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TWO – John

From the very beginning – from the lakeside in Galilee – John is part of that inner circle of disciples along with the brothers Peter and Andrew and his own brother James (Matthew 4:18‑22). But John’s relationship with Jesus could hardly be more different from Peter’s. Peter is all head energy at SIX: faith and fear, loyalty and retreat, full of words – and nudging the boundaries of faith only by great feats of mental anguish. John is one of Peter’s opposite types: TWO to Peter’s SIX. In John’s relationship with Jesus we see the compassion of the heart with the engagement of the gut: we see all of TWO.

There are hints of John’s TWO in the gospel stories – but we see John’s TWO supremely in his own writing.

Only a TWO could write such a movingly compassionate account of Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1‑11), or of Jesus’ being so deeply moved at the death of Lazarus (John 11:33‑36). Luke’s Gospel contains a story where Jesus’ feet are anointed with perfume and the ensuing argument is about the woman Jesus is allowing to do this (Luke 7:37‑39): in John’s Gospel, the person anointing is a known friend of the disciples, and the argument is about whether such extravagant luxury is justified in a world of need. For John, for Jesus, it is justified: this is the intimacy and compassion of TWO.

John’s TWO is seen most clearly in his account of the Last Supper. John omits entirely any account of the breaking of the bread or the sharing of the cup, which are gifts from Jesus to the disciples as a group and to the world. Instead, John alone relates another event from that evening, an event which will have meant far more to John as TWO – not a gift from Jesus to the world or to the group, but a gift to each one of them, one at a time: the washing of their feet. One by one, Jesus will have touched them, held them, looked into their eyes, and then performed this act of service: physical, and all from the heart; pure TWO, and imprinted in every vivid detail on John’s memory (John 13:1‑11).

John sets the context at the very beginning of this account: Jesus has ‘loved his own in the world, and loved them to the end,’ and prepares now to ‘depart out of this world to the Father’; Jesus ‘knows that the Father has given all things into his hands, and that he comes from God and is going to God.’ This is all about love and relationship (John 13:1‑3).

John then gives the account of the foot-washing, and after it, Jesus’ immediate explanation: it is all about serving one another, one to one, within the fellowship of disciples, in accordance with the example that he has given (John 13:12‑15) – and to serve one another within the fellowship of the disciples is to serve Jesus himself (John 13:20).

Jesus’ new commandment is that the disciples are to love one another as Jesus himself has loved them: indeed this is how those outside the fellowship of the disciples will recognize those who are within (John 13:34‑35; 15:12,17). Relationship with God now means a one-to-one love-relationship with Jesus (John 14:6‑11,18‑24; 15:13‑16) who incorporates the disciples into himself, the living vine, by love (John 15:1-10), and who sends a comforter to continue his work among them (John 14:15‑17,25‑26; 16:7‑15).

Despite all that lies ahead for Jesus himself, John does not present Jesus as we see him in the other Gospels – tormented in the garden of Gethsemane – but calm and collected, caring only about how the disciples must be feeling: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled – I go to prepare a place for you – I will come back for you – peace be with you’ (John 14:1‑3,27; 16:16‑33). This is an account of the evening as remembered by TWO.

It is John who ‘lies close to the breast of Jesus’ at the supper itself (John 13:23).

At the cross, wherever the others may have been (Luke 23:49), John is standing right there with the three women: Jesus’ mother, and her sister, and Mary Magdalene. Jesus commends his mother and John to each other, to care for one another as mother and son. It is a perfect TWO moment (John 19:25‑27).

And throughout the telling of this story, John refers to himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ – a self-identification, however accidental, of John’s self-image as TWO.

We have just three other glimpses of John in the other Gospels – all of them very TWO, none of them very flattering. In a particularly TWOish lapse, it is James and John together who seek special places in the coming kingdom, right by Jesus’ side: Jesus very gently smoothes things over when this causes the inevitable indignation among the others, using the event as an opportunity to teach about service (Mark 10:35‑45; Matthew 20:20‑28 – in Matthew’s account their mother appears to talk them into it). Fiercely protective of Jesus, it is John who complains that they have seen someone who is not among their number using Jesus’ name to cast out demons; John tries to forbid him, because for TWO, relationship is what matters, and this person is not in relationship; Jesus says to leave well alone (Mark 9:38, Luke 9:49). Soon after this, again fiercely TWOishly protective of Jesus, James and John ask whether fire should be called down from heaven to consume the villages which have rejected Jesus, just because he is heading for Jerusalem; Jesus again calls them to back off (Luke 9:51‑56). This confrontational flash of anger in the service of TWO must be either the ONE wing of TWO or TWO’s link to EIGHT. Either way, it helps to explain how Jesus comes to surname gentle TWOish John and his brother James ‘the sons of thunder’ (Mark 3:17) – the thunder heard when heart type TWO finds their anger in the ONE wing or in confrontational stress type EIGHT.

