John's Story

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Who dwells with them and will be in them? Jesus Himself? Or another? Mark was getting more confused by the moment.

  “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”

  Mark’s mind was reeling. The world will see Him no more? But the disciples will? And they will live?

  “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

  The other Judas said, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?”

  Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”

  He was speaking the words of God? Mark wanted to know Jesus enough to love Him and keep His word.

  “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

  So that is who will be in the disciples. A spirit?

  “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.

  “And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe.

  “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.”

  For the first time, after all the hours he had spent with Peter and the years he had spent studying the Scriptures, John Mark wished he could be a disciple of Jesus. Was He the Christ, the Messiah? Mark had no idea. But He spoke with such authority and depth.

  “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

  “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.

  “These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them.”

  This Man knows the future? How long would it be before Mark could know for sure?

  “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

  “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father.”

  A little while? Mark felt lost, and he could tell by their looks that the disciples were too. Yet it was as if Jesus read their minds.

  “Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said? Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. You now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

  “The time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father.”

  Well, Mark decided, that couldn’t have been more clear. And apparently Peter agreed. He said, “See, now You are speaking plainly, and using no figure of speech! Now we are sure that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should question You. By this we believe that You came forth from God.”

  Jesus said, “Do you now believe? Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

  As Mark watched, transfixed, Jesus looked up and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

  “I pray for these, My friends. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

  “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

  Mark sat shivering, mesmerized by the puzzling, troubling statements of the Teacher. Mark realized that if this had been his own rabbi, holding forth on some teaching, he might have dozed. But the Teacher said such amazing things.

  When Jesus finished praying, He said, “After we sing, I would that you would join me at the Mount of Olives.” He led the disciples in a hymn, the very one Mark and his mother had sung to finish their seder.

  As Jesus and the remaining eleven made their way down the steps, Mark followed unnoticed and instructed the servants to finish tending to the upper room. He tiptoed past his mother’s quiet bedroom and crept into the night, after the group. A cold breeze was blowing, but Mark didn’t dare return home for his cloak, as he did not want to rouse his mother, nor did he want to lose sight of the men.

  Jesus, clearly having announced Himself as Messiah, would be betrayed! Mark could not have been deterred from following the men even if his mother had risen and forbidden him. The frigid wind be cursed. The Mount of Olives was not fa
r.

  1: 5a Or overcome

  1: 9a Or That was the true Light which, coming into the world, gives light to every man.

  1: 11aThat is, His own things or domain

  b That is, His own people

  1: 16aNU-Text reads For.

  1: 18aNU-Text reads only begotten God.

  1: 23aIsaiah 40: 3

  1: 28aNU-Text and M-Text read Bethany.

  1: 42aNU-Text reads John.

  1: 51aNU-Text omits hereafter.

  2: 17aNU-Text and M-Text read will eat.

  bPsalm 69: 9

  2: 22aNU-Text and M-Text omit to them.

  3: 13aNU-Text omits who is in heaven.

  3: 15aNU-Text omits not perish but.

  4: 42aNU-Text omits the Christ.

  5: 2aNU-Text reads Bethzatha.

  5: 4aNU-Text omits waiting for the moving of the water at the end of verse 3, and all of verse 4.

  5: 16aNU-Text omits and sought to kill Him.

  6: 11aNU-Text omits to the disciples, and the disciples.

  6: 19aLiterally twenty-five or thirty stadia

  6: 22aNU-Text omits that and which His disciples had entered.

  6: 31aExodus 16: 4; Nehemiah 9: 15; Psalm 78: 24

  6: 45aIsaiah 54: 13

  bM-Text reads hears and has learned.

  6: 47aNU-Text omits in Me.

  6: 55aNU-Text reads true food and true drink.

  6: 69aNU-Text reads You are the Holy One of God.

  7: 1aThat is, the ruling authorities

  7: 8aNU-Text omits yet.

  7: 16aNU-Text and M-Text read So Jesus.

  7: 26aNU-Text omits truly.

  7: 29aNU-Text and M-Text omit But.

  7: 33aNU-Text and M-Text omit to them.

  7: 39aNU-Text reads who believed.

  bNU-Text omits Holy.

  7: 40aNU-Text reads some.

  7: 50aNU-Text reads before.

  7: 52aNU-Text reads is to rise.

  7: 53aThe words And everyone through sin no more (8: 11) are bracketed by NU-Text as not original. They are present in over 900 manuscripts.

