It's all in your focus

John 1:12 says, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”

Jordan explains, “The disciples still need the empowering that they’ll get—that power to become. It’s never going to be them. And Peter has to remember that. He took his eyes off the Lord and the purpose God had in Christ, and when he took that away, it’s interesting he looks at John, the disciple whom Jesus loved.

“Now that’s the disciple who focused on Christ’s love for him. He was so caught up in the way the Lord loved Him that he didn’t pay any attention to anybody else. Peter was a guy who boasted about what he was going to do and his love for the Lord. It wound up a failure.

“ ‘Then Peter turned about.’ In other words, he’s getting busy in the affairs of other people. He’s more concerned about the events, the happenings , then the following, and there’s that spirit of competition that comes up.

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John 13 says, “When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
[22] Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake.
[23] Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.
[24] Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake.
[25] He then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?”

Jordan explains, “They’re in the Upper Room, Jesus and the apostles are there. Christ is in the Last Supper with them before He dies. He just washed their feet, had the great example of serving them.

“The service that Christ performs sprang out of His understanding of His identity of who He was. He understood that everything He was doing was what the Father gave Him to do. He was able to be obedient because He knew who He was in the plan of God and He trusted God’s plan, the word of His Father. That’s where real service comes from.

“ ‘Doubting of whom he spake.’ When you read that you got to remember the other gospels. They began to say, ‘Is it I?’ Now if you were going to betray the Lord, don’t you think you would know it?! They’re not sure they’re not going to. They have enough consciousness of their own failure to say, ‘Is it I? Is it I?’ Only one of them didn’t do that.

“Notice John doesn’t say, ‘Is it I?’ All of the rest of them do, but John says, ‘Who is it? It ain’t me, so who out there is it?’ He’s joined into the consciousness that Christ has in the serving.

“Now when he says ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ who wrote the book? The disciple whom Jesus loved. So when he describes himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ he’s telling you, ‘Here’s how the Lord thinks about me.’ The writer is so caught up in Christ’s love for him.

“Verse 13:1 says, ‘Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.’

“So when the other guys want to know somebody else, he never thinks of himself in any other way than the disciple whom Jesus loved. It wasn’t His love for Christ he was focused on. That’s what Peter was focused on. You go on down in the text and Peter says, ‘Lord, I’ll go to death with you. I’ll go to prison with you. I love you. I’ll prove I love you.’

“So which one of them had the close, personal, intimate relationship with Christ? The one who was talking about what he was going to do for Him or the one who focused on what Christ was doing for him?

“You want to have some intimacy with the Lord? You want to have a personal contact? If you want to have that personal intimate relationship with God the Father that He desires to have, it’s called eternal life.

“If you want to have that in the present experience of your life, don’t focus on what you’re doing because it’s only failure there. Focus on how much He loves you. That song about, ‘O how He loves you and me.’ Well, that’s a good thing to think about it because ‘it’s the love of Christ that constrains us,’ as Paul tells us.

“And John, this disciple whom Jesus loved, had his focus on Christ’s love for him. Because of that, he had this special relationship with the Lord that the others didn’t have.”