Jump to The gist Going deeper In the modern world The tidbit This week
The last thing the Lord says about the beloved disciple uses the verb this volume is named for.
John 21:20–22 · Majority Standard Bible
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. He was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper to ask, “Lord, who is going to betray You?” When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain until I return, what is that to you? You follow Me!”
The gist
Peter has just been restored, commissioned and told how he will die. He turns round, sees another man walking behind them, and asks what is going to happen to him.
The answer is a question and an emphatic pronoun, and it is the last thing the Lord is recorded as saying to anybody in this Gospel.
Two things in it are identical in all nine printed Greek editions: what is that to you? and the emphatic you. The only difference anywhere in the sentence is where one small pronoun sits.
And the verb He uses of the other disciple — remain — is the word this volume takes its name from.
Going deeper
The range is the opening of a printed unit, and the cut has to be declared.
The MSB’s heading Jesus and the Beloved Disciple stands at verse 20; the unit runs to verse 25, where the Gospel ends. This week takes verses 20–22.
It is typographically self-contained: the question at verse 20 opens and closes, and the Lord’s answer at verse 22 opens and closes. Nothing hangs.
What is left out is worth naming, because verse 23 is the evangelist correcting a rumour about his own words. Because of this, the rumour spread among the brothers that this disciple would not die. However, Jesus did not say that he would not die, but only, “If I want him to remain until I return, what is that to you?” Verses 24 and 25 are the Gospel’s closing attestation.
Chrysostom noticed what the correction shows about the man who wrote it: observe, I pray you, here also the absence of pride in the Evangelist; for having mentioned the opinion of the disciples, he corrects it, as though they had not comprehended what Jesus meant.
Now the collation, and there is very little of it.
The question what is that to you? is identical in all nine editions. So is the conditional clause before it. So is the emphatic pronoun you that follows.
The only difference in the verse is the position of one word. Five editions — the five critical, Tischendorf included — place the me before the verb, so that the Greek runs you — me — follow. The Byzantine text, the Orthodox text and both Received Texts place it after: you follow me.
Nothing changes but the emphasis, and the emphatic you is in every one of them.
Which makes this a fitting place to say what forty-two weeks of collation in this volume have shown. The differences between the printed Greek editions are real, they are worth knowing, and this book has reported every one it found. They are also, overwhelmingly, of this size.
Three things in the Greek that the English narrows.
The first the MSB itself discloses. At verse 20 it prints that the disciple leaned back against Jesus and footnotes: Greek reclined on His bosom. That is the second translation footnote of this kind this book has recorded, after the one at Luke 19:44 in Week 48, and it is the right way to handle an image a modern reader would misread.
The second is the verb rendered until I return. The Greek is more precisely while I am coming. Vincent says so; the Cambridge Bible says so and draws the consequence: The words express rather the interval of waiting than the end of it.
Which changes the shape of the sentence. It is not if I want him to stay alive until a fixed date. It is if I want him to remain for the whole stretch while I am on my way.
And the third is the verb remain itself.
Ellicott points out that it is the word rendered abide everywhere else in this Gospel. The Cambridge Bible calls it S. John’s favourite word and notes that it occurs twelve times in the fifteenth chapter alone — which is where this volume began.
So the last thing the Lord says about the beloved disciple is that he may be asked to abide.
Then the argument, and it is unusually well documented.
What does until I return mean?
Meyer lists the answers that have been given and rejects six of them: the destruction of Jerusalem, which St John outlived; the conflict between the Church and Rome under Domitian; a gentle natural death; a departure from Galilee; the visions of the Revelation; and a coming to whatever place St John was waiting in. His own answer is the second coming.
But Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible say something that cuts across the whole list.
Ellicott: our Lord made no statement, but expressed a supposition, “If I will,” “If it even be that I will”… Had our Lord told him that St. John should remain on earth until His coming, in any sense of the word, then He would have given an answer, which He clearly declined to give.
The Cambridge Bible is blunter: He is not giving an answer but refusing one. The reply is purposely hypothetical and perhaps purposely indefinite. And it catches the grammar exactly: While the “I will” asserts the Divine authority, the “if” keeps the decision secret.
So the commentators have spent centuries arguing about the meaning of a sentence which two of them say was constructed not to have one — and verse 23, which the evangelist wrote precisely because people had taken it as a statement, is on their side.
