GodReflection: A Brand-New Life And Have Everything To Live For.
Dr. Owen E. Puckett, my great uncle, grew up in the state of Arkansas. He served as a role model for a little boy who attended church with him in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. Everyone looked up to my great uncle. Irresistibly, his Jesus-reflection and humility drew young and old alike.
Through the years, I’ve adopted another great uncle. He grew up in Bethsaida, near the Sea of Galilee. Rather than a medical doctor and an Eddy County Health Director, John the Apostle was a fisherman before he entered his training as one of the twelve Disciples of Jesus.
I first met John in my freshman Greek class. For the next three years I came to know him. Even today, I recognize his voice. Remarkably, he speaks like Dr. Neil Lightfoot, my old Greek professor who led us through John’s writings in our Greek New Testament.
Then when I was a Senior Bible Major, Professor Lightfoot walked our class through the 21 chapters of the Gospel of John. Through our Greek classes and John’s gospel, Dr. Lightfoot’s strong and unique sound engraved the voice of the old apostle onto my soul.
But the voice I hear isn’t the young man who at first wanted to be great among the others; nor the one who wanted to call for lightening to fry his opponents. It is the voice of the mature old man who grew to know Jesus intimately. It is the voice of John The Old Man Who Jesus Still Loves.
Listen to that elderly voice. It comes from the heart of an old man who has seen God in the flesh of Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5).
John is the humble elderly man who reflects over all he has seen, lived, and come to know. Now while in Ephesus on mission for Jesus the Messiah he is ready to write the story of the life of Jesus. He now knows love profoundly. He can’t help himself. The word love appears over eighty times in his writings. Jesus’s love makes a huge impression on him.
Hear his kind reflective voice. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). He understands Jesus’s grace gifted to him and can only refer humbly to himself as the one who Jesus’s loves: One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him (John 13:23). Here I am, near the age of my old mentor. The greatest truth he has taught me is—I am the one Jesus loves and so are you.
And as an old apostle in the city of Ephesus the young struggling churches are ready to listen to him. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.
And so, we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister (John 4:7-21).
Then finally because of all he teaches about Jesus, he is exiled by Nero the Roman emperor. He is deported and banished on the Island of Patmos. While there he receives his final message from Jesus in a vision. It is our Book of Revelation, given by Jesus to reveal the future of God’s church and all believers.
Like his brother James who died as a young man committed fully to Jesus, John also losses his earthly life while banished on a rocky island. And like his brother James, the old apostle John assures us he believed with all his being he has A Brand-New Life And Had Everything To Live For. Because he is John The Old Man Who Jesus Still Loves.
Stay tuned.
Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection: John The Old Man Who Jesus Still Loves.
God Reflection 