Would the apostle John never die?

A rumor once spread that the apostle John would never die. In John 21:20-25, the very end of the Gospel, Dr. Toby Holt explains what Jesus actually said — and what He really meant.

When Peter asked about John’s future, Jesus replied, “If I want him to remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.” People took this to mean John would never die, but John himself corrects that rumor. Dr. Holt explains how Jesus’ words point to His coming in judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the temple was destroyed just as Jesus had foretold — an event John lived to see. The Gospel then closes with John’s own sign-off: the world itself could not contain all the books that might be written about Jesus.

Questions this study answers:

1. What did Jesus mean that John might “remain” until He came? Jesus was not promising that John would never die. He was telling Peter to stop comparing and simply follow Him; John later corrected the rumor that grew out of the misunderstanding.

2. What happened in A.D. 70, and how does it connect? About forty years after the cross, Rome destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, exactly as Jesus had warned. Dr. Holt links Jesus’ words here to that coming in judgment.

3. How does John’s Gospel end? John signs off as an eyewitness who insists his testimony is true, and says the world could not hold all the books that might be written about Jesus.

“Jesus said to him, ‘If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.’” — John 21:22 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This sermon is part of the John Explained study from New Geneva Theological Seminary. Find more verse-by-verse teaching across the Bible at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[gentle music] In today's sermon, we'll conclude our series on the Book of John by talking about the return of Jesus Christ. Specifically, we'll ask when that return was anticipated by Christ's peers, and what he told his apostles to expect.

