1.The Forerunner

There is a kind of greatness that seeks to be seen, and a kind that is content to be a signpost, pointing away from itself to something greater. John the Baptist was the second kind, and this is the key to his whole life. He was the forerunner — the one sent ahead to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. His task was not to draw attention to himself, but to make ready a people, and then to step aside and let the Christ be all. And he fulfilled that task so faithfully that Jesus Himself could say that among all who had ever been born, none was greater than John. Yet the whole of John's greatness was a borrowed greatness, a greatness of service; for his one aim, from first to last, was to prepare the way for Another and then to decrease that Christ might increase. In this he stands as one of the most beautiful examples in all Scripture of what it means to serve God truly: not to build our own name, but to point men to Christ, and to be glad to grow smaller so that He may be seen more clearly. Let us follow his story, and learn from it.

2.A Child of Promise

John's birth was itself a wonder. His parents, Zacharias the priest and his wife Elizabeth, were old and childless, and had long since given up hope of a son. But God had marked out this child before he was born. As Zacharias served in the temple, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and announced that Elizabeth would bear a son, that he was to be called John, and that he would be great in the sight of the Lord. He would be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth, and would turn many in Israel back to their God. And, said the angel, he would go before the Lord "in the spirit and power of Elijah," to prepare a people made ready for Him. So this child was set apart from the womb for one great purpose: to be the herald of the Messiah. From the very beginning, John's life was not his own, but was given wholly to the service of the One who was coming after him. He was, in the deepest sense, a child of promise — born by God's special appointment, for God's special work. And this reminds us that God shapes and prepares His servants long before they know it, weaving their whole lives around the purpose He has for them.

3.The Making in the Wilderness

We are told very little about John's growing years, but the little we are told is significant: "the child grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel." John did not grow up in the busy places of men, nor in the schools of the religious leaders, but in the wilderness, in solitude with God. There, away from the eyes of the world, he was shaped into the stern and mighty prophet he would become. The wilderness stripped his life down to its essentials; he lived simply, clothed in camel's hair and eating locusts and wild honey, wanting nothing that the world prized. And in that solitude his soul grew strong, his sense of God grew deep, and his message took form. Here again we meet a lesson we have seen before in the lives of God's servants: that God so often prepares His messengers in hidden places, in obscurity and solitude, before He sends them out. The years that the world would call empty and wasted were the very years in which John was being made ready. Strength for public service is forged in private communion with God.

4.The Voice in the Wilderness

At last the hidden years ended, and John burst upon the nation like a thunderclap. He came preaching in the wilderness of Judea a single, burning message: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Crowds streamed out from the cities to hear him, and he baptized in the Jordan those who confessed their sins. His preaching was fearless and searching. He called the people to a real turning from sin, and demanded "fruit worthy of repentance" — not mere words or religious pretense, but changed lives. He did not flatter the powerful or spare the religious leaders, but warned them sharply not to trust in their outward standing. When men asked who he was, he claimed no title for himself; he was simply, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the LORD." A voice — not the Word himself, but only the voice that announced him; heard for a moment, and then gone, its whole purpose to point men to the One who was coming. John's stern call to repentance was not an end in itself; it was the preparation of hearts to receive the Savior. He broke up the hard ground so that the seed of the gospel might take root; he humbled men so that they might be ready to be lifted up by grace.

5.Behold the Lamb of God

The true heart of John's ministry was not his preaching of repentance, mighty as that was, but his witness to Christ. Everything in him pointed to Jesus. When the people began to wonder whether John himself might be the Messiah, he flatly refused the honor: "I am not the Christ." He declared that One was coming after him, mightier than he, the strap of whose sandal he was not worthy to loose. And then came the supreme moment of his life. Seeing Jesus coming toward him, John lifted his hand and cried the words that have echoed down the centuries: "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" In that one sentence John gathered up the whole gospel. He pointed his hearers not to a teacher or a rule, but to a Lamb — to the Savior who would take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. This was John's great gift to the world: he pointed men to Christ the sin-bearer. And when two of his own disciples heard him, they left John and followed Jesus — and John was glad. For he had never sought disciples for himself; he had only ever wanted to lead men to the Lamb of God.

6.He Must Increase

And now we come to the words that reveal the true greatness of John's soul. As Jesus' ministry grew, more and more people went to Him, and fewer came to John. John's own disciples were troubled by this, and came to him almost jealous on his behalf: everyone is going to Him, they said. But John's answer is one of the noblest ever spoken. He was not the bridegroom, he said, but only the bridegroom's friend, who stands by and rejoices greatly to hear the bridegroom's voice. His joy was full precisely in seeing the people go to Christ. And then he spoke the words that sum up his whole life and ours: "He must increase, but I must decrease." Here is the very spirit of true service to God. John was glad to grow smaller, to fade from view, to be forgotten, so long as Christ was magnified. There was not a trace of rivalry or self-seeking in him. He had done his work — he had pointed men to Christ — and now he was content to step back into the shadows and let the Lord shine. This is the hardest and highest lesson for any who serve God: to want Christ to increase even as we decrease, to seek His glory and not our own, and to rejoice, not to grieve, when others' eyes turn from us to Him.

