Beautiful Discipleship in the Gospel of John

Learning from the Beloved Disciple

The Beloved Disciple appears throughout the Gospel of John, and Christian readers have been trying to identify him since the 2nd century AD. The most common view is that the Beloved Disciple was John, the author of the Gospel bearing his name. The first early church leader to connect the name John with the Fourth Gospel and the Beloved Disciple was Irenaeus (ca. 130-200).¹ This John could have been John the son of Zebedee, John the Elder of 2 and 3 John, or John of Patmos, the author of Revelation. Today, many Bible readers assume all of those were the same John, yet John was—and still is—an incredibly common name.

Ultimately, though we know the Fourth Gospel as “John’s Gospel,” the author (or as we will see, possibly multiple authors) responsible for the Fourth Gospel is not named. And yet, there is so much we can learn from this Gospel’s portrait of the Beloved Disciple. In fact, I think we could also call him the “Beautiful Disciple,” because more than any other person, apart from Jesus, he shows us what beautiful discipleship looks like. So, let’s slow down, sit for a while, and meditate on the portrait John’s gospel gives us of this beloved and beautiful disciple.

Beautiful Disciples Read Scripture Beautifully

Over and over in John this disciple is described as the one “whom Jesus loved,” which “points to a special relationship of the BD with Jesus.”² But in John, there is almost always more beneath the surface. Of the many ways in which this person could have been described as having a special relationship with Jesus, why as he “whom Jesus loved”? The answer may come from the Fourth Gospel’s characteristic use of subtle allusions and echoes from the Old Testament. The Song of Songs refers to a character in similar language, and it does so the same number of times as John. The bride of the Song calls the groom “him whom my soul loved” five times (Song 1:7; 3:1, 2, 3, 4), and the Beloved Disciple is referred to five times, with some variation, as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20).³

Because the Song uses the same exact phrase each time, whereas John’s phrase varies, having five such references might not be significant.⁴ However, Song of Songs is a favorite text for the Gospel’s subtle allusions. As Aimee Byrd puts it, “John, the beloved disciple, was quite the singer of the Song.”⁵ Given the feminine emphasis of the Song, John’s allusions to the Song are most apparent in narratives involving women. We don’t have time to survey them here, but those narratives are the mother of Jesus at the Cana wedding (2:1-11), the woman of Samaria at the well (John 4:1-42), Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet (John 12:1-8), the mother of Jesus at the cross (John 19:25-27), and Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday (John 20:1-2, 11-18).⁶

Even the subtle art with which the Beloved Disciple connects himself to the Song is beautiful (and oh that I had space to show you more! Beauty is in the details, and this essay is all too general). This presupposes, as all the arts do, a foundation of knowledge upon which art builds. Scholar Jocelyn McWhirter puts it well:

“The biggest hindrance for contemporary Christian audiences [in hearing the OT echoes] is not their ignorance of Greek but rather their ignorance of Israel’s Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament. An audience will not recognize an evoked text unless that audience is thoroughly familiar with that text.”⁷

Beautiful disciples know their Bibles! When we slow down to see and hear the whole concert of John’s use of the OT, we hear a symphony of melodic, imaginative resonances. The echoes are musical. Implications for why the Beloved Disciple drew from the Song in particular are likely to be just as artistic: more musical than mathematical, more poetic than propositional, more beautiful than boring.

Beautiful Disciples Identify Themselves, Individually and Corporately, As Christ’s Bride

If the Beloved Disciple is the author of the Fourth Gospel (John 21:24), then we can combine these recurring narrative connections to the Song with the recurring bride-like reference to “the disciple whom Jesus loved”⁸ and see that they go together and make sense together. Furthermore, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” would be a self-reference, displaying a sense of the author’s identity. If the source for this reference is indeed the Song of Songs, then the identity is stunning.

By referring to himself as “the one whom Jesus loved,” the Beloved Disciple uses the Song as a lens for his own identity. He sees himself through the image of that intimate marital relationship. As McWhirter explains, this aligns with the Jewish tradition of reading the Song as a symbolic representation of God’s relationship with his people.

“For [the Johannine community], the Song was about the Messiah, Jesus, and the community of believers. They appropriated Israel’s Scriptures not only to describe Jesus but also to illustrate their experience of Jesus. In so doing, they affirmed their identity as the people of God—in this case, by identifying with the Song’s bride.”⁹

Amazingly, the Beloved Disciple takes that corporate identification with the Song’s bride and applies it to himself individually. This is remarkable. If a woman had done this, no one would blink an eye. As a man, it would be more natural for the Beloved Disciple to see himself as the groom. But that possibility was overridden by the Jewish tradition of identifying God as the Song’s bridegroom. Jesus is explicitly identified as the bridegroom in John 3:29. Therefore, the bride’s perspective of “him whom my soul loved” is transferred to Jesus the bridegroom and his love for the Beloved Disciple.