Jesus, in today's passage, is going to make an extremely enigmatic statement. Specifically, he's going to tell one apostle, he's going to tell Peter, that a different apostle, John, is going to remain, stick around, hang around, until Jesus himself returns. He says, "If I will," if it's my desire, "that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" Jesus asks of Peter in verse 20. Now, as we look to see how to interpret this text aright, a question may be, how was it interpreted by the very people who heard it first? How'd they understand this idea that John would somehow remain until Jesus himself returned? How'd they understand that? Well, we see in today's text that rumors started to pass that what Jesus must have meant when he was talking about John is that John's not going to die. When Jesus tells Peter that this guy's going to remain till I come, and what's it to you if that's what I will, then the rumor started that John himself is invincible, that he will not pass, that he will not die. Now, here's the thing. John started to outlive the other apostles. The other apostles were picked off one by one. They were martyred, every last one of them, except for John. John outlasted them all, and as he outlasted them, guess what? The rumor really spread. This guy's going to be around forever. However, as we know, the rumor wasn't true. Jesus did not say that John would not die, and in fact, history tells us that he did die. Most scholars believe that the Apostle John died in Ephesus. Remember, he had been on the Greek isle of Patmos for a season. Well, at the very end, he went to Ephesus, and it is in Ephesus he died around the year 100 AD. Now, with that said, we have a conundrum that's slightly different than the conundrum that they had. Their conundrum was, how do we understand our peer John is going to outlast the rest of us? How do we understand how that's supposed to work? Okay, well, we know he died, so part of that's been resolved. We don't believe what they believed, that he was going to live forever. But we still have the conundrum of, well, what in the world does it mean that Jesus seems to suggest that he is going to hang around at least until Christ returns? How do we understand that if we're anticipating Jesus has yet to return? What do we do with this text? Again, it's enigmatic. It's a curiosity, and yet it's one presented to us at the very end of the gospel as being of importance. Let's return now, verses 20 and 21, to try to understand what in the world is being referenced in this text, and then we'll work our way through the balance of the passage. Okay, verse 20. "Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following him, who had leaned on his breast at the supper and said, 'Lord, who is the one who betrays you?'" So, he's talking about John. Peter sees John, is what verse 20 says. And then Peter, verse 21, seeing him, said to Jesus, "But Lord, what about this man?" What about this guy over here? All right. In last week's study, in chapter 21, chapter 21 begins, the apostles are out in the rowboat. They're out fishing. They're out looking to catch the day's fish. There's been all sorts of excitement in recent days, obviously, and they're fishing, but the fishing hasn't borne great fruit. They haven't caught many fish, and so they look to the beachhead, and there they see a man, not only waving to them, but speaking to them. And the man on the beach tells them, "Hey, try putting your nets down over there." So they do so. They catch a ton of fish. They realize this is Jesus. It's not just anyone who's standing on the beach side. They realize it's Jesus, and they start to row furiously to get back to land to be with Jesus. Peter doesn't even wait to get back. Peter doesn't even wait to row back. He just jumps in the water to go and to be with his Savior. Now, the verses we looked at last week talked about the conversation that Peter and Jesus had at that time, there on the beach. Remember, Jesus literally cooked up breakfast for them. They arrive, they have a nice breakfast. Jesus is the greatest chef, cooks up this wonderful breakfast for them. They eat the breakfast, and then Jesus takes Peter aside. "Peter, Peter, Peter. Peter, do you love me? Do you love me, Peter?" "Oh, yes. You know I love you." "Then feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me?" "Yeah. You know I love you." "Then tend to my lambs." And a third time, "Peter, do you love me?" At this point, Peter's kind of grieved. He doesn't get why he keeps being asked. "Yes, you know I love you. Why do you keep asking this? You know that I love you." "If you love me, then feed my sheep." Now, as we talked about last week, the three questions being asked, "Do you love me?" they match up. There's a symmetry with the three denials that Peter had just days earlier, in which he denied that he even knew Jesus. So, there was a symmetry in Jesus asking these questions to testify to Peter's love and affection for him. And at that moment, as we saw last week, there's reconciliation, there's restoration, and there's commissioning. Jesus says, "Peter, you're my guy. You're my guy. I want you to go out, and I want you to go and share this gospel. Tell people what you've known. Tell people what you've seen. Share the gospel with others in this fallen world." And then he gave Peter a warning. He says, "Peter, now as you do so, you should know this. When you were younger, you went and did whatever you wanted, but when you get older, a day is going to come when others are going to take you, and they're going to take you somewhere you do not want to go. You're going to stretch out your arms. Peter, you're going to die, and you're going to die as a martyr." As we saw last week, this was to testify to the manner of death that Peter would one day suffer, which he did suffer. Prior to the fall of Jerusalem, Peter did die. He died as a martyr during the reign of Emperor Nero, that great villain of history. Peter died, and as we talked about last week, he was crucified, and history suggests that he was crucified upside down at his request because he wasn't worthy to die in the same exact manner as his Savior. So, that was what Jesus is telling Peter was about to go down, or at least would go down at some point in the future. Now, that brings us to today's text. Today's text, look there at verse 20. In today's text, Peter turns around. "Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple who Jesus loved following him." So, what happens here? Peter has this hard conversation. "I'm going to die. I'm going to be crucified," because that was this idea of stretching out your arms. Someone's going to lead you where you don't want to go. "I'm going to die." Well, wait a second. This guy, John over here, what about him?What's