Meyer’s own verdict on one of the more inventive readings is the best sentence in this entry’s sources, and it could stand as a rule for the whole trilogy: if we depart from the clear and certain sense of the words, we fall into the habit of phantasy, so that we no longer expound, but invent and create.
In the modern world
There is a second dispute here, and it decides whether this passage is a rebuke or something gentler.
Meyer says Peter asked not merely out of curiosity, but even from a certain jealousy — and names Chrysostom, Erasmus and others as importing a kinder motive.
Chrysostom’s reading is indeed kinder, and it is built on a detail in the text.
Why, he asks, does the evangelist remind us at this exact moment that this was the disciple who leaned on the Lord’s breast at the supper? Not without cause or in a chance way, but to show us what boldness Peter had after the denial.
Because at that supper it was Peter who could not bring himself to ask the question, and passed it to John. Here the positions are reversed: he who then did not dare to question Jesus, but committed the office to another… not only does not commit to another what relates to himself, but himself now puts a question to his Master concerning another.
And Chrysostom’s account of why is that Peter is asking for his friend. Peter greatly loved John… desiring to have John also to share with him, he said, And what shall this man do? Shall he not come the same way with us?
Two readings of the same three words, and this entry prints both. What is worth noticing is that the answer is the same either way.
Because the answer is not about Peter’s motive. It is about the shape of the question.
Chrysostom: Do not thou on any account suppose, He says, that I order your matters after a single rule.
That is the sentence to take away from this passage, and it is the hardest thing in the Christian life to actually believe. Peter has just been told he will die stretching out his hands. The man behind him may be asked simply to remain. Neither vocation is a verdict on the other, and the moment Peter tries to read one against the other he is told, in four words, that this is not his business.
Chrysostom then gives a reason that is genuinely startling, and it is not the one anybody expects.
And this He did to withdraw them from their unseasonable sympathy for each other; for since they were about to receive the charge of the world, it was necessary that they should no longer be closely associated together; for assuredly this would have been a great loss to the world.
Two men who loved each other were about to be separated, and the separation was the point. Not because affection is a fault, but because they were needed in different places, and a friendship that had held them side by side would have kept half the work undone.
Which is the last and least sentimental thing this Gospel says about following.
And the practical form of it is the commonest comparison anybody makes. Somebody else’s marriage, health, income, children, parish, vocation, or apparent peace — held up against your own, and the silent question underneath it: why is his different from mine?
Ellicott sees where that instinct actually leads, and his diagnosis is precise. He is told to follow, but is ready to lead. He would know and guide his friend’s life rather than his own.
And he adds the warning that keeps this from becoming a rule against friendship: There is a spiritual companionship which strengthens and helps all who join in it; there is a spiritual guidance which is not without danger to the true strength of him that is led, nor yet to that of him who leads.
The tidbit
The volume you are holding is named for a word that appears, in this Gospel, for the last time in the sentence you have just read.
The verb the MSB renders remain at verse 22 is the word rendered abide everywhere else in St John — the word of the vine and the branches, which the Cambridge Bible calls his favourite and counts twelve times in the fifteenth chapter alone. (That count is that commentary’s; no search was made here.)
Book Three’s first week is John 15:1–8. Abide in Me, and I in you.
And its last is this: a question about somebody else, and an answer in which the same verb is used of a man who may simply be asked to stay.
Two ways of following are set side by side in the final paragraph of the Gospel — one that ends with hands stretched out, and one that ends with waiting — and the only instruction attached to either is a pronoun.
You follow Me.
This week
The practice is one week without the comparison.
Name the person you measure yourself against. Everybody has one, and it is usually not an enemy — it is a friend, a sibling, a colleague, somebody at church whose life looks like the one you were supposed to have.
For seven days, when the comparison arrives, say the four words back to it: what is that to me?
Not dismissively. The question in the text is not contempt; it is a boundary. The other person’s road is real and it is not yours to walk, to grade, or to explain.
It might look like this. It is not an enemy. It is the man you were baptised alongside, who reads at the services now, whose children come with him, and whose life looks a great deal like the one you had assumed you would have by this point. So when the comparison arrives on the Tuesday, you say the four words back to it. Not dismissively. As a boundary.
And then the second half, which is the whole of it.
Take the thing you already know you are meant to be doing — the one Chrysostom describes as a work entrusted to you — and do the next piece of it this week.
You have had a work entrusted to you, look to it, accomplish it, labour and struggle. What if I will that he tarry here? Look thou to and care for your own matters.