7.Faithful unto Death

John's courage in pointing men to the truth eventually cost him his life. He had fearlessly rebuked King Herod for taking his brother's wife, refusing to soften the truth even before a king; and for this he was thrown into prison. There, in the darkness and the long waiting, even this mighty man passed through a season of doubt. He who had so boldly proclaimed Jesus now sent his disciples to ask Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" It is a deeply human moment, and a comforting one. For even the greatest of God's servants may sink, in the darkness of suffering, into uncertainty and questioning; and to do so is not a mark of being cast off by God. And how tenderly the Lord dealt with him! Jesus did not rebuke John for his doubt, nor shame him; He simply pointed to the works of mercy He was doing — the blind seeing, the lame walking, the poor hearing good news — and sent back quiet reassurance. And then, far from criticizing John to the crowds, Jesus turned and gave him the highest praise. John was soon after put to death, beheaded at the whim of a wicked court; and so this faithful witness sealed his testimony with his blood. He is forever an example of standing for the truth whatever it costs, and of a Lord who is gentle with His servants even in their weakness.

8.The Greatest and the Least

Jesus' own verdict on John is the fitting close to his story. "Among those born of women," He said, "there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist." No higher tribute could be paid to any man. And yet Jesus added a startling word: "he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." John stood at the very end of the old order, the last and greatest of the prophets who looked forward to the Christ; but he did not live to see the full glory of what he announced — the cross, the empty tomb, the pouring out of the Spirit, the opening of the kingdom to all who believe. The humblest believer who lives on this side of the cross, who knows the finished work of Christ and the indwelling Spirit, stands in a place of privilege that even John did not fully enjoy. What a thought that is for us! If John was great in merely pointing forward to the Lamb of God, how much greater is the privilege of those who now know that Lamb as their own Savior. And John's abiding lesson remains for every one of us: to point away from ourselves to Christ, to decrease that He may increase, and to find our whole joy in His glory.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.From Reed to Rock

When Jesus first met Simon the fisherman, He looked at him and said a remarkable thing: "You are Simon… you shall be called Cephas" — that is, Peter, a rock. It was a strange name to give him, for at that moment Simon was anything but a rock. He was impulsive, changeable, and unstable, as shifting as sand; and he would, in time, prove it by a shameful fall. Yet Jesus did not name him for what he was, but for what grace would make him. He saw in this unpromising man the rock he would one day become, and He set that name over him like a promise. And that is the story of Peter's whole life: the story of how the grace and patience of Christ took an unstable, blundering man and slowly, through many failures, made him into the rock-like apostle who would help to found the church. It is one of the most encouraging stories in all the Bible, for it shows us that Christ does not choose the finished and the flawless, but takes weak and faulty people like ourselves and, by His grace, makes something strong and useful of them. What Peter became, he became not by his own strength, but by the grace that never let him go.

2.Come, Follow Me

Peter was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, a working man of no great learning, when Jesus called him. The call came with a sign that Peter never forgot. After a whole night of fruitless toil, Jesus told him to let down his nets once more; and Peter, though weary and doubtful, obeyed — and the nets came up so full that they began to break. In that moment Peter was overwhelmed, not with pride at the great catch, but with a sudden sense of his own sinfulness in the presence of one so plainly touched by the power of God. He fell down before Jesus and cried, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" It was a true instinct; for to draw near to the holiness of Christ is always to feel our own unworthiness. But Jesus did not depart. Instead He spoke the gentle words, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will catch men." And Peter, with his companions, left everything — the boats, the nets, the great catch itself — and followed Him. So began the discipleship of Peter: called not because he was worthy, but by the free grace of Christ; and answering that call by leaving all to follow.

3.Bold, Warm, and Unstable

To understand Peter's story, we must understand the kind of man he was, for his character shaped both his triumphs and his failures. Peter was warm-hearted, eager, and impulsive. He was almost always the first — the first to speak, the first to act, the first to leap forward. He loved his Master deeply and sincerely, and there was a genuine boldness in him. But his was an unstable boldness, running ahead of his strength; he would promise more than he could perform, and act before he had thought. He was, in short, a great mixture — capable of the noblest words one moment and the rashest blunder the next, of soaring faith and sudden failure almost in the same breath. We shall see this again and again in what follows. And there is comfort for us in it, for many of us know this same instability in ourselves — the warm intentions that outrun our weak performance, the good beginnings that end in stumbling. Peter is the disciple of the divided, faltering heart; and it is just such a man that grace takes in hand and, over time, makes steadfast.