going to happen to my buddy John over here? So that's the nature of the question that we see here. Now, why was Peter curious about John's future? Why did he ask him, "What about this guy?" Well, it could be just genuine curiosity. "Oh my, mercy me, I'm going to die. It's going to be horrible. John, what about him?" Right? It could've been just as simple as curiosity. But if you remember right, [chuckles] the apostles, despite being apostles, which would make you think that they're the most pious, holy guys in the world, they were also somewhat competitive, at least during the three years of Christ's ministry. They were competitive one with another. They had talked about who was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, right? Even at the Last Supper, they're still debating which one of them is going to be the greatest in the kingdom. At other times, they talked about who's going to get to sit at Christ's right hand, right, in the heavenly kingdom. They were a competitive bunch. And so it's possible that Peter's just heard about what's going to happen to him and the nature of his future, and there's a part of him that says, "Well, what about John?" In order to kind of understand where they are in the pecking order and so forth. How is John going to be dealt with if I'm going to have this sort of outcome? Well, whatever the case, when Peter asked about John, Christ's response is going to be fairly simple. It's going to be, "Peter, it's none of your business. It's none of your business." Let's look at these verses. Let's look at verses 22 and 23. "So Jesus said to him, 'If I will,'" if I desire, if out of my volition, if I will, " 'that he remain until I come,' " till I return, " 'what is that to you? You follow Me.' " Verse 23. "Then the saying went out among the brethren that this disciple," John, "would not die. And Jesus did not say to him that he would not die." Right? "But if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?" It's very rarely in scripture that you see an exact statement Jesus makes in one sentence repeated a second time only sentences later. All right. What is going on here? Well, let's dive into this statement a little bit and see if we can figure out what is Christ talking about here. In implying that John would remain, right, that he would remain until Christ came again, that He returned, theologians have offered three different explanations. On the one hand, this may be a simple way of Jesus telling Peter to mind his own business, which is sort of what that looks like. "Peter, don't worry about him. If I wanted him to remain until I came back, what is that to you?" Right? It could've been a figure of speech sort of thing. "If I will that he remain till I come back. I've told you you're going to die. If I told him he's not going to die, what is it to you?" It could just be a figure of speech, a way of saying, "Mind your own P's and Q's. You follow me." Right? "Let's not get distracted about what's going on with everybody else. You just do what I told you to do, and all will be good." So that's possible. This may be a figure of speech here that is taking place, although I don't think that that's likely. Now, secondly, maybe what Jesus is doing with Peter here is that he's just explained to Peter how Peter himself is going to die, right? You're going to put out your arms, you're going to be taken somewhere you don't want to go, right? He tells him how he's going to die. He's going to die as a martyr for his king. Peter asks about John, and it's possible that in saying that "John will remain till I come," that Jesus was implying that John would not die as a martyr. You see, every last apostle did. All of them except John. So some theologians say, well, maybe what's going on here is that Jesus is telling Peter that you and the other guys, for that matter, you ultimately are going to be taken out by the enemies of my kingdom. You're ultimately going to die as a martyr. But in John's case, I'm going to come and take him home in my time. Right? So the coming that we see there is that Jesus will come for John and take him home in his time, and it's going to be a different outcome than that which Peter and the others are going to face. So that's one way others interpret it. I honestly think that makes kind of a mash of the text, so I don't particularly like that or think that's correct, but some theologians believe that to be the case. With that said, possibly maybe, maybe just maybe, this is the third of the three explanations. Maybe just maybe what Jesus meant here when he said that John would remain till Jesus returned, maybe just maybe he said exactly what he intended. Maybe just maybe that's exactly what Jesus meant. Maybe just maybe John would indeed remain until Jesus came back. Now we already said that he died. Do you see the conundrum? Maybe just maybe you can take Jesus at his word when he says, "This guy is going to remain until I return." Maybe just maybe that's exactly how you should interpret that. But the problem that we have is we know that he already died. So what do we do? How do we answer that? In order to answer that, we need to look at a few other texts in scripture to understand what was about to go down in Israel, what was about to go down following Christ's death. Following Christ's death, things were going to get rough, bad, terrible for Israel, for Jerusalem, and for the temple within just a few decades. In fact, the temple itself would be destroyed by Rome. However, let's go back for a moment to a passage that's referred to as the Olivet Discourse in Matthew chapter 24. Now in Matthew 24, Christ's disciples, they didn't always read the room right when it came to Jesus, so they're out there looking at the temple with Jesus, and they look at the temple and they say, "Oh, the temple is so wonderful. It's so strong. It's so big. It's so grand. It's so amazing. Oh my goodness, the temple, the temple, the temple." Jesus stops them and says, "Guys, hear me now. Destruction is coming. You see the same temple you think is so strong? Not a single stone of that temple will be left standing upon one another." Why did Jesus talk about the stones of the temple, not a single one would be left standing on one another? The reason he talked about it is because these stones were incredibly large. They're the most impressive stones of their type. This is what was called Herodian stone because this is the Herodian temple. The stones are as big as a wall in your living room. Huge, huge stones. And Jesus says those massive things, not a single one is going to be left standing upon one another in the very near term. The temple you used to think is so strong, it's coming down. Now let me ask you, what year was Jerusalem destroyed? What year did those stones come down?

