Recently, after one of my sermons, a woman came up to me to ask a question. This is a pretty routine experience for any preacher. We get a lot of questions. Sometimes the question is about something I said in the sermon. Other times, it’s about something going on in their life. And still other times the question is just thinly veiled criticism. It all comes with the territory. 

Most of the time, these questions have a straightforward response, generally conditioned by whether I have the answer or not. Either I have information I can share, or I have to admit that I just don’t know. 

But then there are times when you get a question that seems to create insight. It’s not just a matter of whether you know the answer or don’t; it’s as if the question creates the answer in you as you respond to it. As if the question opens the door to a room that you’ve walked by a thousand times but have never stopped and explored. There are questions that are a kind of revelation in and of themselves. 

This woman’s question was like that. 

She started by asking, “I’ve been reading through the Gospel of John, and I’ve been wondering: who is the disciple Jesus loved?” 

That was a softball. I had the answer to that one! “Oh, that’s the author of John referring to himself. So, John is the one whom Jesus loved.”[1]

Boom. Answered. You’re welcome. 

But that wasn’t her real question. Her real question came next. 

“But how can it be true that Jesus loves this one person more than others? That doesn’t sound like the Jesus I know. He loves us all. So, what does it really mean for John to be ‘the one whom Jesus loved?’ Because it clearly can’t mean that he loves him more than anyone else.”

Now that is a good question. 

My immediate response was to applaud her for her impeccable theological instincts. Without knowing it, she was reading the Bible in a way that has become incredibly rare in the post-enlightenment, Western world. She was letting what she already knew about the character of God guide her reading of the text – rather than allowing a literal reading of the text to distort her understanding of God. As the church father Origen would have put it: she was searching for “a meaning worthy of God.”[2]

The starting place for every good and faithful interpretation of Scripture must be the conviction that God is good. And if there is anything about how I am reading a particular text that makes it sound like that isn’t true – well, then I can be certain that I do not understand that passage yet. 

So, how should we answer my friend’s question? If God loves us all equally, what does it mean for John to call himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved?”

There are probably a lot of different ways to answer that question. And a biblical scholar would probably answer it differently than a theologian or a pastor would. But as I considered her question, I saw an angle that I had never seen before. So, this was my response: 

“You know, I think it’s significant that the one who wrote the Gospel of John is the one describing himself as the one whom Jesus loves. At first glance, that sounds arrogant or braggy. But I wonder if he was simply describing what it felt like to be in the presence of Jesus. Because he was right there. He walked and talked with Jesus. He shared meals with him. He served people with Jesus. He is telling the story of Jesus as he experienced it himself. And being that near to Jesus made him feel like he was the one whom Jesus loved. Because that’s how Jesus makes everyone feel. Jesus treats everyone as if they are the one whom he loves. But John is the one telling the story – so we hear about how Jesus loved him. It’s not that John was special or set apart. It’s that we are all John. And if we were to tell the story of Jesus for ourselves, from our own experience of loving him and being loved by him, then we would say the exact same thing: I am the one whom Jesus loves.” 

I had never thought about the Gospel of John in those terms before. And I never would have, if I had not gotten that beautiful question from the heart of someone who truly knows the heart of God.

1. See John 21:20, 24.
2. “Now all this, as we have remarked, was done by the Holy Spirit in order that, seeing those events which lie on the surface can be neither true nor useful, we may be led to the investigation of that truth which is more deeply concealed, and to the ascertaining of a meaning worthy of God in those Scriptures which we believe to be inspired by Him.” Origen, De Principiis, Book IV