4.The Confession and the Faltering

The mingling of heights and depths in Peter comes out nowhere more clearly than around his great confession. When Jesus asked the disciples who they believed Him to be, it was Peter who spoke the magnificent words: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." It was the high point of his discipleship, a confession that Jesus Himself declared to be a revelation from the Father. Yet within moments Peter had fallen from that height to a depth. When Jesus began to speak of the cross that lay ahead, Peter, in his warm but misguided love, took Him aside and rebuked Him, insisting it must never happen; and Jesus had to answer him sharply, for Peter was, without knowing it, standing in the way of God's very purpose. So the man who had just spoken by the Father's revelation now spoke against the Father's plan. We see the same pattern when Peter, seeing Jesus walk on the water, boldly asked to come to Him across the waves — and for a moment did walk, held up by faith; but then, looking at the wind and the storm instead of at his Lord, he began to sink, and could only cry, "Lord, save me!" And Jesus caught him at once. Bold faith and faltering doubt, in the very same moment: that was Peter. And in his sinking cry we hear the prayer that has saved many a faltering soul: Lord, save me.

5."Though All Fall Away, I Will Not"

As the shadow of the cross drew near, Peter's self-confidence rose to its height. At the Last Supper, when Jesus warned that all the disciples would fall away, Peter protested loudly that though everyone else deserted Him, he never would; he was ready, he said, to go with Jesus to prison and to death. He truly meant it; but he trusted in his own resolve, and did not know his own weakness. And here the Lord spoke words of wonderful grace. He told Peter that Satan had desired to have him, to sift him like wheat; but then He added, "I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren." Let us weigh those words, for they are full of comfort. Before Peter had fallen, Christ was already praying for him. Before Peter had failed, Christ already spoke of his return, as of a certain thing — "when you have returned." Peter's fall would be real and grievous, but it would not be final, because Christ was holding him fast by prayer. And so it is with all Christ's own: our standing does not rest on the strength of our own resolve, which is weak, but on the faithfulness of our praying Savior, who does not let go of those He has taken up.

6.The Denial

Then came the fall itself. When Jesus was arrested, Peter, who had boldly drawn a sword in the garden, followed at a distance into the courtyard of the high priest, and there stood warming himself at a fire. And there, of all places, his courage failed. A servant girl said he had been with Jesus, and Peter denied it. Again he was accused, and again he denied. A third time they pressed him, and now Peter, frightened and cornered, denied his Lord with oaths, swearing that he did not even know the man. At that moment the cock crowed. And the Lord, being led away, turned and looked at Peter. That look — full, we may be sure, not of anger but of grief and love — broke Peter's heart. He remembered the warning; and he went out and wept bitterly. It was the bitterest hour of his life. The bold disciple who had promised to die for his Master had denied Him three times before a servant girl. Yet we must see his tears rightly. They were not the tears of despair, but of godly sorrow — the honest, broken grief of a man who loved his Lord and knew he had wounded Him. And such sorrow, unlike the hopeless remorse of Judas, is the doorway back to grace. Peter fell terribly, but he wept his way toward restoration, not away from it.

7.Do You Love Me?

And restore him the Lord did, with exquisite tenderness. Even the message of the resurrection carried a special word for the fallen disciple: the angel said, "Go, tell His disciples — and Peter." That little added name must have meant everything to a man who feared he had forfeited his place. The risen Christ sought Peter out. And then, by the Sea of Galilee, came the full and beautiful restoration. There was another catch of fish, as at the beginning; and there was a charcoal fire on the shore — the same kind of fire beside which Peter had denied Him. And three times, matching the three denials, Jesus asked, "Simon, do you love Me?" Three times, grieved but sincere, Peter affirmed his love; and three times Jesus gave him back his work, and more: "Feed My lambs… Tend My sheep… Feed My sheep." The Lord did not scold Peter, nor cast his failure in his face, nor demote him. He gently drew out a fresh confession of love to heal each denial, and then entrusted to this fallen man the care of His own flock. Here is the very heart of the gospel of grace: that Christ seeks out those who have failed Him, forgives them fully, and restores them to usefulness. Peter's worst hour became the ground of his tenderest healing; and the shepherd who had himself been so gently restored would know how to care for other straying sheep.

8.The Rock at Last

The final proof of Peter's transformation came at Pentecost. The same man who had trembled and denied his Lord before a servant girl now stood up before a great crowd in Jerusalem and preached Christ with fearless power; and thousands were brought to faith through his words. The reed had become a rock. The Simon of shifting sand had become the Peter of Jesus' promise. And the change had come, not from Peter himself, but from the grace of Christ that had never let him go, now crowned by the power of the Holy Spirit poured out upon him. From that day Peter was a bold and steadfast apostle, a shepherd of Christ's flock and a pillar of the young church, who would in the end, tradition tells us, lay down his life for the Master he had once denied. And out of his own long experience of failure and grace, he would later write to suffering Christians of a "living hope," and urge the shepherds among them to feed the flock of God willingly and humbly — the very charge his Lord had once given him by the sea. Peter's whole life preaches one great truth to us: that our hope rests not in our own strength or our own resolve, which will fail, but in the grace of a Savior who prays for us, seeks us when we fall, forgives us fully, and by His Spirit makes even the weakest of us into something strong for His service.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.A Servant of Jesus Christ

