LIFE'S INDIVIDUALITIES
Poul Madsen
Reading: John 1:29-51
GOD is a God of repetitions, as we saw in a previous article [Life's Repetitions, Vol. 13, No. 4]; but He is not a God of uniformity. He has created millions of human beings, and all of them have two feet, two hands, a nose between two eyes, and two ears. That is repetition on a huge scale. Yet each of those [115/116] beings is unique: none of them is exactly like the others. This, then, is what our God is like; He is the God of repetition who hates uniformity.
Satan is just the opposite. He insists on uniformity, and he often seems to have his way. All the big political powers are built on uniformity. Sometimes this principle seems to enter into the Church, so that people in a particular church seem just like one another. They are without originality; they have become copies; they do the same things, speak the same language and use the same phrases. This is quite boring, and it is certainly not what is meant by being holy. Such sameness, far from being of God is very, very human and lacks vitality. True life demands individualities.
John's account of the first calling of the disciples speaks of two men without giving any names. From 1:40, however, he goes on to give us the names of four of them. The first is Andrew: "One of them that heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother". He is identified in this way, that he was the brother of Simon Peter, and with one exception this is always the case (Matthew 10:2; Luke 6:14; John 6:8). Almost the only place where he is not so described is in Mark's Gospel which, of course, was written under Peter's guidance; there he is just called Andrew (Mark 3:18).
I feel sorry for him. Nobody would wish only to be known as somebody else's brother. He was not so important as Peter, we know, but still he became just as indispensable. He became a real man in his own right, a unique personality, as the Gospels make quite clear. He first heard about Christ without the help of Peter. He heard for himself, and then he followed for himself, without the help of Peter. Indeed, it was all the other way round, for the Scriptures go on to report that "he findeth first his own brother, Simon ...".
The word 'first' indicates that he found others after Peter. It was he who found the lad with the five loaves and the two fishes (John 6:9), for that is the kind of man he was. Humanly speaking he lived under the shadow of his brother Peter, but really he lived in the light of the Lord, so he had his own personal testimony which he had not learned from Peter. He heard for himself John's words, "Behold, the Lamb of God". He heard that without Peter's help, and then he was able to exclaim: "We have found the Messiah".
It is tremendous to appreciate this that, without Peter's help, he understood that the embodiment of weakness was also power incarnate; the Lamb is the Almighty. It made his personality, to know this for himself. How had he learned it? By revelation of the Spirit through the Word of God. We know that John the Baptist and his disciples had seen the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus and rest upon Him: "John bare record saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him" (v.32). Andrew, the brother of Peter, came to the Lord himself, and the Lord gave him the words about the resting Spirit: "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him" (Isaiah 11:1-2).
Andrew did not learn this from his brother Peter; he learned it from God Himself. The Spirit rested, abode, on the Lord Jesus and Andrew, the brother of Peter, understood this and was able to identify Him as the Christ. He did not say, 'We have found a man and I think that he may be the Messiah', or 'We have found one and I should not be at all surprised if he turned out to be the Messiah'. No, there were no doubts in his mind so that he was able to say: "We have found the Messiah" and in saying so he became a real man. He had found the Messiah, and in doing so he had found himself. Like Paul, he could now say, "By the grace of God I am what I am" -- I am Andrew. But he did not say, "I have found the Messiah". He was big enough to forget himself, which he did by asserting that it was "we" who had found Christ.
Andrew was now a new man and unique, even though he was still called the brother of Peter. He was an example of Biblical renewal by which common men are made unique, real personalities. In our limited understanding we think of renewal in two ways. One is by repair. When my wife repairs my shirt, I say that it is like new. But repair is not Biblical renewal. The other way is by substitution, starting with new material. I buy a shirt and of course it is a new shirt. But neither is this the Biblical way of renewal, as though we had put Andrew aside and created another man. No, it is not repair and it is not substitution; it is the miracle of renewal so that Andrew is still the same Andrew and yet is an altogether new Andrew, a real man. [116/117]
This makes man the most interesting being on earth, and shows that the Creator respects what He has created. The Lord had made Andrew a different man from all others, and then had given him a God-given personality. From the outside he had been unique, but now as an inner personality he was unique too. He had heard the wonderful message that the sin which was the self-centredness of the world had been taken away by the Lamb of God. Through that message, Andrew was liberated, delivered from self-centredness and given a new centre. His personality was no longer centred in his ego but in Christ, and so he had become the real Andrew, though he remained the brother of Peter.
This was true liberty, and now his testimony was convincing, even to his big brother Peter. Peter might be expected to doubt his statement, replying 'How can you know? You are only my brother Andrew'. But as he looked at him, he saw a new Andrew, a man quite natural, not artificial or dramatic, but a real man whose testimony was most convincing. If you want people to believe your testimony you must be truthful, and you can only be truthful when you are yourself, and you can only be yourself when you are in Christ. If you copy others, don't expect people to believe you.
