Jesus Know His Disciples | Part 2
The objective in Part 2 of this series deals with Jesus’s knowledge of those whom he calls. It is essential to remember, before going on, that discipleship done the way Jesus did it is not a momentary event but a lifelong commitment.
According to the Gospel of John, Andrew and another disciple were the first to follow Jesus after hearing John the Baptist proclaim, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36). John the Baptist understood that his mission was to point to Jesus as the Lamb of God and that it was Jesus who was to be followed. John’s statement was enough for these two men to decide to leave him and begin to follow Jesus (John 1:37, 40).
As Jesus was walking along, he suddenly saw that he was being followed by two men. John 1:38–39 (NKJV, emphasis added) states,
Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where He was staying, and remained with Him that day (now it was about the tenth hour).
There are five notable verbs and one title in this passage that show the intentionality, seriousness, and commitment of transformative discipleship: follow, see, seek, Rabbi, come and see, and remain.
The verb follow, akoluthein, is “strictly limited to discipleship of Christ.” In this act of following, “the disciple leaves everything to go after Jesus (Mark 10:28).” In this following of Jesus, all other ties are broken. The bond with Jesus even surpasses family ties (Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:61). “The exclusivity of the use of akoluthein in the New Testament arises from the fact that for early Christianity there is only one discipleship, and therefore only one following, namely, the relationship with Jesus. Jesus’ demand when he calls us to follow him is a messianic demand.”[1]
Akoluthein (follow) means participation in the salvation offered in Jesus. This following is a decision not to look back after putting one’s hand to the plow. He who looks back is not fit for the kingdom of heaven (Luke 9:61–62). This following also entails “participation in the destiny of Jesus.” In Matthew 8:19–20, Jesus responded to the one who volunteered to follow him, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (NIV). Participating in Jesus’s destiny entails denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, and following him (Mark 8:34). Following Jesus is “a communion of life and suffering with the Messiah that arises only in the communion of his salvation.”[2]
Following Jesus is not an emotional or momentary affair. Following Jesus is a lifelong commitment through which we decide to give everything to him.
The next word to look at is the verb “to see.” In John 1:38, it says that when Jesus noticed that the two disciples were following him, he turned to look at them. This particular verb (theáomai) “denotes astonished or attentive vision, to look (at or upon), to contemplate.”[3] It highlights the fact that Jesus stopped to pay attention to these two men who were following him. This verb speaks of “fixing one’s eyes in a steady and intense gaze, often with enthusiasm or studious attention.”[4] Jesus stopped to study these two men. Many people cannot withstand a direct gaze into the eyes, especially those who have something to hide. If you can withstand a direct gaze, it is because you are confident. I usually tell people that when they have to talk to the authorities, they should look them directly in the eyes. That direct gaze says that you have nothing to hide. That is how Jesus is; he looks us directly in the eyes. We must not forget that Jesus’s eyes are penetrating and searching. There is nothing hidden, concealed, or secret from him. Jesus has a knowledge of us that even we ourselves do not have.
After that searching gaze, Jesus asked the two disciples, “What do you seek?”
Jesus does not ask them, “Who are you looking for?” but rather, “What do you seek?” or “What are you looking for?” I believe this has to do with our personal agendas—our personal interests—in following Jesus. Jesus is interested in knowing whether we follow him for personal gain or out of love and obedience. Jesus wants to know if we are looking for the giver of good things or the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Even Peter showed his concern for and interest in the benefit he [and the other disciples] would gain from following Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Look, we have left everything to follow you! And what do we gain from it?” Jesus’s response was to promise him that they would sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel, they would receive a hundred times more than everything they had left behind, and they would inherit eternal life (Matthew 19:27–29). Mark, in his version of Jesus’s response to the hundredfold, adds “with persecutions” (Mark 10:30). Jesus is interested in knowing what we seek in following him. Today, many follow Jesus for personal gain, for position, and for power. Discipleship requires renouncing everything for the love of Jesus. It is not what I can get, but what I can give. Jesus wants to know how committed we are to following him in discipleship.
The next point to highlight here is the way Andrew addressed Jesus and the question he asked him about his home: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” This is the first time Jesus is called Rabbi in the Gospel of John. Calling someone rabbi was a sign of respect and obedience. This was a recognition of Jesus’s authority as a teacher. There was a difference between Jesus and the rabbis of his time. According to Eduard Lohse, “Since Jesus preaches with prophetic authority, his disciples do not undertake the study that, once successfully completed, will enable them to finish their training and become rabbis. [They] remain disciples, and Jesus remains their teacher. They are expressly forbidden to call themselves rabbi (Mt. 23:8).”[5] In other words, discipleship with Jesus is not a matter of a few years of study after which we graduate, but a lifelong relationship. Despite the passage of time, we remain disciples, and Jesus remains our Teacher.