When Paul introduced himself in his letters, he did not reach first for his titles — his learning, his apostleship, his labors. Again and again he opened with a humbler and dearer description: "a servant of Jesus Christ." The word he used means a bondservant, one who belongs wholly to his master. And there is something deeply moving in that choice, when we remember who this man had been. For Paul had once been the fiercest enemy of Jesus and His people; and now he counted it his highest honor to belong to that same Jesus as His willing slave. His whole life is held between those two poles: the amazing grace that laid hold of a persecutor, and the wholehearted devotion of a man who gave himself entirely, in return, to the service of his Lord. To read the life of Paul is to see, on the grandest scale, what the grace of God can do — how it can stop a man in his tracks, turn his whole life around, and make of its bitterest enemy its most devoted servant. Let us trace that story, for it is our own gospel written large; and every one of us who has been laid hold of by grace may find our own smaller story reflected in his.

2.The Zealous Persecutor

Before he was Paul the apostle, he was Saul of Tarsus, and by every human measure a most impressive man. He was a Jew of pure descent, a Pharisee, trained in Jerusalem under the great teacher Gamaliel, deeply learned in the law, and, by his own account, blameless in his keeping of it. He was brilliant, disciplined, and utterly sincere. But his sincerity was joined to a terrible zeal against the followers of Jesus, whom he believed to be dangerous enemies of God. He stood approving at the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr, and guarded the coats of those who threw the stones. And then he threw himself into stamping out the young church, going from house to house, dragging off men and women to prison, "breathing threats and murder" against the disciples. Here is a solemn thing to ponder: a man could be so religious, so learned, so sincere, and yet be fighting against God Himself. Saul thought he was serving God by persecuting the church; he was, in fact, persecuting the very Christ he claimed to honor. Sincerity is not enough, if it is sincerely wrong; and even our zeal for God can be terribly misguided when it is not according to the truth. Saul needed more than sincerity; he needed to meet the living Christ.

3.The Damascus Road

And meet Him he did, in the most dramatic conversion in all of history. Saul was on the road to Damascus, armed with authority to arrest any Christians he found there, when suddenly a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazed around him, and he fell to the ground. And a voice said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" Trembling, he asked, "Who are You, Lord?" And the answer came: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." In that moment Saul's whole world was overturned. The Jesus he had thought dead and discredited was alive, and glorious, in heaven; and in persecuting the church, Saul had been persecuting Him. Blinded by the light, he was led by the hand into the city, and there for three days he neither ate nor drank. Then God sent a humble disciple named Ananias, who laid his hands on Saul; his sight was restored, he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and he was baptized. The great persecutor had become a believer. It was not Saul who sought Christ; it was Christ who sought and stopped Saul, meeting him on the very road where he was bent on doing harm. That is the nature of grace: it comes to us not because we deserve it, but freely, often when we are running the wrong way; and it lays hold of us and turns us around.

4.The Chief of Sinners, Saved by Grace

Paul never got over the wonder of his conversion, and it became the heart of the gospel he preached. Looking back on the man he had been, he wrote that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, "of whom I am chief." He never excused his past; he called himself the foremost of sinners, a former blasphemer and persecutor. But that was precisely the point. If grace could save a man like Saul — the very chief of sinners, the fierce enemy of Christ — then it could save anyone. Paul saw himself as a living pattern, held up to show the boundless patience and mercy of Christ, so that no sinner anywhere need ever despair of being received. And out of his own experience Paul preached, above all, the gospel of grace: that we are saved not by our own works or law-keeping, in which he had once trusted so proudly, but by the free grace of God, received through faith in Christ. He had learned that lesson in the only way it can truly be learned — by discovering that all his own righteousness was worthless, and that Christ had saved him for nothing, purely out of love. This is the good news that Paul carried to the world, and it is the good news still: that salvation is God's free gift, offered by grace to all who will receive it by faith, and that not even the worst of sinners is beyond its reach.

5.The Apostle to the Nations

Grace does not save us to leave us idle, and Paul's conversion was also a calling. From the first, Christ had marked him out to carry His name to the Gentiles — to the nations who did not yet know the true God. After his conversion there were quiet years of preparation, in Arabia and back in his home city of Tarsus, until Barnabas sought him out and brought him into the work at Antioch. Then, at the Holy Spirit's direction, the church at Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas out, and there began the great missionary journeys that filled the rest of Paul's life. Over the following years he crossed and re-crossed the Roman world, traveling thousands of miles by land and sea, preaching Christ in city after city, and planting churches wherever he went — in Asia Minor, in Greece, and at last toward Rome itself. He reasoned in synagogues, spoke in marketplaces, and stood before governors and kings; and everywhere he went, communities of believers sprang up behind him. And to the churches he founded he wrote the letters that make up so much of our New Testament, letters full of the depths of the gospel, still feeding the church today. No one has ever labored more tirelessly to spread the good news of Christ. He poured out his whole strength, without reserve, in the service of his Master and for the salvation of others.

