John 1:42

The passage keeps count of days. On the day before this one, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” and he testified that this is the Son of God (John 1:29–34). Verse 35 opens on the next day, and verse 43 opens on the day after that with “The day following”. The days follow quickly, and each one brings new people to Jesus.

Verse 35 begins with pálin, “again”, the plain adverb for something that happens once more. John is at the place beyond Jordan where he was baptizing (John 1:19–28), and he is about to say again what he said the day before. The verb for “stood”, hístēmi, is the ordinary word for standing, and it pictures John at his post with two of his disciples beside him.

A disciple, mathētḗs, is a learner or pupil, from a root meaning to learn. In Israel at that time pupils (in Hebrew, talmidim) attached themselves to a teacher to learn both his teaching and his way of life, and these two men belonged to John in that way. John’s work had been foretold. Isaiah spoke of a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the LORD (Isaiah 40:3), and Luke applies those words to John (Luke 3:4). Malachi spoke of a messenger sent to prepare the way before the Lord (Malachi 3:1) and of Elijah the prophet coming before the great day of the LORD (Malachi 4:5–6). John came to bear witness of the Light (John 1:6–8). The crowds that came to him wondered whether he might himself be the Christ (Luke 3:15), so he had a following he could have kept for himself. He used it to send his own disciples to Jesus, which is what he later meant when he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

In verse 36 John is “looking upon Jesus as he walked”. The verb emblépō means to look at or look straight at someone, and John has his eyes fixed on Jesus as he passes. Then he speaks to his disciples: “Behold the Lamb of God!” The word íde, “behold”, is an interjection like “see!” or “lo!”, which calls for attention and puts weight on what comes after it. This time John says it to the two men closest to him, and they take it as his word to them.

They hear, and they act. The verb for “heard”, akoúō, is the common word for hearing, and what they heard moved them, because “they followed Jesus”. akolouthéō comes from a word of union and a word for a road, and Strong’s gives its sense as “to be in the same way with”, to go along with someone, especially as a disciple. The two men walk after Jesus along the road, and that walk is the beginning of their life as his disciples. Their own teacher has pointed them to him, so they go with John’s blessing. Jesus would later put the call in his own words: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19), and “take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). He says that his sheep hear his voice and follow him (John 10:27), and Peter would one day tell him, “thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

Jesus turns and sees the two following him. The verb stréphō is a turning round, and with it Jesus takes up the meeting himself and speaks to them first. His first words in John’s Gospel are a question: “What seek ye?” The verb zētéō means to seek, to look for, to try to obtain. Jesus already knows them, as his words to Nathanael will show, and the question brings into the open what they are looking for, so that following him becomes their own clear choice.

They answer with a title and a question. “Rabbi” was a title of honour for a teacher in Israel, meaning “my great one” or “my teacher”, and John explains it for his readers: “which is to say, being interpreted, Master”. He does the same with “Messias” in verse 41 and “Cephas” in verse 42. Then they ask, “where dwellest thou?” The verb is ménō, to stay, abide or remain. A disciple lived near his teacher and learned from his daily life, and these men want to stay where Jesus is and learn from him.

Jesus answers, “Come and see.” The verb érchomai is the ordinary word for coming or going, and eídō means to see, with the eyes or with the mind. Jesus offers himself to be known, and they come to know him by being with him. “They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day”. “Abode” is ménō again, the same verb as in their question, so they ask where he stays and end up staying with him. The word grows large in this Gospel. Jesus later says, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4), and he promises that the Spirit of truth will dwell with his disciples and be in them (John 14:16–17).

The whole exchange fits what Scripture says about seeking God. David longed to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of his life (Psalm 27:4), and a psalm calls, “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8). Jesus promises that those who seek will find (Matthew 7:7), and he calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30). In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). John has already told us that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), so these two men spend that day in the company of God made man. After his death and resurrection he would make his home in his people by the Spirit, so that Paul could say, “Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20), and call the believer’s body the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19). Eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3), and for these two that knowing began on this day.

Verse 40 names one of the two: “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.” The verbs are those of verse 37, akoúō and akolouthéō: he heard John speak and followed Jesus. The word adelphós is the ordinary word for a brother. Andrew is introduced by his link to his brother, who would become the better known of the two, yet Andrew met Jesus first and then brought Simon to him. Matthew and Mark tell of Jesus calling Simon and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:18–22, Mark 1:16–18).

Verse 41 says, “He first findeth his own brother Simon”. The verb heurískō means to find, and finding runs through these verses: Andrew finds Simon, Jesus finds Philip, and Philip finds Nathanael. “First” (prōtos) marks this as the first thing Andrew did, and “his own brother” shows that he went straight to his family. His message is short: “We have found the Messias”. The “we” takes in the other disciple, who shared Andrew’s conviction after their day with Jesus.

