When the first disciples met Jesus, they found
exactly what they were hungering for. The fact that these men had almost certainly all been disciples of John the Baptist
points to their moral desire. Only the most spiritually hungry would be
disciples of John. If John’s followers were at all like John, they were people
who hungered and thirsted after real righteousness and were sick of the
righteousness that was then in vogue. They longed for a relationship with God
beyond that of pharisaic superstition and pretention. They had prayed fervently
for the reviving of true religion and the coming of the divine Kingdom. They
longed for the coming of the Messianic King who would separate the wheat from
the chaff and make everything right. These were the sentiments of those who had
the honor to be the first disciples of Christ.
Simon, best known of the twelve by the name of Peter is introduced
to us here through the prophetic insight of Jesus as the man of rock. When
Andrew brought Peter into the presence of his future Lord, Jesus looked at him
and said, “you shall be called Cephas”
(Greek Petros) which means rock.
Jesus discerned in Peter latent capacities of faith and devotion that would
become the foundation of ultimate strength and power.
The gospel writer does not tell us much about the character of
Philip, but his words and actions suggest that he was an earnest inquirer after
truth. He was acquainted with the scriptural truths about the coming
Messiah. When we observe how Philip won Nathanael over to the same faith, we
recognize his generous and sympathetic spirit. Later he would demonstrate the
same spirit when he became the bearer of the request of some devout Greeks who
asked permission to see Jesus.
This passage gives us more detail about Nathanael than the rest of
the scriptures combined. We have it on the highest authority that Nathanael was
a man of great moral excellence. No sooner had Jesus seen him than He
exclaimed, “““Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.””(John
1:47). The words suggest the idea of one whose heart was pure and in whom there
was no double-mindedness, impure motive, pride, or unholy passion: a man of
gentle, meditative spirit, in whose mind heaven lay reflected like the blue sky
in a still lake on a calm summer day. He was a man with strong devotional
habits. He had been spending time with God under a fig tree just before he met
Jesus. When we look at the deep impression the words of Jesus made on Nathanael,
it seems that when Jesus said, “I saw you under the fig tree”, Nathanael
understood Jesus to be saying, “I saw into your heart and was with you under
that fig tree and I pronounce you a true Israelite”.
Nathanael saw the statement by Jesus as evidence of supernatural
knowledge causing him to immediately exclaim, “Teacher, You are the Son of God;
You are the King of Israel” – King of that realm in which you say that I am a
citizen. It is interesting that this disciple with such insight into Christ originally
was hesitant about receiving Jesus as the Christ. When Philip told him that he
had found the Messiah, he had asked incredulously, “Can any good thing come
from Nazareth?” It seems strange to find
such prejudice in one so meek and amiable; and yet, on reflection we see that
is quite characteristic. Nathanael’s prejudice against Nazareth didn’t come
from pride, as was the case of the people of Judea who despised the Galileans,
but from humility. He was a Galilean himself, and as much an object of Jewish
contempt as any Nazarene. His inward thought was, “Surely the Messiah could
never come from among a poor and despised people like us – from Nazareth or any
other Galilean town or village!” He timidly allowed his mind to be biased by
current opinion. This is a fault common to sincere people who defer too much to
human authority. While Nathanael was not without fault, he came to Jesus as one
who wanted those faults removed. He came and he saw. This openness to
conviction is the mark of moral integrity. The person of integrity does not
dogmatize, but investigates. Such was the character of the men who first
believed in Jesus.
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