Why do you suppose, when in John thirteen, Jesus says ‘one of you will betray me’ that He didn’t just tell them who it was?
They begin to look around in wonder but again, ‘no one dared ask’. Oh the great ways of the Lord!-Peter wont ask, but he’s smart and strong enough to know someone, who wasn’t going to ask on his own, could. We all need people to recognise that we’re positioned relationally and physically to do more than we may have the confidence to do. Peter did this here, not necessarily for John’s sake but for all of their benefit as well as satisfying his own fearful curiosity. And Jesus allowed it-that’s key.
Jealous as it may make us to consider, there are those still today enjoying a reciprocal love beyond ‘the ordinary’ with the Lord.
I’m not sure which is the stronger point here but this shows intimacy gives proximity and proximity in turn, grants intimacy.
It’s remarkable that Jesus answered John but not the group. It’s important to see that He gave a sideways answer; a way to know the truth without removing one’s responsibility to perceive and believe. And, He did all of this without removing each individual actor from his own choices and role to live out. ( whatever they may’ve heard, verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine make it clear they hadn’t grasped all that was being said.)
Whether we understand in the moment all that our intimacy in the Lord gains for us, we can rest assured those revelations there received have the power to keep us in the uncertain days ahead.
We often think of young John bringing older Peter into the trial. We marvel that Peter broke and denied the Lord but that John evidently didn’t. What makes, what by all accounts was a nineteen year old boy wiser and stronger than a man likely ten years his elder ?
All things considered, Peter should’ve been the one to stand. He was older, stronger and more experienced. Perhaps it was the proximity which John had with the Lord that kept him through this confusion and painfully later on, propelling him into an empty tomb.
Perhaps the closeness of having the answer breathed upon him personally was just enough to cause John to understand that Jesus was not taken unaware; that he knew the coming events all along and was indeed guiding all of the moving parts towards heaven’s conclusion.
At any rate the larger points remain. Intimacy and proximity go hand in hand and affords us grace and wisdom to stand, to keep others and when the moment comes, to give leadership in our shared race.