70 AD. What year did Jesus die, roughly?

30.

Let's say 30, 33, somewhere in the early 30s is when Jesus died. So a few decades later, Jerusalem was truly destroyed. Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed. Now who destroyed it?Rome. Remember, they're under Roman oppression at that time. The zealots in the midst of Israel had been fighting against Rome and rebelling against Rome. The Israelites of this age were a wicked bunch. And even Rome, which was no pillar of virtue either, thought that the people in Israel needed to be dealt with ultimately. In AD 70, Vespasian, followed by his son Titus, they went in and destroyed Jerusalem to the ground. Now, with that said, to say they destroyed Jerusalem, we've heard of destruction of cities before, and we go, "Okay. All right. So be it. They got destroyed." History records that the destruction of Jerusalem is unlike the destruction of any other city across the span of mankind's history. Now, let me quote a couple of historians in order to demonstrate this. Alfred Edersheim, a famous Jewish historian, he said this. He said, "The tribulation to Israel was unparalleled in the terrible past of its own history, and unequaled even in its bloody future. Nay, so dreadful would be the persecution that if Divine mercy had not interposed for the sake of the followers of Christ, the whole Jewish race that inhabited the land would have been swept away." The famous Jewish historian, Josephus, who was actually alive at this time. This is a historian who's also alive at the very time that this went down. He said this. He said that, "The misfortunes of all men from the beginning of the world, if compared to those of the Jews upon the destruction of Jerusalem, are not so considerable as theirs were." What Josephus is saying is that across the history of mankind, there has never been

crueler destruction to a city than what happened in Jerusalem. If you remember, initially Vespasian, but later than Titus, they rolled on in. They rolled in with catapults. They went out to the Mount of Olives. They cut down all the olive trees, burned them for their own fuel. They broke down the supply lines that had previously fed the city of Jerusalem. And because they broke down the supply lines and had everyone basically locked into the city, the people within the city had no options when it came to food and the like. So, what did they begin to do? They began to cannibalize, to eat one another. This was terrible. This is one of the most brutal destructions preceded by persecution that the world, the globe, has ever seen. Now, do you think Jesus would ever talk about what was coming? Yes, and that's what he's doing when he talks about the temple. You see the temple you think is so strong? It is going down. In the Olivet Discourse and in other places, some of the text that we like to think is some future judgment, that down the road, the evil people in the future, that that's what's going to happen. A lot of the text that was written in the Olivet Discourse and elsewhere was meant to be understood in light of what was about to go down to the very people he was talking to in Israel, in Jerusalem. In Matthew 24, he said this, "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place." What did we read in our call to worship this morning? From Matthew 16. Let me reread it again. "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.'" Sacrificial. "But whoever desires to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profits a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Now listen to this. "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." You understand when he says, "This generation will not pass away," in Matthew 24, when he says here in Matthew 10, when he talks about, "There's some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom," there's a lot of ways that people interpret these things, to be clear. There's a lot of ways you can interpret this generation and some standing here and so forth. But I'm making the case because I find it to be a biblical case that what Jesus was talking about was literally people standing right there, that something bad would happen, and when the bad thing happened, that Jesus himself would be at the forefront of it. In Matthew 10, he adds a detail. He tells people, he says, "You will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. Now when they persecute you in this city, flee to another city. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the cities of Israel..." This is given to Israelite people. "You will not go through all the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes." You see what he was repeatedly talking about? He says destruction's coming, and when it happens, flee to that city. Go there, go this. Go through the cities of Israel. But you won't even have gotten through all the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. He's pointing, he's talking about some arrival, some coming, some return in judgment of Jerusalem, which we believe occurred in 70 AD. Christ, in this passage and others, links the coming destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD to his own appearance. He does so again in Matthew 26. He's talking to the high priest. Listen to what he says to the high priest. Remember they're having this back and forth. The high priest can't wait to put this guy to death. Here's a discussion briefly. "The high priest said to Him, 'I put You under oath." Jesus. "I put You under oath by the living God, tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God.' And Jesus said to him, 'It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.'" Do you see this? The high priest, the chief priests are coming against Jesus. They're angry with Jesus. They're going to crucify Jesus. They hate Jesus, and they want him to perjure himself, or at the very least, they want him, in essence, to convict himself by claiming to be God in the flesh. "Tell us, are you the Christ? Are you the one?" And Jesus says, "You got it. It is as you said. You got it. But here's the thing, guys. Here's the thing. Nevertheless, I tell you, hereafter." Which means shortly. It doesn't mean thousands of years from now, something's going to happen to some other people besides you. It says, "Hereafter." Hereafter. You. You, not them. "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven." There was an implication time and time again that Jesus was going to return in judgment of the very generation that put him to death, that he was going to return in judgment. It's clear again and again and again. But we bought into some mindset that says he came once, and he's going to return once. He came once, and he'll come in the future. Well, yeah, he came once, and he will return in the future. And yet, time and time and time again, we see Jesus promise, anticipate, point to his arrival in judgment at a time shortly after his ascension, which occurred in 70 AD. NowNow, interestingly, remember Josephus? We talked about him a few moments ago. He was a Jewish historian, the most famous Jewish historian probably ever is Josephus, and he watched all these sort of things go down. His historical records are elevated by historians across the spectrum, Jewish, Christian, and otherwise. Josephus said something interesting. When Jerusalem was ultimately run over, when it was ultimately destroyed, just prior to that, something happened that people saw and reported. Something happened that suggested the divine presence over the destruction of the city itself. Listen to what Josephus records. He says, "On the one and 20th day of the month, a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared. And I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable were it not related by those who saw it, and were not the events that followed it so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals. For before the sun set on this day," before the sun set, "chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running among the clouds." He goes on, and he gives a few other signs that occurred there, but let me stop with that. Just before the city itself was destroyed, there was a sign so amazing, so surprising, so shocking, he almost seems reluctant to name it. He says, "I know this is astounding, but there's too many people who reported seeing this exact thing," and here's what they saw. Just before the destruction of the city, the people looked up, and they saw chariots. Chariots of fire, presumably, but chariots in the sky with troops. What Josephus is saying is something that was commonly understood in his age, that the destruction of Jerusalem came with a divine [claps] boot stamp. That what happened at this time was not simply one nation-state battling another nation-state, but God rendering judgment on the very city, on the very people, whose wickedness exceeded the wickedness of the forebearers and the very ones who had crucified the Son. Judgment came with a divine boot stamp, so to speak, and the point for our purposes as we look at John 21 is this. In 70 AD, Jesus did return in judgment, and at that point, Peter was dead, but John was not. You understand this in its historical context, then you can look at this passage and say amen and amen. All right, let's look at our final verses now. Let's look at verses 24 and 25. "Now this is the disciple," and John is referring to himself. This is his epilogue. This is the epilogue to the whole gospel. He says, "This is the disciple who testifies of these things and who wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." Way back when we started this whole study back in September, we read these words, among other words. We read this, "The word became flesh." The word Jesus, the word God. "The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld," with our eyeballs, "we beheld his glory." In chapter one, if you were to go all the way back in order to understand how the book started, in order to understand how it finishes, you'd understand that John has the same basic objective. He says, "Look, guys, I was there. I saw all of these things, all of them. I was there when these things happened. I was there when these magnificent occurrences went down. I was there at the beginning. I was there at the end. I was there, and I am bearing witness to you of what I have seen, not just me, but others." And the conclusion that others saw it is borne out by the fact that there's four gospels and not just one, and there weren't just four people who saw this stuff either. There was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and even Jesus, after the stuff went down, and after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, he was seen by hundreds then, even before the ascension in Acts 1. All of this, John says, all of this is borne out by historically verifiable proof. He says, "We saw it, we were witnesses, and we have testified to what we have seen. Not just us, but others." But here's the thing, guys, John says, "What I'm testifying to you is only a sliver of what Jesus did." Wouldn't it be cool to read the whole Gospel of John if it were to include everything?

