The Disciple's Perspective

Try your best to mentally "walk a mile in the shoes" of Christ’s original twelve Disciples. Attempt to see through their eyes the thoughts and feelings they experienced as Jesus broke into their world.

Maybe the magnetism to Christ were His eyes. Maybe it was His voice, He was, after all, the Word of God in flesh! Once someone was a disciple of Jesus, living with Him must have been awesome to be sure, interesting all the time and confusing to a Jewish people expecting a militant Messiah and now receiving a Lamb of God, a suffering servant. 

To hear what He had to say and see the compassionate miracles He poured out on the people would have certainly made you think twice about His messiahship because Isaiah 53:2 says about Jesus, 

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." 

Yet, there was something about Him that drew the Disciples like a moth to a flame. There was an amazing, supernatural attraction because at the invitation to come follow Him the two brothers in Matthew 4:22 left their boat and father and followed Jesus - "immediately"!

Aside from this incredible, other-worldly pull Jesus had on people - Jesus' public and private teachings must have been unclear at times, if not most of the time, to The Disciples. An unattractive carpenter's son speaking on the things of God and eventually claiming He was the very Son of God Himself, this falls under the category of "things that make you go hmm". 

Of course hindsight is perfect vision and all they had to do and we have to do is look at the fruit or results of Christ's life and you have your answer. This is why I applaud The Disciples for sticking with Jesus throughout all the moments of confusion and fogginess of concept. The Disciples could not have consulted the Pharisees, Sadducees and Teachers of the Law for clarity on what Jesus might have been referring to in His teachings. Those groups of people were so high on themselves that The Disciples would not get an accurate answer.

One thing is remarkably clear - over the experiences and perspectives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, their individual recordings of the words of Jesus portray a unity of how the disciples heard and understood Jesus when He taught.

The lessons of Jesus were phrased in a particular way when He taught. Some responses by Jesus were guarded at times.

Have you ever said, "I'm going to leave in a minute and I'll be back in a little bit."? Well, Jesus seemed to say this same thing but in His own way. 

"In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me." (John 16:16) 

When the Disciples asked Jesus about not seeing Him for a while, Jesus was once again guarded in His response - John 16:19-24. Then in verse 25 Jesus gives a silver lining to this cloud of code. 

"Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father." 

If I was a Disciple back then I am shouting ''Hallelujah!" about now.

From that unattractive carpenter's son came unclear and down right confusing ideas in other instances. 

Even Jesus' words about becoming His disciple or follower probably seemed cryptic to the Disciples. Consider Mark 8:34-38 - 

"Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.'" 

Wow Jesus! I don't know about taking up a cross! Who is this "Son of Man"? Is that you? If the Son of Man is you and you are here, how are you going to come back with "the holy angels"? And if you are the Son of Man, why are you speaking in third person again?

Jesus spoke through many styles of language like parables, 3rd person, guarded answers, End of Days imagery, farm analogies and so forth. He used different styles of Code, if you will, to keep hidden, certain revelations, like unification with God by being in the "Vine" (John 15:1-17) or taking in His Word daily by "eating His flesh" (John 6:53-58), etc. 

This Code or veiled language that Jesus seemed to be speaking in and operating from was Father God's Plan of Revelation. In other words, The Code was the delivery method of what to say and when to say it, of what to do and when to do it - to fulfill prophecy concerning Him as the Christ and to teach the disciples The Way. John records Jesus saying,

"For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say." (John 12:49-50)

The main message of all that Jesus emphasized at the end of all the Gospels repeatedly is talk about His betrayal, being handed over to the authorities, suffering, death, and resurrection. We definitely observed the Disciples uncertainty about Jesus' words and even fear to ask Him about them. Mark 9:30-32 documents this -

"because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, 'The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.' But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it."

However, God's Plan was that the understanding, The Revelation of Christ's hidden, coded language came after the completion of the Plan of Salvation. All the prophecies foretold Christ's first visit in human form as The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. One example of such a prophecy is found in Isaiah 53. 

This prophecy, among many others, is not a picture of The Lion of the Tribe of Judah who comes later. That view somehow got jumped over The Lamb of God view in the thinking and belief of the Jews. 

As stated earlier, they were expecting their Messiah, their Anointed One to save them from Roman oppression, to set up His kingdom of Righteousness forever, and award them their inheritance before a servant leader. Wrong order.

In John 2:18-22 we begin to receive reasoning of why the Lord spoke cryptically. This passage is when Jesus addressed the Pharisees about destroying the "temple" and He rebuilding it in three days. However, Christ was again using symbolic language with the "temple" meaning His own body. Concerning the Disciples understanding of this dialogue and Jesus' words in particular, the next verse says, 

"After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken." 

The concealed or hidden is now revealed by the Holy Spirit afterward as they recall the events and words that transpired. I believe two major things contributed to The Disciples belief in Christ, besides a risen Savior -

1) what the Scripture had to say about these matters was fulfilled through Jesus and 

2) what Jesus had said was and is Truth.

We know Jesus explained Himself to the two men on the Road to Emmaus from the prophecies of the Old Testament (Luke 24:13-35). We know Jesus appeared to His Disciples many times after He rose from the dead (Mark 16:14; John 21:1; John 21:14) and taught many more things. In fact, John says it like this - 

"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." (John 21:25) 

However, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to come once He ascended to the right hand of His Father, so that, among other things, the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth (John 16:13). 

Jesus had Father God's Plan on His mind the whole time. He consulted His Father about everything. His word choice was strangely challenging to everyone, especially His chosen ones, but He knew Revelation was coming. 

Jesus knew all this, but Israel and the disciples were missing who Jesus really was as He visited. Fulfilling prophecy, healing the sick and the demon possessed, raising the dead, speaking in code and even out-right declaring His Messiahship was not enough to remove the heavy, spiritual scales that hung on The Disciple's Perspective.