Simply Jesus - The one Jesus Loved

John 20

John, the writer of this book, appears in the narrative of the book often. Its an eye witness story but for some reason John chooses not to say "I" or on this occacasion "Peter and I". He always refers to himself in the story as the ONE that Jesus loved.

I am sure there is some deep and meaningful theological reason to this. On first reading I thought that he was trying not to dray attention to himself not using his name but surely he did the opposite. He set himself up as the ONE that Jesus loved.

Maybe to the people looking on from the outside it seems a bit ostentatious to refer to oneself as the ONE whom Jesus loved.

Two things jump to mind though.

1. Jesus clearly had an inner circle of followers. He had hundreds if not thousands of followers, he had 12 disciples that he hand picked and of them 3 were closest. Jesus saw the value and also cultivated strong intimate relationships with a few choice friends and actually had one friend that was closer than all the rest. A good model??
2. Thankfully you are the ONE that Jesus loves and me!