Aimee Byrd

issued a compelling exhortation for this vision in The Sexual Reformation. It’s an ancient heritage that we have largely lost, at least in the Protestant tradition, especially among men. In the 12th century Bernard of Clairvaux wrote sermons on the Song of Songs that connect the marital imagery of the Song with the Christian’s relationship with God. He specifically draws on the scene in the Fourth gospel where the Beloved Disciple leans against Jesus’s chest to make this connection (13:23):

“He [the Son] has made him [the Father] known, I say, not to me, unworthy wretch that I am, but to John, the Bridegroom’s friend (John 3:29)…and he made him known to John the Evangelist, too, the disciple Jesus loved (John 13:23). For his soul was pleasing to the Lord, and worthy both of the dowry and the name of a Bride; deserving the Bridegroom’s embraces and worthy to recline on the Bridegroom’s breast (John 13:25). John learned from the heart of the only-begotten what he had learned from his Father.”¹⁰

Bernard goes on to apply the Song’s marital imagery to the soul of the believer in relationship with the Trinity. Though Bernard may not have seen a direct connection between the bride’s “he whom my soul loved” and the “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” he saw the deep connection between the Song and the Gospel of John. He, too, was a singer of the Song, and learned from the Beloved Disciple’s testimony how to be intimately loved by Jesus. Beautiful disciples take their belovedness seriously—in a beautiful way, in metaphor and image and relationship more than abstract intellect.

Beautiful Disciples Celebrate the Value of Women

Many scholars believe that John was written by multiple authors in a Johannine school of teachers discipled by the Beloved Disciple. Because women appear to have been full equal members of that community, it’s possible that they also contributed to the Gospel text.¹¹ One scholar suggests that “if Mary the Mother of Jesus lived in the household of John for as many as thirty years (19:27), then it should be possible to discern the influence of Mary upon John’s Gospel.”¹² That would certainly help make sense of the significant roles played by women in John. Perhaps Mary helped him understand and more accurately portray those women.

While these can never be more than guesses, they do make sense in view of the prominent, positive narratives of women in John. It is no surprise, and surely no accident, that a book with such a deep connection to the woman-centered Song of Songs would likewise center the stories and perspectives of women. Beautiful disciples not only make room for women’s voices, but seek them out, listen to them, and learn from them.

Beautiful Discipleship Is Anonymous

If we affirm the divine inspiration of Scripture, we can trust the Spirit’s choice not to name the author of the Gospel of John. Whether the Beloved Disciple did indeed write it, or was at least a primary contributor, the fact remains that he is never named. While the original audience probably knew his true identity, it is also true that they (and the Holy Spirit) could have chosen to name him, and did not.¹³ He remains intentionally anonymous. If Jesus’s mother or other women had any feminine influence on the Beloved Disciple’s use of the Song, perhaps her anonymity is also intentional. While Mary appears twice (John 2:3-5; 19:25-27), like the Song’s bride she is never named. The Beloved Disciple and Mary lived together, and both of them remain anonymous.

Discipleship is never about making a name for oneself. Such pride is the mark of the world and those who insist on the pursuit of power and influence (John 7:3-9; 18; 12:42- 43). Instead, beautiful disciples follow the example of Jesus who both taught and demonstrated that glory is found in the ground where life is birthed from death (12:23-25). Perhaps for the Beloved Disciple that death included untethering his name from what is arguably the most influential biblical text of the past 2,000 years.¹⁴

The bride in the Song of Songs is repeatedly described as beautiful. I believe the Beloved Disciple intentionally chose a beautiful figure as a symbol for his own identity. By doing so, he has become not just the Beloved Disciple but also the Beautiful Disciple.

In what other ways does John’s Gospel paint a portrait of beautiful discipleship? Communal interpretation of Scripture is surely another one of those characteristics, so please share your contributions in the comments!

1. R. Alan Culpepper, John the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 123-124.

2. Martinus de Boers, John 1-6 (London: T&T Clark, 2025), 159.

3. Or more literally, “whom Jesus was loving” (ibid., 159).

4. There are instances in John of similar OT allusions using the same word the same number of times. See this post where I explore Genesis 3 (Septuagint) as an intertext for John 4 and the Samaritan woman, including the observation that both narratives use the word for woman, gynē, thirteen times.

5. Aimee Byrd, The Sexual Reformation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022), 57.

6. On these echoes of the Song in John, see Ann Roberts Winsow, A King is Bound in the Tresses: Allusions to the Song of Songs in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1999); Jocelyn McWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah and the People of God: Marriage in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

7. McWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah, 135.

8. Although de Boers argues that the Beloved Disciple references were inserted after his death by other members of the Johannine school (de Boers, John 1-6, 171).

9. McWhirter, 132.

10. Bernard, Sermons on the Song of Songs, in Bernard of Clairvaux Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 239-240. The passage from Bernard alludes to the almost exact repeated language of Jesus in the bosom of the Father (1:18) and the Beloved Disciple in the bosom of Jesus (13:23).

11. See de Boers, John 1-6, 7; Roberts Winsor, A King is Bound, 61, 67, 97; Michael Pakaluk, Mary’s Voice in the Gospel according to John (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 2021), xxxiv.

12. Pakaluk, Mary’s Voice, xiii.

13. See 21:24, which shows, at minimum, that someone other than the Beloved Disciple helped write that ending.

14. See David Ford: “John’s Gospel has perhaps been the most influential single text on Christian thought during the past two millennia” (The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021], 14).