The question, “Where are you staying?” is important because it shows an interest in moving with Jesus. The verb for staying, meneis, means, among other things, “to remain in a place,” “to wait,” “to be in the house,” “to spend the night,” “to dwell.”[6] The disciples’ question indicates that they intended to stay with the Lord. This helps us to understand that discipleship requires a commitment to stay with Jesus; it is to remain with him and to move with him, as Jesus emphasizes later in John 15 in the teaching about the true vine. There, he stresses the importance of remaining in him. In verses 4 through 10, Jesus repeats the verb “to remain” 10 times. Transformative discipleship is achieved when we remain, when we move with, and when we stay with Jesus.
Jesus’s response to the disciples was “come and see.” Since they were determined to stay with Jesus, Jesus showed them where he was staying. The invitation to “come and see” is repeated several times throughout the Gospel of John. It is an invitation to follow, to know, and to commit to discipleship with Jesus. John writes that “they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about four o’clock in the afternoon” (1:39 NET). The verb meneis (to stay) that Andrew used to ask Jesus where he was staying is the same one used to tell us that the disciples “stayed” with Jesus. Here we have an emphasis on the importance of “staying” for transformative discipleship. For those two disciples, the die was cast—the decision had been made, the bridges were burned, and there was no turning back. That is true discipleship. We move in with Jesus and stay with him.
As we have seen, Jesus knows those he calls. Jesus scrutinized Andrew and the other disciple. But when Andrew brought his brother Peter to Jesus, Jesus also looked (emblepo) at him and called him Cephas, Aramaic for rock or stone (which is Peter in Greek). In other words, Jesus saw Peter as he was, but he also recognized what he would become as a result of his life of continuous discipleship with Jesus.
John goes on to tell us that Jesus found Philip, called him, and gave him the command, “Follow me” (1:43). Perhaps you have heard the word “eureka,” which reminds us of Archimedes when he discovered the principle of buoyancy of objects in water. The word eureka means “to find after searching.”[7] This indicates Jesus was intentional in seeking and finding Philip. Philip in turn sought out Nathanael, who doubted that anything good could come out of Nazareth. Philip said to Nathanael the same thing that Jesus said to Andrew: “Come and see” (v. 46).
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said, “Look, a true Israelite in whom there is no deceit” (v. 47). This statement astonished Nathanael, who asked Jesus where he knew him from. I think Jesus’s answer stunned him: “Before Philip called you, when you were still under the fig tree, I saw you” (v. 48 AMP). The verb eidon, translated here as “see,” is related to the verb “know.” Jesus let Nathanael know that he already knew him. Jesus knew his integrity, his character, and his sincerity. Unlike his ancestor Jacob, who was a deceiver, Jesus told him that there was “no deceit in him.” This statement by Jesus led Nathanael to make one of the most complete Christological confessions about Jesus. First, he called him Rabbi, recognizing his authority as a teacher. Then he said, “You are the Son of God,” recognizing his relationship with God and his deity. Following that he said, “You are the King of Israel,” recognizing him as the root of the trunk of Jesse, the heir to the throne of Israel.
There are other instances in which Jesus reveals his knowledge of people. In John 2:23–25, John tells us that after the Passover feast in Jerusalem, “many believed in his name, seeing the signs which he did, but Jesus did not trust himself unto them because he knew all men and needed not that any should give testimony, for he knew what was in man” (JUB). At the end of chapter 6, after a mass exodus of disciples, Jesus asked the Twelve if they also wanted to leave. John writes,
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, though one of the Twelve, was later going to betray him). (John 6:68–70 NIV)
As we can see, Jesus knows us intimately. He knows us by name, but more than anything else, he knows our hearts. There is nothing we can hide from him. Jesus knows if we are deceitful or if we are not deceitful. Jesus knows if there is a Judas inside us, willing to sell him out and betray him for money. To be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, we must be willing to pass the test of his searching eyes. I always wonder what Jesus sees in me when his eyes examine me. Ask yourself the same question!
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[1] Gerhard Kittel, “Ἀκολουθέω, Ἐξ-, Ἐπ-, Παρ-, Συνακολουθέω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 213–215.
[2] Kittel, “Ἀκολουθέω, Ἐξ-, Ἐπ-, Παρ-, Συνακολουθέω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 213–215.
[3] Wilhelm Michaelis, “Ὁράω, Εἶδον, Βλέπω, Ὀπτάνομαι, Θεάομαι, Θεωρέω, Ἀόρατος, Ὁρατός, Ὅρασις, Ὅραμα, Ὀπτασία, Αὐτόπτης, Ἐπόπτης, Ἐποπτεύω, Ὀφθαλμός,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 345.
[4] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “gaze,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaze.
[5] Eduard Lohse, “Ῥαββί, Ῥαββουνί,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 964.
[6] Lohse, “Ῥαββί, Ῥαββουνί,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 964.
[7] Herbert Preisker, “Εὑρίσκω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 769.
