Last (Wo)Man Standing

What gets you to the end when everyone else is gone?

If you been reading here for a while, you know the Gospel of John is dear to me. I spent all last year deep in it as I wrote my next book on the believability of Jesus in a world constantly changing. I can’t wait to share it with you! I’ve had the privilege to teach through the Gospel of John in a women’s Bible study and write curriculum on it for my local church’s adult Sunday School. Every time I’m in it, I learn new things about Jesus’ life on earth and what he accomplished for us. I’ve learned more about John, too. I can’t wait to meet him one day.

One of the most striking insights into the beloved disciple comes at the end of the book, when Jesus is talking to both Peter and John after his resurrection. In John 21, Peter and John are talking to Jesus about what comes next. Jesus begins to tell Peter what his death will look like. It’s not going to be peaceful. In true Peter fashion, he turns to John and says “what about him?” And in true Jesus’ fashion, he tells Peter to mind his own business. Jesus tells Peter, “If I want him to live until I return, what is that to you?” Now, we know that didn’t happen, but it started a rumor. Everyone thought John was going to live a long time. While he didn’t live until Jesus’ return (we’re still waiting on that), he did outlive Peter—and everyone else.  

I’m helping lead a Bible study on 1-3 John this semester and I’m enjoying being in John’s head again, this time even later in his life. But what strikes me about this exchange with Peter is that by the time John records it for us, Peter is long gone. It changes how you read John 21 when you know that the man John writes about has already given his life for the Savior.

When John says, in John 20:31, that “these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and by believing you may have life in his name,” he is writing from the vantage point of someone who has “seen, heard, and touched” the Savior (1 John 1:1-2). He’s writing as a credible witness with firsthand knowledge of all Jesus said and did in his life on earth. But he’s writing from the vantage point of someone who has experienced this life even when he was watching earthly life extinguished one by one.

He's the last man standing.

I often wonder what went through his mind as he wrote words like “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:22). Did the memory of Lazarus walking out of the tomb sustain him when he laid his own brother in the ground after he was martyred? Did he reflect on the difficulty of pastoring amidst conflict and relational struggles when he wrote “by this they will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35)?

When I read John’s words, they take on fresh meaning when I remember that he writes them as an old man looking back. They take on a fresh meaning when I realize that he made it to the end. To write these hopeful words, it didn’t come without suffering, relational losses, and grief. If John can make it to the end with hope in his heart and truth on his lips, so can I.

So can you.

The struggles he encountered in the early church aren’t much different than ours today. They didn’t get along, neither do we. They disappointed one another, so do we. They watched friends die, leave the faith, and reject them. So do we.

Yet Christ, our older brother, carries us all the way home.

As John writes in 1 John 1, “our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” This bond is unbreakable, even when the world crumbles around us. We can be last man (or woman) standing, but Christ was the last man standing first. And he cannot forsake his own. He didn’t forsake Peter. He didn’t forsake John. He won’t forsake us.