6.Strength Made Perfect in Weakness

This tireless service was bought at a great price of suffering. Paul's life as an apostle was one long endurance of hardship for Christ's sake. He was beaten and imprisoned again and again; he was stoned and left for dead; he was shipwrecked more than once; he faced hunger, cold, sleeplessness, and constant danger from enemies. Yet through it all he pressed on, and even rejoiced. The secret of that endurance is found in a precious episode. Paul was given some painful trial he called "a thorn in the flesh," and three times he begged the Lord to take it away. But the answer he received was not removal, but grace: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." And Paul learned to embrace it. He came to say that he would gladly glory in his weaknesses, so that the power of Christ might rest upon him; for, he said, "when I am weak, then I am strong." Here is one of the deepest secrets of the Christian life, and a great comfort to every weak and struggling believer. Our weakness is not a barrier to God's using us; it is the very place where His strength is shown. God does not wait for us to become strong; He pours His strength into our weakness, so that the glory may be plainly His and not ours. The suffering, weary servant is not disqualified; he is exactly the vessel through whom the power of Christ shines.

7.For to Me, to Live Is Christ

What was it that drove this man through all his labors and sufferings? It was, in a word, love for Christ. Paul's whole being was consumed by devotion to the Lord who had saved him. "For to me," he wrote, "to live is Christ." He could say, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." His old self, with all its proud achievements, he counted as loss — as rubbish — for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. "The love of Christ," he said, "compels us"; it was that love, received and returned, that pressed him onward and would not let him rest. This is what it means to be, in the fullest sense, a servant of Jesus Christ: not a grudging obedience, but a life so captured by love for the Master that His service becomes its very reason for being. Paul is the great example of a heart wholly given to Christ. And his example searches us. It is possible to know much about Christ, and even to work for Him, without this consuming love. But it was love that made Paul what he was; and it is only such love, kindled in us by the grace that first loved us, that will carry any of us through a life of faithful service.

8.I Have Finished the Race

Paul's long race ended, as it had to, in suffering and death. He was arrested and eventually brought to Rome, and there, imprisoned and facing execution under a cruel emperor, he wrote his last letter. There is no bitterness in it, no regret, no fear — only a calm and triumphant peace. "I have fought the good fight," he wrote, "I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day." Soon after, tradition tells us, the great apostle was put to death for the Master he had served so faithfully. But he died more than a conqueror. He had begun as the chief of sinners, the fierce persecutor of Christ; and by grace he ended as a faithful servant, finishing his course with joy and looking to a crown. His whole life proclaims the gospel he preached. It tells us that no sinner is beyond the reach of grace; that grace, once received, calls us to wholehearted service; that Christ's strength is made perfect in our weakness; and that a life poured out for Christ, however costly, ends not in loss but in a crown. May his God be our God, and his Savior our Savior, and his devotion, in some measure, ours as well.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

When John wrote his Gospel, he never once set down his own name. Instead, whenever he had to refer to himself, he used a quiet and wonderful phrase: "the disciple whom Jesus loved." We might, at first, think this a strange or even a proud thing to say. But it was not pride; it was wonder. John was not claiming that Jesus loved him more than the others; he was simply naming the truth that had become the deepest thing in his whole life — that he was loved by the Lord. Of all the things he might have said about himself — that he was an apostle, an eyewitness, a writer of Scripture — the one thing he chose to be known by was this: that Jesus loved him. And here, at the very start, is the secret of John's life. He was a man who knew himself loved by Christ, who rested in that love, and who was transformed by it. This is a truth for every believer, not for John alone. The love with which Christ loved John is the same love with which He loves each of His own. And to know ourselves loved by Him, and to rest in that love as John did, is the beginning of all Christian growth and all Christian peace.

2.The Fisherman Called

John was the son of a Galilean fisherman named Zebedee, and with his brother James he worked the family's fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee, in partnership with Simon Peter and his brother. He was, then, a working man, without high position or learning, when the call of Jesus came. And when it came, John left the boats, the nets, and even his father behind, and followed. From early on, John was drawn into the innermost circle of the Lord's friends. Together with Peter and his own brother James, John formed the group of three who were nearest to Jesus — the three whom the Lord took with Him into the room where He raised a dead child, the three who saw His glory on the mountain of Transfiguration, and the three He drew nearest to Him in the garden of His agony. John, then, was privileged with a peculiar closeness to Christ. He had more opportunity than almost anyone to watch the Lord closely, to hear His private words, and to drink in His spirit. And it was this long, close fellowship, more than anything else, that would in time transform him. We become like those with whom we keep close company; and John kept the closest company of all with Jesus.

