When we are excited about something – a new movie, new restaurant, a new book – we tell other people about our excitement and invite other people to join us. We want whatever we are experiencing that is good and excellent or awesome to be shared with others. When we love something, we want others to love that thing. That is at the core of what it means to witness or evangelize.
In this passage, Jesus is calling some of the first disciples, and doing so in a way that seems chaotic from an outside perspective. Why is Jesus extending this invitation to these people? Why are they accepting?
This story comes at the beginning of John, and has analogous chapters in the other gospels with slightly different telling. This part comes after the theological opening to the gospel of John , the “Word was God,” etc. Then it starts the narrative with John the Baptist who is pointing people to the coming of the messiah. He is putting his ego aside and pointing his own disciples directly to Jesus.
In First Century Judaism, pupils would typically seek out their rabbis, rather than the other way around. It’s like seminary students seeking out specific professors – and the rabbis would be selective, only taking the elite.
So Jesus is being counter-cultural in two ways – he is reaching out directly, and being far less selective, in the world’s eyes, taking blue collar fishermen as well as the more experienced disciples coming over from John.
This story shows how Jesus operates relationally, in an intensely personal manner. He brings in his disciples through a chain of witness. The “come and see” leads directly to a “follow me.” Jesus could have done things differently, using his power to bring thousands to him all at once. But instead, he works one person at a time. John points a pair of people to him, and then Andrew brings in his brother. Then Jesus directly approaches Philip who brings in Nathanael – going personal relationship by personal relationship.
This relational interaction is to some degree in tension with the crescendo of titles we get in the passage. John calls him the Lamb of God; Andrew calls him Rabbi and then Messiah. Nathanael calls him the Son of God and King of Israel. Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, a callback to the prophecies of Daniel, and evokes the image of Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis 28, setting up Jesus as that ultimate bridge between earth and Heaven.
We come together because we believe this, because we are looking ahead to a future that is greater than today, and to the work that God does in our lives today. We experience the good work of Jesus, and we can call others to come and see what He has done in our lives.
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 2, 2026