John 21:20-23, Jesus and the Beloved Apostle

20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” 22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” 23 So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

Why is John, the Beloved Disciple, special? Or should I ask, more special than Peter? John spent a day with Jesus at the beginning of his ministry before Peter ever saw Jesus (1:40-42). John, like his running to the empty tomb, was first. He was the first to believe in the resurrection. The fact that John is present at the cross makes him superior to Peter not simply as a disciple, but precisely as the only male disciple who witnessed the key salvific event of the whole Gospel story. At the end of the gospel we read that John will live longer than Peter because John is destined to bear witness through his gospel.

The testimony of John, therefore, precedes and continues after that of Peter. Jesus does not want Peter, however, to focus on this but to live into his own ministry that will be very different from John’s and of equal, if not of greater, importance for the life of the Church.

The ministries of Peter and John represent two different kinds of church-building discipleship: active witness and perceptive witness. While one may think that John’s Gospel disparages Peter, it actually portrays him as the disciple, who through failure and subsequent grace, is enabled by Jesus to become the chief pastor of the Church. This is not John’s primary role, and that is why John is irrelevant to Peter’s own call to discipleship (21:20-22). John, in contrast, is portrayed as a perceptive witness with spiritual insight into the meaning of the events of the Gospel story. Jesus, the eternal Word before the beginning, knew John would write the most profound of all the gospels from an intimate, insider’s perspective. Jesus knew that John, created in the image of God, would communicate the mind of God through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the Son of God because Jesus had chosen him, like God chose Abraham, to be a blessing to succeeding generations of believers.

Father God, thank you for the witness of John, for his words of the Word, your Son who is very God of very God, begotten not made, and who is our salvation. Amen.