3.The Son of Thunder

Yet we make a great mistake if we imagine that John was, by nature, a soft or gentle man. The truth is quite the opposite, and it is important that we see it, for it makes his story far more hopeful. The young John had a fierce, intense, and even harsh temperament. Jesus Himself gave John and his brother a striking surname: "Boanerges," which means "Sons of Thunder." And the name was well earned. On one occasion, when a Samaritan village refused to receive Jesus, John and James were so incensed that they asked, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" They were ready to destroy a whole village over a slight to their Master. On another occasion, John came to Jesus proudly reporting that he had forbidden a man to cast out demons in Jesus' name, "because he does not follow with us" — a flash of narrow intolerance. And John was not free of ambition, either, for he and his brother once sought the chief seats of honor in the coming kingdom. Here, then, was the raw material: a man who was fiery, intolerant, harsh, and ambitious. This is the man whom grace would make the apostle of love. And that should give hope to every one of us who knows the harder edges of our own nature.

4.You Do Not Know What Manner of Spirit

How did the change begin? It began, as such changes always do, with the gentle correction of Christ. When John and James asked to call down fire on the Samaritan village, Jesus turned and rebuked them, and His words went to the root of the matter: "You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." That was a lesson John never forgot. He had thought his fierce zeal was zeal for God; but Jesus showed him that it was not of God's Spirit at all, for God's Spirit is a spirit that saves, not destroys. The Lord had come, not to consume sinners, but to seek and save them; and those who would share His spirit must share His heart of mercy. Here we see how Christ deals with the harshness in us. He does not merely scold it; He shows us a better way, the way of His own saving love. And He is patient. He did not cast John off for his thunder; He bore with him, corrected him, and kept him close, until the harshness was slowly melted and remade. It is a comfort to know that the Lord is just as patient with the rough places in us, and that He is able, in time, to change even what seems most fixed in our nature.

5.Transformed by Love

And change it He did. Over the years of walking with Jesus, and above all by dwelling in the love of Christ, the Son of Thunder was slowly and surely transformed into the apostle of love. It is worth noticing how this transformation worked, for it teaches us much. Christ did not simply erase John's strong and intense nature and leave him a weaker man. Rather, He took that very intensity and turned it into a new channel. The same depth of feeling that had once burned as fierce anger came to burn, instead, as deep and steady love. The strength remained, but it was transfigured. This is how grace works in us. It does not destroy the temperament God gave us, but redeems and redirects it, so that the very energies that once served our sin come to serve our Lord. The passionate man becomes passionate for Christ; the strong-willed becomes strong in obedience; the intense nature that made John a Son of Thunder made him, in the end, the most tender and loving of all the apostles. Let no one think that his natural disposition puts him beyond the reach of such change. What grace did for John, grace can do, in its own measure, for any of us who will keep close to Christ.

6.Abide in Me

What was the secret of this transformation? John himself, more than any other writer, has told us. In his Gospel he preserved the Lord's great image of the vine and the branches, and the command at its heart: "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me… for without Me you can do nothing." This was the secret of John's own life. He abode in Christ; he stayed close, drew his life from Christ as a branch draws sap from the vine, and dwelt continually in the love of his Lord. And because he abode in that love, its fruit grew in him. The transformation from thunder to love was not something John achieved by his own effort of will; it was the natural fruit of a branch that stayed joined to the vine. Here is the deepest lesson of John's life for us. We do not make ourselves loving, or patient, or Christlike, by gritting our teeth and trying harder. We become like Christ by abiding in Him — by keeping close to Him in faith and love, and letting His life flow into ours. Apart from Him we can do nothing; abiding in Him, we bear much fruit.

7.Near to the Last, First to Believe

As John's love for Christ deepened, it showed itself in a faithful nearness that never failed. When almost all the other disciples had fled at the arrest of Jesus, it was John who followed all the way to the cross and stood there to the end. And from the cross, in one of the most tender moments in all the Gospels, the dying Jesus looked down and entrusted His own mother, Mary, to John's care: "Behold your mother." From that hour John took her into his own home. What a trust to place in a man — and what a mark of the love and confidence between them. John's love also gave him a quick spiritual perception that others lacked. On the resurrection morning, he ran with Peter to the empty tomb; and though Peter went in first, it was of John that it is written, "he saw and believed." And later, when the risen Lord stood on the shore of the lake and the disciples did not know Him, it was John who first recognized Him, and said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" Love has clear eyes. Because John loved much, he saw quickly what others were slow to see. So it often is: those who love the Lord most deeply come to know Him most surely, and recognize His hand where others miss it.