  8: 2aM-Text reads very early.

  8: 4aM-Text reads we found this woman.

  8: 5aM-Text reads in our law Moses commanded.

  bNU-Text and M-Text read to stone such.

  cM-Text adds about her.

  8: 6aNU-Text and M-Text omit as though He did not hear.

  8: 7aM-Text reads He looked up.

  8: 9aNU-Text and M-Text omit being convicted by their conscience.

  8: 10aNU-Text omits and saw no one but the woman; M-Text reads He saw her and said.

  bNU-Text and M-Text omit of yours.

  8: 11aNU-Text and M-Text add from now on.

  8: 38aNU-Text reads heard from.

  8: 54aNU-Text and M-Text read our.

  8: 59aNU-Text omits the rest of this verse.

  9: 4aNU-Text reads We.

  9: 8aNU-Text reads a beggar.

  9: 9aNU-Text reads “No, but he is like him.”

  9: 11aNU-Text omits the pool of.

  9: 35aNU-Text reads Son of Man.

  10: 8aM-Text omits before Me.

  10: 26aNU-Text omits as I said to you.

  10: 34aPsalm 82: 6

  10: 38aNU-Text reads understand.

  11: 18aLiterally fifteen stadia

  11: 30aNU-Text adds still.

  11: 31aNU-Text reads supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

  11: 41aNU-Text omits from the place where the dead man was lying.

  11: 50aNU-Text reads you.

  12: 1aNU-Text omits who had been dead.

  12: 5aAbout one year’s wages for a worker

  12: 7aNU-Text reads that she may keep.

  12: 13aPsalm 118: 26

  12: 15aZechariah 9: 9

  12: 38aIsaiah 53: 1

  12: 40aIsaiah 6: 10

  12: 41aNU-Text reads because.

  12: 47aNU-Text reads keep them.

  13: 2aNU-Text reads And during supper.

  13: 18aNU-Text reads My bread.

  bPsalm 41: 9

  13: 25aNU-Text and M-Text add thus.

  14: 2aLiterally dwellings

  bNU-Text adds a word which would cause the text to read either if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? or if it were not so I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

  14: 14aNU-Text adds Me.

  14: 15aNU-Text reads you will keep.

  14: 28aNU-Text omits I said.

  15: 2aOr lifts up

  15: 7aNU-Text omits you will.

  15: 25aPsalm 69: 4

  16: 3aNU-Text and M-Text omit to you.

  16: 4 aNU-Text reads their.

  16: 15aNU-Text and M-Text read He takes of Mine and will declare it to you.

  16: 33aNU-Text and M-Text omit will.

  17: 2aM-Text reads shall.

  17: 11aNU-Text and M-Text read keep them through Your name which You have given Me.

  17: 12aNU-Text omits in the world.

  bNU-Text reads in Your name which You gave Me. And I guarded them; (or it;).

  17: 20aNU-Text and M-Text omit will.

  18: 15aM-Text reads the other.

  18: 20aNU-Text reads where all the Jews meet.

  19: 3aNU-Text reads And they came up to Him and said.

  19: 7aNU-Text reads the law.

  19: 16aNU-Text omits and led Him away.

  19: 24aPsalm 22: 18

  19: 28aM-Text reads seeing.

  19: 36aExodus 12: 46; Numbers 9: 12; Psalm 34: 20

  19: 37aZechariah 12: 10

  20: 16aNU-Text adds in Hebrew.

  20: 18aNU-Text reads disciples, “I have seen the Lord,”…

  20: 19aNU-Text omits assembled.

  20: 29aNU-Text and M-Text omit Thomas.

  21: 3aNU-Text omits immediately.

  21: 15aNU-Text reads John.

  21: 16aNU-Text reads John.

  21: 17aNU-Text reads John.

  1: 4aNU-Text and M-Text read our.

  2: 7aNU-Text reads Beloved.

  aNU-Text omits from the beginning.

  2: 18aNU-Text omits the.

  2: 20aNU-Text reads you all know.

  2: 27aNU-Text reads you abide.

  2: 28aNU-Text reads if.

  3: 1aNU-Text adds And we are.

  bM-Text reads you.

  3: 14aNU-Text omits his brother.

  3: 19aNU-Text reads we shall know.

  3: 23aM-Text omits us.

  4: 3aNU-Text omits that and Christ has come in the flesh.

  4: 19aNU-Text omits Him.

  4: 20aNU-Text reads he cannot.