Just as Peter thrives after the resurrection, so it is with John. At some point they had become a key partnership: Jesus sent them together to prepare the Last Supper (Luke 22:8), and in John’s account of resurrection morning, they run together to the empty tomb after Mary Magdalene arrives with the news. Heart type John stands respectfully outside, stooping to look in, and wondering; head type Peter goes straight in to see what there is to see (John 20:1‑7). Subsequently Peter and John are together through the early chapters of Acts: in the temple together in chapter 3, arrested together in chapter 4, and traveling to Samaria to minister together in Acts 8:14‑25. Head type Peter does most of the public speaking, but John is right there by his side. For as long as they were able to work together, Peter and John will have made a compelling partnership – complementing each other superbly as opposite types, SIX and TWO, bringing a whole range of gifts and touching a whole range of people. Although they worked separately rather than together, Peter and Paul also make a formidable ‘partnership’ for the spread of the gospel, as opposite types SIX and ONE, ensuring that a whole range of gifts is brought to the task of reaching a whole range of people. John may have been influential in securing the converted Paul’s endorsement by Peter and James (Galatians 2:9); Paul and John are very different characters, but Paul, ONE, does have his TWO wing, and John, TWO, does have his ONE wing, so they would have been able to relate to each other. The complementary influences of these three – Peter, Paul, and John – bring many gifts to the service of the gospel – in the first century and in every century since.

The three New Testament letters attributed to John continue the TWO theme. The key theme in discussing forgiveness is not a great cosmic plan, as described by Paul, but relationship: we confess to God, and God forgives (1 John 1:9); Jesus pleads for us as our advocate (1 John 2:1); and now God loves us with an overwhelming love, calling us children of God (1 John 3:1). You must love (1 John 2:10; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 4:7), and it matters what you love – it must be God and one another, not the things of the world (1 John 2:15‑17) – and it matters how you love – it must be seen in practical TWOish acts of service for those in need, not just in pious words (1 John 3:17‑18). In 1 John 4, the perfect statement of the TWO gospel appears twice: that God is love (1 John 4:8,16). From this develops a full, ONEish systematic theology of salvation based on love (1 John 4:7‑21). The second letter repeats the themes; the third again promotes ‘rendering service to the brethren’ (3 John 1:5).

In John we have seen the angry wing ONE, and now the systematic wing ONE. In John’s shared leadership of the early Church we see the emergence of the leading and inspiring wing THREE. TWO’s link to creative FOUR is seen in John’s writing – his Greek text is poetic and elegant throughout, and the classic translations capture this superbly in the well-known prologue to the Gospel (‘In the beginning was the Word…’ – John 1:1‑18). We see TWO’s link to EIGHT in the letters: John explicitly instructs us to ‘test people out’ in 1 John 4:1‑6, and throughout the epistles he keeps on EIGHTishly asserting, very strongly, that love which fails to produce practical action is no love at all (1 John 2:9,11; 1 John 3:14‑15; 1 John 4:8 – and also the assertiveness of 1 John 1:6,8,10). But above all John is TWO. From Galilee to the writings, for John, ‘God is love.’

John’s journey is part of the journey of TWO. When he asked for the seat at Jesus’ right hand in the kingdom, he thought it could be all about Jesus and him: that was all that mattered to him. When he wanted to call down fire on the villages that rejected Jesus, or forbid the freelance healer who used Jesus’ name, again nothing mattered but immediate close intimacy with Jesus – and Jesus corrected him both times. John had to widen his vision and realize that God’s plans were bigger than just himself and his immediate friends: God has a much wider plan for the good of the whole world.

The writings of John are all about love. He manages to move beyond the TWOish idea that it is only about Jesus and John – but characteristically in John’s writing, the command to love is for Christians to love Christians: John manages to extend his vision from the one-to-one love relationship to love within a community, but not quite to the point of anonymous ‘good Samaritan’ love, beyond the known community (Luke 10:29‑37), or the radical call to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27,35). John’s particular contribution to the work of God’s love in the world is the compassionate, generous, caring, individually focused love of TWO.

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