8.God Is Love

John outlived all the other apostles, and in his long life he became, above all, the great teacher of love. His Gospel is the Gospel of love, telling us that God so loved the world that He gave His Son, and recording the Lord's new commandment that we love one another. And his letters ring with the same note from beginning to end. It was John who gave us the simplest and most profound description of God ever written: "God is love." It was John who wrote, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God," and who traced all our love back to its source: "We love Him because He first loved us." There is an old and beautiful tradition that in his extreme old age at Ephesus, when John was too feeble to preach a long sermon, he would be carried into the assembly and would say, again and again, only this: "Little children, love one another." And when at last someone asked him why he always said the same thing, he answered, "Because it is the Lord's command, and if this alone be done, it is enough." At the end of his life, exiled to the lonely island of Patmos for his testimony, this same John was given the great vision of the risen and glorified Christ, and of His final victory. The disciple who had once leaned on Jesus' breast now beheld Him in blazing glory — and remained faithful to the very end. His life leaves us one clear message: rest in the love of Christ, abide in Him, and let His love so fill you that it overflows to one another. For God is love; and those who abide in love abide in God.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.The Runaway Prophet

The story of Jonah is unlike any other in the prophets, for it is less about the prophet's message than about the prophet himself — and about the God whose mercy he could not escape. Jonah was a true prophet of Israel; but when God called him to a task he did not like, he did the astonishing thing of trying to run away from God altogether. "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it," said the LORD; but Jonah rose up instead to flee to Tarshish, in the very opposite direction, "from the presence of the LORD." Here is a prophet in rebellion against his own God. And yet, as we shall see, the whole book becomes a demonstration of the patient, pursuing, and boundless mercy of God — His mercy toward a wayward servant, and His mercy toward a great and wicked city. Jonah's story is, in the end, our story too. For we also are prone to run from what God asks of us; and we also need to learn the greatness of the mercy of God, both toward ourselves and toward others whom we might think unworthy of it. Let us follow the runaway prophet, and learn.

2.Fleeing from Mercy

Why did Jonah flee? It was not, as we might suppose, from fear of a dangerous mission. The real reason comes out later in the book, from Jonah's own mouth, and it is startling. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the cruel and dreaded enemy of Israel; and Jonah did not want Nineveh to be spared. He knew that God was merciful, and he feared that if he preached and the city repented, God would relent and not destroy it. And that was the very thing Jonah could not bear. He would rather his enemies were wiped out than shown mercy. So Jonah fled, not from danger, but from the mercy of God — because he did not want that mercy extended to people he hated. It is an ugly thing to see in a prophet, and yet we must look at it honestly, for the same narrow spirit can lurk in any of us. It is easy to rejoice in God's mercy toward ourselves and those we love, and quietly to resent it toward those we despise. But the mercy of God is wider than our hearts; and Jonah had to learn, painfully, that God cared about a city he had written off. Before we judge Jonah too quickly, we would do well to ask whether there are any for whom we, too, secretly begrudge the mercy of God.

3.The Storm and the Pursuit

But a man cannot flee from God. As Jonah's ship put out to sea, the LORD sent a great storm, so fierce that the vessel was in danger of breaking apart. The terrified sailors cried each to his own god and threw the cargo overboard, while Jonah, strangely, lay fast asleep below. When the lot was cast to find who was to blame, it fell on Jonah; and he confessed that he was fleeing from the LORD, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. At his own word, and with great reluctance, the sailors at last threw him into the raging sea — and instantly the storm ceased, and the sea grew calm. The sailors, seeing it, feared the LORD. Notice what is happening here: God is pursuing His runaway prophet. He will not simply let Jonah go his own way to ruin. The very storm was an act of mercy, sent to stop Jonah in his flight and turn him back. This is a comforting truth about the God we serve. When His children wander, He does not always let them wander unchecked; often, in love, He sends the storm that halts them, the trouble that turns them around. What feels like disaster may in fact be the pursuing mercy of God, refusing to let us destroy ourselves.

4.Out of the Depths

And even in the sea, mercy met Jonah. God had prepared a great fish, which swallowed Jonah, and in that strange refuge Jonah was preserved alive for three days and three nights. There, in the darkness and the depths, at what seemed the very bottom of everything, Jonah at last turned back to God. Out of the belly of the fish he prayed, and his prayer is one of the most moving in all Scripture — a cry of distress rising into hope. "I cried out to the LORD because of my affliction," he prayed, "and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice." He remembered the LORD when his soul fainted within him; and he ended with the great confession that is the heart of the whole book: "Salvation is of the LORD." Here is deep comfort for anyone who has sunk into the depths — into trouble, or despair, or the consequences of their own wrong. There is no pit so deep that God cannot hear a cry from the bottom of it. Jonah, in the belly of the fish, was not beyond the reach of God; and neither are we, however low we have fallen. When we can do nothing else, we can still cry to the LORD; and from the depths He hears, for salvation belongs to Him alone.

