John Chapter 1

vs 41

Obviously some Jews were looking for their Messiah, because Andrew thought he'd found him, and thought it was worth telling his brother about him. Christ is just the greek of the Hebrew Messiah. What does it really mean? It gets revealed as we read the gospels.

vs 42

Simon is obviously special, right from the start. Jesus certainly knows who he is (of course, Andrew might have told him), but he's still special, because Jesus gives him a special name. None of the others had special names. He gives him an Aramaic name, Cephas, Peter in Greek, which means rock. Why? John doesn't feel the need to explain it.

vs 43

Jesus then seeks out another person, once he has decided he's going somewhere. This is Philip. It's worth just looking at how little time John spends on this early part of Jesus' life. And yet, he is prepared to tell us the names of the people he first met, and some odd little snippets of information about them...

vs 44

like that they are from Bethsaida. So these guys are all sort of kinfolk. They probably would have known each other. So, who is Philip? Is he the second one (with Andrew) who first started following Jesus? If so, then why did Jesus need to tell him to follow? But if not, then who was the second follower? It possibly could be the author. But that is of course speculation.

vs 45

The word of mouth spreads, and Philip goes to tell his brother/friend/cousin Nathanael about Jesus too. They have found something worth following, and they have found something that people were obviously seeking, the Messiah. It's a very specific person from a specific place.

vs 46

Nazareth is obviously fairly well known to these guys. Nathanael even makes a joke about it. But he still is curious enough to go and see.

vs 47

It's an interesting statement to make. I'm sure Jesus isn't meaning to slur his company, but Nathanael, about whom we know basically nothing, is being complimented. The special thing about this, of course, is that Jesus has never met him.

vs 48

Nathanael calls Jesus on this fact, and Jesus gives a little bit of extra information about Nathanael - the position he was sitting in before Philip came and told him that they'd found the Messiah. It doesn't seem like much, but it is a miracle. Many breakdowns of the book of John list the 6,7 or 8 miracles of Jesus described in John. This is never one of them - they always start with the water to wine. But I like this one, because it is actually convincing Nathanael of Jesus' lordship, and it just has a more familiar, friendly air to it.

vs 49

This one thing is enough for Nathanael to declare Jesus the Son of God. I don't know about you, but it seems to me he didn't take much convincing. Jesus has done the miraculous equivalent of a card trick, and Nathanael is stoked at it. This should give us a fairly good picture of how willing people were to look for (and find) the Messiah. But we will find out later that lots of people see even bigger miracles, but few hang around. It isn't Jesus' miracles which end up convincing people. But for now, Nathanael has made an early stab at Jesus' identity.

This also shows us that, unlike the other gospels, where Jesus' identity either comes late, or comes early but from the mouths of demons, John is happy for us to know that Jesus is the Son of God. That's a given. It was what the first bit of chapter 1 was all about.

vs 50

Jesus shows how simple a thing it was - the vision of a fig tree is nothing, compared to what these guys are going to see.

vs 51

But there is something else - heaven will open, and angels will come to the aid of the Son of Man. When we hear about angels coming down to help Jesus at various stages of various gospels, I often wonder if they are visible or invisible. Jesus seems to be indicating that they will see them. But I think Jesus is using this example to offset the simple miracle of the fig tree vision.

But Jesus does something else - he sets out who he says he is. He refers to himself, not as Rabbi, or Messiah or Christ, or as Son of God or King of Israel. He doesn't dispute those titles either, mind you. But his own title for himself is Son of Man. One comment I heard about this was that all those other titles are pregnant with meaning already, and alot of that meaning might be misrepresented. For example, Jesus is King of Israel, sure. But most of the Jews were expecting God to send a King who would raise an army and have a military victory over the Romans.

Son of Man, however, whilst being a biblical title, doesn't have the same amount of injected meaning into it. It's more nebulous, which means Jesus can give it his own meaning - the proper meaning.