John 21:20

John 21:20

I. As we apprehend the character of John, the first thing which strikes us is a peculiar intuition. That great sight, God dwelling in the midst of men, was early disclosed to this pure-hearted beholder, and through the rest of life he seems never to have lost the open vision. "With his loving gaze fixed upwards upon the Light of Life, his own eye has become light; the sun has made it sunlike."

II. Ingenuousness and intuition are near allied; the pure heart, the open eye. From the time that the Baptist exclaimed "Behold the Lamb of God," it would seem as if John had no longer toiled at the task which some of us find so troublesome the task of taking away our own sins but had rested in sweet security, satisfied with a Divine Redeemer and Reconciler, and at leisure to observe those gracious words and wonderful works which showed so plainly the Father.

III. Open, receptive, unpreoccupied, John's was that attitude of mind which, at the disclosure of Incarnate Deity rejoicing with exceeding joy, was prepared to sustain without stumbling the unveiling of an awful as well as glorious future. Of the two types of piety the active and the contemplative Peter and John may be taken as patterns; and as both conformations exist in society, it is a cause of rejoicing that there is room for both in the Church of Christ. The side of John is that on which few of us are likely to exceed. We are more ready to work than to worship more anxious to hear some new thing than to realise the all-important things with which we are already familiar. In the dust of our own bustle we veil the heaven, and we run so fast that we cannot read. It is God's goodness, therefore, that He gives us leisure, and our seclusion will be a blessed banishment if we are led to a more intimate communion with that Saviour who, oft forgotten, is never far away.

J. Hamilton, Works,vol. i., p. 316.

References: John 21:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1539; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 250; T. L. Cuyler, Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 91; vol. v., p. 433; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 347; Ibid.,vol. v., p. 31. Joh 21:20-22. R. S. Candlish, Scripture Characters and Miscellanies,pp. 250, 264; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,4th series, p. 415.John 21:20. B. F. Westcott, Revelation of the Risen Lord,p. 141.