Day 219: John 19:17–27

When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved standing there, He said to His mother, “Woman, here is your son” (v. 26).

Have you ever looked around you at circumstances you could never have imagined experiencing and thought, “How did we get here?”—days that you desperately wish you could drop off the calendar so you can just go back to life as it was?

I believe that such experiences give us some concept of the way John must have felt in the scene depicted in the nineteenth chapter of his Gospel.

Can you imagine how John’s head must have been spinning? Don’t you know he wished someone would wake him up from his nightmare? Then came a profoundly tender and emotional interchange between Jesus, John, and Mary. Jesus assigned John to care for Mary, but be sure that you don’t tag it as a warm and fuzzy moment and try to snuggle up to it. The events John observed were horrific. We can only appreciate the depth of the tenderness against the backdrop of the horror.

After beating Jesus within inches of His life, they held His hands and feet against the crude wood and fastened Him there with a hammer and three long nails. Whether or not John saw the pounding of the hammer, heaven could hear the pounding of his heart. At a time when any thinking man would want to run for his life, the youngest of all the disciples stayed.

Near the cross. That’s what the Gospel of John says. Above the young man hung his world. His hero. His attachment. His future. His leader. Love of his life. Three years earlier he had been minding his own business trying to gain his daddy’s approval with a boat and a net. He hadn’t asked for Jesus. Jesus had asked for him. And here he stood. Isaiah’s startling prophecy tells us that by the time the foes of Jesus had finished with Him, His appearance was disfigured beyond that of any man, and His form marred beyond human likeness (Isa. 52:14).

“When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!” (John 19:26 kjv). Don’t take it lightly. Hear it. Not the way the passion plays do it. Hear the real thing. Hear a voice erupting from labored outburst as Jesus tried to lift Himself up and draw breath to speak.

Every word He said from the cross is critical by virtue of the fact that Jesus’ condition made speaking harder than dying. Chronic pain is jealous like few other things. It doesn’t like to share. If a man is in pain, he can hardly think of anything else, and yet Jesus did—perhaps because the pain of His heart, if at all possible, exceeded the pain of His shredded frame. The look of His mother’s face. Her horror. Her suffering.

Jesus gazed straight upon the young face of the one who was standing nearby. John’s face. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, this face had nestled against His chest in innocent affection. John, like our Melissa, was the baby of the family . . . and he knew it. He no doubt reveled in its privilege. If anyone had an excuse to run from the cross, perhaps it was John, and yet he didn’t.

Jesus saw the disciple whom He loved standing nearby. I believe indescribable love and compassion hemorrhaged from His heart. “Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home” (John 19:27 kjv).

If the cross is about anything, it is about reconciliation. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14). The unbelief of Christ’s brothers had raised a wall of hostility between them and His disciples. As Christ gazed upon His beloved mother and His beloved disciple, He saw His own two worlds desperately in need of reconciliation and a woman who no doubt was torn between the two. Simeon’s prophecy to Mary was fulfilled before Jesus’ very eyes: “A sword will pierce your own soul” (Luke 2:35 hcsb). How like Jesus to start stitching a heart back together even as the knife was tearing it apart. One day soon His family and His disciples would be united, but the firstfruit of that harvest stood beneath the cross of Christ. “From that hour the disciple took her into his home.”

How perfectly appropriate! Right at the foot of the cross we discover the very quality that set the apostle John apart from all the rest.

I am reminded of an Old Testament saint about whom God said, “My servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly” (Num. 14:24). God didn’t mean a different Holy Spirit. All of us who are redeemed have the same Holy Spirit. No, God was referring to something wonderful about Caleb’s own human spirit that made him unique. I believe John had something similar. These were fallible men prone to the dictates of their own flesh just like the rest of us, but they had something in them that was almost incomparable when overtaken by the Holy Spirit. They were simply different.