5.The Word a Second Time

God spoke to the fish, and it cast Jonah up onto the dry land. And then comes one of the most gracious lines in the book: "the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh." The second time. God did not cast off His failed and disobedient servant. He did not find another prophet, or leave Jonah to the ruin he had chosen. He came to Jonah again, with the same call, and gave him a second chance to obey. What mercy is here — not only toward Nineveh, but toward Jonah himself. This is the God of the second chance, and of the seventh, and of the seventieth. When we have failed Him and run from Him and been brought low, He does not write us off; He comes to us again, and calls us afresh to the work He has for us. We have seen this same grace throughout these studies — in Peter restored by the sea, in the runaway made a servant again. It is the very nature of God to restore the fallen and to renew His call to those who have failed. And this time Jonah obeyed. Chastened by all he had passed through, he arose and went to Nineveh, as the LORD had told him.

6.The City That Repented

Jonah went through the great city with a short and stark message: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." And then the astonishing thing happened. The people of Nineveh believed God. From the greatest to the least, the whole city humbled itself; they fasted, put on sackcloth, and cried mightily to God, and everyone turned from his evil way. Even the king rose from his throne, laid aside his robes, and called the whole city to repentance, saying, "Who can tell if God will turn and relent?" And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and He relented from the disaster He had threatened, and did not destroy them. It was one of the greatest revivals in all history — a whole heathen city turned to God at the preaching of one reluctant prophet. And it displays the very heart of God: His readiness to show mercy to any who will truly repent, even those who had been steeped in wickedness. Here, centuries before the gospel went out to all nations, is a shining sign that God's mercy is not confined to one people, but reaches out to Gentile and stranger and enemy alike, wherever there is a heart that turns to Him. The God of Israel is the God of the whole earth, and He desires the salvation of all.

7.The Prophet's Hard Heart

We might expect Jonah to have rejoiced at so great a work of God. Instead, the book turns to show us the prophet's hard heart, and it does so without flinching. When God spared the city, "it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry." And now at last he admitted the real reason he had fled in the first place: "I knew that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm." Jonah had run away precisely because he knew God was merciful and feared that Nineveh would be spared. And so bitter was he that mercy had triumphed, that he told God he would rather die than live. It is a shocking self-revelation. Here was a man so consumed by his own narrow loyalties and his hatred of an enemy that he actually resented the mercy of God, and grudged the salvation of a hundred and twenty thousand souls. Yet the book holds this up as a mirror to us. It is a searching question whether our own hearts are ever like Jonah's — whether we, too, are glad enough for mercy shown to ourselves, but cold toward mercy shown to those we dislike; whether we care more about being proved right, or about our own comfort, than about the salvation of the lost. Jonah's hard heart is a warning to every servant of God to guard against a spirit so unlike the God he serves.

8.Should I Not Have Pity?

God did not cast Jonah off even for this; instead, He taught him with gentle patience. Jonah went outside the city to see what would become of it, and God caused a leafy plant to grow up and shade him from the sun, and Jonah was very glad of it. But the next day God sent a worm that withered the plant, and the sun beat down on Jonah until he again wished to die. Then God reasoned with him tenderly. Jonah had pitied the plant, though he had done nothing to make it grow, and it had sprung up and perished in a day. "And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city," God asked, "in which are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much livestock?" With that question the book ends — and the question is left hanging, for Jonah and for us. God's last word is a revelation of His own heart: His great compassion for the multitudes of the lost, even the ignorant and the wicked, and even the very cattle of the field. The reluctant prophet cared about a plant; the merciful God cares about a city full of souls. Long afterward, the Lord Jesus pointed back to this story. He spoke of "the sign of the prophet Jonah" — for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and rise again. And He warned that the men of Nineveh, who repented at Jonah's preaching, would rise in judgment against those who would not repent, "for a greater than Jonah is here." Jonah's rescue foreshadowed the death and resurrection of Christ; and the mercy shown to Nineveh foreshadowed the gospel that would go out, at last, to all the nations of the earth.

9.Grace in Every Life

And with Jonah we close our second walk through the lives of the men of Scripture, and it is good to gather up what these five have taught us. We began with John the Baptist, the forerunner, who found his whole greatness in pointing away from himself to Christ, and in decreasing that Christ might increase. We followed Peter through his bold confession and his bitter fall to his tender restoration, and learned that grace does not cast off those who fail, but seeks them out and remakes them. We saw in Paul the chief of sinners saved by sheer grace and made a servant of Christ, whose strength was made perfect in weakness. We watched the Son of Thunder, John, transformed by long fellowship with Christ into the apostle of love. And now, in Jonah, we have seen the boundless mercy of God, pursuing His runaway servant and reaching out to a whole city of strangers. And through every one of these lives runs the same golden thread: the grace and mercy of God, laying hold of flawed and failing people, restoring them, transforming them, and using them for His purposes. Not one of these men was worthy in himself; each was weak, each failed, each was carried by grace alone. And every one of them points us, in the end, to the same Lord Jesus Christ — the One whom John announced, whom Peter and Paul preached, whom the beloved disciple loved, and of whose death and resurrection Jonah was a sign. May the God of such abounding grace and mercy be our God; and may His compassion for the lost become, more and more, our own.

10.Taking It to Heart