Day 334: 1 John 4:20–5:5

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent also loves his child (v. 1).

My favorite account from the early church fathers concerning John was preserved by Clement. It begins with the statement, “Listen to a story which is not a story but a true tradition of John the Apostle preserved in memory.”

While visiting a new bishop and his congregation in Smyrna, John “saw a young man of strong body, beautiful appearance, and warm heart. ‘I commend this man to you,’ [John] said, ‘with all diligence in the face of the church, and with Christ as my witness.’”

John returned to Ephesus and, as promised, the bishop took the young man under his wing and baptized him. Time passed, and the bishop “relaxed his great care and watchfulness. . . . But some idle and dissolute youths, familiar with evil, corrupted him in his premature freedom.” Before long, the young man had given himself entirely to a life of sin, committed crimes, and even renounced his salvation. Eventually John was summoned back to Smyrna and asked for a report of the young man. Somewhat taken aback, the bishop answered, “He has died”—meaning he had abandoned his faith.

John replied, “Well, it was a fine guardian whom I left for the soul of our brother. But let me have a horse, and someone to show me the way.” When the elderly John found the young man, he started to flee. John called out to him, “Why do you run away from me, child, your own father, unarmed and old? Pity me, child, do not fear me! You have still hope of life. I will account to Christ for you. If it must be, I will willingly suffer your death, as the Lord suffered for us; for your life, I will give my own. Stay, believe; Christ sent me.” (John knew better than anyone else that only Christ could ransom a man’s life.)

The young man wept bitterly, embraced the old man, and pleaded for forgiveness. The account says that John led the young man back and “baptized him a second time in his tears. . . . He brought him to the church, he prayed with many supplications, he joined with him in the struggle of continuous fasting, he worked on his mind by various addresses and did not leave him, so they say, until he restored him to the church, and thus gave a great example of true repentance and a great testimony of regeneration, the trophy of a visible resurrection.”72 Truly, John practiced what he preached.