On the next day Jesus “would go forth into Galilee”, which is to say he had made up his mind to go. Galilaía, Galilee, is a name of Hebrew origin that Strong’s renders “the heathen circle”, and Isaiah calls it “Galilee of the nations”, the land where the people that walked in darkness would see a great light (Isaiah 9:1–2). The leaders in Jerusalem looked down on it, and the Pharisees would later tell Nicodemus, “out of Galilee ariseth no prophet” (John 7:52). They had already sent men to question John (John 1:19–28), and Galilee, among ordinary people and away from their scrutiny, would be where Jesus did much of his work.

Then Jesus “findeth Philip”. The verb is heurískō again, and this time Jesus is the one who finds. In Israel a student usually chose his rabbi, and here the Teacher goes looking for his student. His word to Philip is “Follow me”, the command form of akolouthéō, the verb used of the first two in verses 37 and 40. Jesus later told his disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (John 15:16). He is the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11), and he goes out to find his own. Before long he would appoint twelve to be with him (Mark 3:13–19).

Philip does what Andrew did. He “findeth Nathanael” and tells him, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write”. gráphō is the ordinary verb to write, and prophḗtēs is a prophet, one who speaks for God. “Moses in the law, and the prophets” names the whole of the Scriptures Israel had, and Philip says all of it was pointing to this man.

Moses wrote that God would raise up a Prophet like him from among his brethren (Deuteronomy 18:15), and Peter applied those words to Jesus (Acts 3:22). The prophets and psalms told of a virgin who would conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:14), of one wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:4–6), of the Holy One whom God would keep from corruption (Psalm 16:10), and of the Son of man given everlasting dominion (Daniel 7:13–14). Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Romans 10:4). After his resurrection Jesus himself, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets”, expounded in all the scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27), and he told his disciples that everything written of him in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44).

Philip ends with what everyone knew about him: “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” That is how his neighbours spoke of him, by his town and his family. Philip’s faith is real, and it is still young. John has already shown us that this man is the Word who was with God and was God, by whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), and who was made flesh (John 1:14). Later the crowds would stumble over the same facts and ask, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” (John 6:42).

Jesus is the good thing that came out of Nazareth, and Nathanael is about to meet him. His question uses agathós, good, and ek, “out of” or “from”, the ordinary preposition for where something comes from. Nazareth was a small village in Galilee, and the Old Testament never mentions it. Micah had named Bethlehem as the place from which the ruler of Israel would come (Micah 5:2), and later the crowds in Jerusalem argued that the Christ must come from Bethlehem and the seed of David, and so could hardly come from Galilee (John 7:41–42). Nathanael came from Cana (John 21:2), another small Galilean town, and his question was the honest prejudice of a man who knew the Scriptures and knew Nazareth.

God’s way has long been to work through what people pass over. Isaiah said of the servant, “he hath no form nor comeliness” (Isaiah 53:2–3), and the Lord told Paul that his strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Philip answers with the invitation Jesus gave in verse 39: “Come and see.” The verb for “see” is eídō, as it was there. Philip leaves Nazareth’s reputation alone and brings Nathanael to the one who can answer for himself. To come and see Jesus is to meet the only begotten Son who has declared the Father (John 1:18), the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). A Samaritan woman would later do the same for her town, telling them, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (John 4:29).

Jesus “saw Nathanael coming” (eídō), and before Nathanael says a word, Jesus speaks about him: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” An Israēlítēs is a descendant of Israel, and “indeed” (alēthōs) means truly or genuinely. Nathanael is a son of Israel in heart as well as by birth. dólos, guile, is a word Strong’s traces to a decoy, a bait or trick, and so it means craft or deceit. Nathanael is open and straightforward. He said bluntly what he thought of Nazareth, and Jesus counts that honesty to his credit.

The words echo the man Israel was named for. Jacob took his brother’s blessing by deceit, so that Isaac said, “Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing” (Genesis 27:35), and only later did God name him Israel (Genesis 32:28). Here stands an Israelite free of the old trickery of Jacob, and in verse 51 Jesus will speak of Jacob’s own dream.

Scripture prizes this kind of heart. “Blessed is the man ... in whose spirit there is no guile” (Psalm 32:2), and God desires “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6). Peter tells believers to lay aside “all malice, and all guile” (1 Peter 2:1), and of the redeemed who follow the Lamb it is said, “in their mouth was found no guile” (Revelation 14:5). Jesus spoke hard words against religious men whose outward show covered inward corruption (Matthew 23). Christ himself is wholly free of guile: “in him is no sin” (1 John 3:5), and he always did what pleased the Father (John 8:29). Through him we are made new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17), and he will present his church to himself holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27).

