John 1:35-39, The First Two Disciples

35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, "What are you seeking?" And they said to him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?" 39 He said to them, "Come and you will see." So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

As a child I was rightly taught that John the baptizer’s role was to prepare the way for Jesus. He did this by attracting a lot of attention at the Jordan River by the crazy food he ate—locusts and wild honey—and the weird camel’s hair clothes he wore and all the baptizing he did. I also knew that Jesus was so charismatic and filled with the Holy Spirit that when he called his first disciples at the Sea of Galilee, they followed him immediately, even though they had never had a conversation with him. I had a partial understanding.

Studying John’s Gospel in seminary, I realized it gives us information that the other gospels do not. John the baptizer has his very own disciples, who are learning from him. He is the one who points two of them to Jesus. They leave him and follow Jesus. John’s first role even before baptizing Jesus was to prepare disciples for him. In the next verse we will discover that one of the disciples is Andrew the brother of Peter. Tradition holds that the other unnamed disciple is John the gospel writer.

When I understood this aspect of the ministry of John the baptizer, Jesus’ calling of his first disciples at the Sea of Galilee began to make more sense. This was not the first time they had met Jesus. They had known him for some time. He was not a stranger but a trustworthy new friend to them. John’s role really was to prepare the way for Jesus by preparing the first disciples for him—people who knew the Messiah was about to arrive and shake things up. It also gave me more understanding about what it meant that John should decrease so that Jesus might increase. After baptizing Jesus, John’s ministry would literally decrease numerically. He had fulfilled his role to serve his Messiah.

Have you considered how you can be like John, serving him so that Jesus might increase in you and your life – in order that you might decrease? It is a strange and unnatural concept, but one that helps us to love God and our neighbor more as Jesus becomes the center of our being, replacing ourselves. Pray to the Lord and ask him to make this so in you, and because it is unnatural, ask him to do this through his supernatural Spirit.