John says the world couldn't even hold the books. That's probably hyperbole, but maybe it's true. Maybe Jesus did that much. Imagine that one day you'll find out all that he did. Right now, we have part of that story. You think you know all of it? The three years of Christ's ministry. He did this, he went to there, he went to there. Yeah, we know like that much. The things we know are amazing and impressive. Imagine if you know every last story of every last healing, every last thing he did. Someday you will. Someday you will, and that'll be kind of cool to get the full story. But that's what John is saying here. He says, "You wouldn't imagine all the things Jesus did, but what I've recorded, what I've written to you, is a record that, for your purposes, should be sufficient. I've recorded to you the person and the work of Jesus Christ, who he is, what he did, in such a way that is sufficient for you to believe, for you to trust in this one." This morning, I'd ask the same question that I think John would ask. He says, "I've told you what I know to be true. Do you believe it?" This is the question. Young people, it's not so important whether your parents believe it. I mean, that's great. I hope they do. But for your own purposes and your own future, the question is, do you believe it? Young people, do you take ownership over that which your parents have preached, over that which your parents have taught, over that which your parents believe, over that which grandma and grandpa believe? Young people, do you believe it? And if you do believe it, what are you doing about it? How is that belief vesting itself in your decisions and your actions? You and I, from the oldest to the youngest, should take ownership of these words, to accept them as truth, and to tattoo them upon our choices and faith in the days yet to come. Let's pray