Nathanael’s reply is plain surprise: “Whence knowest thou me?” The verb ginṓskō is the common word for knowing or perceiving, and he simply asks how a stranger can know him. Jesus answers, “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” The verb is eídō again. Jesus saw Nathanael before anyone called him, in a place where he was alone, and Nathanael knows that only he himself knew of that moment.

John says of Jesus that he “knew what was in man” (John 2:24–25), and at the well he told the Samaritan woman about her husbands (John 4:17–19). Scripture gives this knowledge to God. Solomon prayed, “thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men” (1 Kings 8:39), David sang, “O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me” (Psalm 139:1–4), and all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13). When Jesus sees Nathanael under the fig tree, he does what only God does.

That knowledge is also a comfort. Jesus is the shepherd who calls his own sheep by name (John 10:3) and knows them (John 10:14), the high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15) and makes intercession for us (Romans 8:34), and the Son of man who came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10).

Nathanael answers at once: “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” rhabbí is the respectful title for a teacher, the one the first two disciples used in verse 38, and Nathanael moves straight on from it to two greater titles. huiós is the word for a son, and “the Son of God” names one who stands in a unique relationship to God. basileús means a king, one with authority to rule, and “the King of Israel” names Jesus as Israel’s promised ruler. God had promised David a son whose throne he would establish for ever (2 Samuel 7), and Isaiah foretold a child on David’s throne whose kingdom would grow for ever (Isaiah 9:6–7).

Nathanael spoke more truly than he yet understood. Many then thought of the Son of God as the anointed king, and John’s readers know from the opening of the Gospel that the Son is the Word who was God (John 1:1). He was in the form of God and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6–7), and he is the Son God gave because he so loved the world (John 3:16). Other confessions follow this one. Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Martha says she believes he is the Christ, the Son of God (John 11:27), and the newly converted Saul preached in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God (Acts 9:20).

Jesus closes with a solemn promise: “Verily, verily, I say unto you”. amḗn is a word of Hebrew origin meaning firm or sure, and as an adverb it means “surely” or “so be it”. In John’s Gospel Jesus doubles it, and it marks what follows as certain truth. He is speaking to Nathanael, “he saith unto him”, yet the promise uses hymîn, the plural “to you”, so it belongs to all the disciples with him. “Hereafter” stands for árti and apó, “from now on”, so what he promises begins now and goes on.

The promise is that “ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” anabaínō means to go up, and katabaínō means to go or come down. Jesus is speaking of Jacob’s dream at Bethel, where Jacob saw “a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:12). Jacob called the place Bethel, the house of God. Jesus says the angels will go up and come down on the Son of man. He himself is the ladder, the place where heaven and earth meet, and the true house of God. All of God’s dealings with us come down through him, and all our approach to God goes up through him. Paul writes, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), and Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The guileless Israelite of verse 47 is promised the reality that Jacob’s dream pointed to.

Heaven opened over Jesus at his baptism, when the Spirit came down upon him (Matthew 3:16), and Stephen, as he faced death, saw the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God (Acts 7:56).

These verses give Jesus one name after another, and together they say who he is. John the Baptist calls him the Lamb of God. The first disciples call him Rabbi, Master. Andrew calls him the Messias, the Christ. Philip calls him the one of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, and also Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathanael calls him the Son of God and the King of Israel. Jesus calls himself the Son of man. Each disciple says what he has seen so far, and each name is true. The sacrifice for sin, the Teacher, the Anointed One, the fulfilment of Scripture, the man from a small town, the Son of God, Israel’s King and the meeting place of heaven and earth are one person, and the rest of John’s Gospel shows him to be all of them.

This passage shows us how Christ gathers his people. John the Baptist points two of his disciples to Jesus. Andrew goes first to his own brother. Jesus himself finds Philip, and Philip goes to his friend. Each of these witnesses speaks simply, “Behold the Lamb of God”, “We have found the Messias”, “Come and see”, and leaves the rest to Jesus. The same pattern carries on after the resurrection, when the Lord sends his disciples to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19) and to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Through Abraham’s seed, which is Christ, the blessing promised to all the families of the earth goes out (Genesis 12:3, Galatians 3:16), and it has reached each of us through someone who met him first.

The passage also shows us our Lord. He turns toward people who follow him and asks what they are looking for. He takes them home for the day. He looks at a fisherman and names what he will become. He goes looking for Philip. He sees Nathanael under the fig tree before anyone calls him, and he meets an honest doubter with knowledge that wins him and a promise of more. The one who came out of Nazareth is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world and the Son of man on whom heaven stands open. Whoever comes to him with the question of verse 38 in their heart finds that he knew them before they came, and he still says, “Come and see.”