated in the last post, I have found that this is a pilgrimage each of them is on, and each of us has the privilege of joining them along the way.
That has changed the way I am approaching them.
I am not simply trying to collect facts about twelve men who lived two thousand years ago. I am trying to walk beside them for a little while. To notice what they noticed. To pay attention to how Jesus spoke to them, corrected them, trusted them, and formed them.
And somewhere along the way, I am realizing that I am being asked questions too.
That happened with Peter and with Andrew. It even happened with the fishermen.
And now it is happening again with John.
John does not make himself easy to find
One of the first things I noticed about John is that, for someone who has so much attributed to him, he seems remarkably unwilling to place himself in the middle of the story. I saw that immediately.
The more I read, the more I began listening to the way he writes. John feels meditative to me. He is not in a hurry. He does not throw an idea onto the page and move on to the next thing. He stays with it, turning it over and over. He repeats certain words and themes. He seems intent on capturing every detail correctly before moving forward.
There is something steady about his voice. He is level, precise, and thorough.
When I moved from John into 1 John, I could hear that same rhythm. The subjects shift, but the way the thoughts are handled is familiar.
Then I began reading Acts and immediately noticed the difference. The pace in Acts moves. Luke takes you from place to place and event to event. People enter, speak, leave, travel, preach, get arrested, escape, and move somewhere else.
That does not mean Luke has less purpose. It simply means John sits with things longer. His purpose is different. And that made me think about Jesus calling James and John:
Sons of Thunder.
Thunder
When I hear “Sons of Thunder,” I think we often imagine two hotheaded men. Maybe that’s partly because of the incident with the Samaritans, when James and John wanted to call down fire on them. Jesus corrected them.
But I realized I had been mixing two different things together. Fire is not thunder. Lightning can create fire. Thunder is sound.
I do not know why Jesus called James and John the Sons of Thunder. Scripture does not explain His reason, and I am not going to pretend to know something the text does not tell me. But I cannot help wondering about the name as I read John.
Thunder is not the showman. Thunder announces. It carries through time and space so that anyone can hear it. It has weight. When we hear thunder, we know we must be alert.
To me, this sounds like the John I am meeting. He is quieter than Peter. He allows Peter to step forward and speak for the apostles. He is less reactive than Peter — who jumps out of the boat the moment he sees Jesus, or who impulsively draws his sword to defend Him.
John is different. He is almost the opposite. There is strength in him, but it feels contained and steady. His words do not have to leap off the page to carry weight. They carry because they are precise and clear.
Then I changed one sentence
There was another small experiment that made me see things differently. John refers to someone as
“the disciple whom Jesus loved”
I substituted:
“me.”
And suddenly the entire sentence sounded different.
“Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.”
Now change it:
“Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom was me.”
Do you hear it?
I do.
The second version pulls John right into the center of the scene.
Me. I was there. I was the one beside Him.
It feels braggadocious. — self‑centered. It grates on me.
Thankfully, that is not how John tells it.
If the beloved disciple is indeed John, then he manages to describe himself in one of the most intimate places imaginable without saying his own name. He steps backward.
Jesus remains in front.
Because I am beginning to see something about John that goes beyond simple humility, which he surely exhibits.
I am seeing servant leadership.
The one who steps back
A servant leader does not have to disappear. A servant leader still has responsibilities, still has to speak, still has to lead. But the mission does not become about him.
That is what John seems to be doing. He was there with Jesus. He saw and remembered even the smallest details that others seemed to overlook. Those details mattered deeply to him.
But he does not seem interested in making sure we understand how important John was. He wants us to understand how important Jesus is.
At the empty tomb, John arrives first by outrunning Peter. But he stops and allows Peter to go in ahead of him. It’s such a small detail, yet it feels exactly like John. He gets there first and steps back.
I keep seeing that pattern over and over. It is not a sign of weakness, nor fear, nor lack of importance. It is restraint. Maybe even respect for Peter’s role. And perhaps the quiet confidence of a man who does not need to be first simply because he arrived first.
Another voice in the wilderness
Then I began thinking about John the Baptist. The two Johns are not the same person, of course, and their missions were different. But something about them feels as though there is a connection.
John the Baptist is a voice crying in the wilderness, and his entire mission is to point beyond himself. When Jesus arrives, John does not cling to the people who had been following him. Andrew had been one of them.
John points toward Jesus and tells them to follow Him. He looks beyond himself to the One who is greater than he. That was the point. He was preparing the way.
And in another manner, John the Apostle does something similar. He writes and bears witness through his memories while keeping himself in third person. It’s one of the ways he keeps the focus on Jesus. His writing consistently points away from himself and toward Christ.
The Voice Behind the Thunder
When I think of thunder, I think of sound. It’s an announcement — a voice telling you that something powerful is near.
And when we hear thunder during a storm, we know something about distance. We see the flash, then count until the thunder reaches us. The smaller that distance becomes, the closer we are.
This led me to consider something differently. Was John trying to accomplish this in his writings? Is he announcing Jesus so that we can see Jesus through his words? Could his testimony be bringing me closer to Christ?
Because he is bearing witness to the Light — Jesus.
The more I read John, the more it feels as though his voice keeps saying: “Look at Jesus. Listen to Him. Remain in Him. Know Him. Love Him.”
Maybe that is the thunder
I’m early in my study of John, and there’s a lot I don’t understand yet. Honestly, that’s true for all the apostles. So far, I’ve only finished Peter and Andrew, and there was so much I could see with them.
There are questions about authorship. Then there’s Revelation, which is honestly going to take a while to figure out. Then there is Acts, Ephesus, Mary, and Patmos. Not to mention the beloved disciple and the question of what tradition tells us versus what Scripture actually says.
John is quieter than I expected—steady, precise, and deeply attentive. Someone capable of real intensity without needing to draw attention to himself. And suddenly the name Jesus gave him makes sense.
Son of Thunder.
Maybe thunder doesn’t always shout. Maybe sometimes it’s simply a sound with enough weight to travel a long distance.
And here I am, two thousand years later, still listening.
References
For those who want to go deeper, these sources shaped this reflection.
Scripture Mark 3:13–17 · Luke 9:51–56 · Mark 10:35–45 · John 1:6–8, 19–37 · John 3:27–30 · John 13:21–26 · John 19:25–27 · John 20:1–10 · John 21:20–24 · Acts 3–4 · 1 John 1:1–4 · Revelation 1:9
On “the disciple whom Jesus loved” The Gospel itself does not name the beloved disciple as John. John 21:20–24 connects that disciple with the witness behind the Gospel. Christian tradition has long identified him with John the Apostle, while modern scholarship continues to discuss the question. This reflection follows that traditional identification while keeping the distinction clear.
Early Christian Tradition Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Book III, 1.1 — identifies John, the disciple who reclined on the Lord’s breast, with the Gospel associated with Ephesus. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Books III and V — preserves early traditions concerning John’s later life and ministry in Asia Minor.
On witness and authorship The Gospel of John and 1 John repeatedly emphasize seeing, hearing, remembering, and bearing witness to Christ. The similarities in voice and theology noted in this reflection are observations from reading the texts; questions of authorship and composition have been discussed by Christians and scholars for centuries.
Previous Post in the Series
- The First One Called
- The Fishermen of the Sea of Galilee
- Peter: The Man Jesus Called Rock
- Thinking Like God
- Peter the Man Jesus Called Rock
- The Name Fulfilled
- The Fishermen and the Pilgrimage God Charts
- John: The One Who Stepped Back
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