One piece. This week. Yours.
And since this is the last week of this book, one thing more, and it is only a suggestion. Go back to Week 1 and read John 15 again — the vine, the branches, and the word that turns up here at the end. The volume opens with an invitation to abide and closes with a man being told to follow, and the same verb stands in both.
And the limit. This week is not an instruction to stop caring what happens to the people you love, and “what is that to me?” is a boundary against comparison, never against compassion. Chrysostom reads Peter’s question as an act of friendship, and the Lord answers the comparison and not the affection. If someone in your life genuinely needs you to attend to their road, attend to it. Nor is the second exercise a demand that you already know what your work is — if you do not, that is a question for your priest or confessor, and “the next piece” this week can simply be asking it. Where a week and the safety note in How to Use This Book seem to disagree, the safety note governs.
Scripture. John 21:20–22, Majority Standard Bible (Byzantine Majority Text). The printed unit is verses 20–25 under the heading Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, and this week takes verses 20–22. The range is typographically self-contained: the question at verse 20 opens and closes, and the Lord’s answer at verse 22 opens and closes. The cut is declared: verse 23 is the evangelist’s own correction of a rumour about these words and is quoted in full above though not printed as the week’s text; verses 24 and 25 are the Gospel’s closing attestation. One footnote marker has been stripped. Week 50 takes verses 15–19 of this chapter, and the MSB’s own headings divide the two. biblehub.com/msb/john/21.htm
Text. Nine printed Greek editions were collated at verses 20 and 22. At verse 22 the conditional clause, the question what is that to you, and the emphatic pronoun are identical in all nine; the only difference in the verse is the position of the pronoun me, which the five critical editions place before the verb and the Byzantine text, the Orthodox text and both Received Texts place after. Nothing but emphasis changes, and the emphatic you stands in every edition. At verse 20 the Byzantine and Orthodox texts carry a connective the others lack, and nothing else moves. The MSB’s footnote at verse 20, disclosing that the Greek reads reclined on His bosom where it prints leaned back against Jesus, is a translation note of the same kind as the one at Luke 19:44 in Week 48, and it is credited. biblehub.com/texts/john/21-20.htm biblehub.com/texts/john/21-22.htm
Greek. The verb rendered remain at verse 22 is the verb rendered abide throughout this Gospel, from which this volume takes its title; Ellicott notes the identity and the Cambridge Bible calls it St John’s favourite word and counts twelve occurrences in chapter 15, which is Week 1 of this book — that count is the Cambridge Bible’s and no search was made here. The phrase rendered until I return is more exactly while I am coming, which Vincent and the Cambridge Bible both state, the latter adding that it expresses the interval rather than its end. The question at verse 22 is literally what as concerns you, which is Vincent’s rendering. At verse 20 the participle for the disciple’s following is the same verb as the command at the end of verse 22.
Commentators. Ellicott, Meyer, the Cambridge Bible, Vincent, Benson, Barnes, Bengel, Gill, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Poole, Matthew Henry, the Expositor’s Greek Testament and the Pulpit Commentary were consulted at verse 22; those quoted are quoted as attributed. Meyer supplies the catalogue of interpretations of until I return and rejects six of them, holding for the second coming; the names attached to each are his and none of those works was opened. Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible both hold that the sentence is a refusal to answer rather than an answer, which cuts across Meyer’s list; all three positions are printed and none is adopted. Meyer also holds that Peter’s question came in part from jealousy and names Chrysostom and others as reading it otherwise; both readings are printed. Ellicott supplies the diagnosis of the impulse to guide another’s life rather than one’s own, together with his own caution that spiritual companionship is not the same thing as spiritual guidance. Vincent and the Cambridge Bible supply the rendering of the phrase about the coming. Meyer’s judgement on a fanciful reading of the passage, quoted above, is his verdict on another commentator and is printed as such. biblehub.com/commentaries/john/21-22.htm
Fathers. St John Chrysostom, Homily 88 on the Gospel of John, read at first hand in the NPNF translation. Its printed lemma is John 21:15 and it runs through the end of the Gospel; the lower neighbour was checked by its own head lemma, Homily 87 on John 20:24–25, which is this book’s Week 30, and there is no upper neighbour — Homily 88 is the last of the series and the address for an eighty-ninth returns nothing. Both boundaries are established. He supplies the reading of Peter’s question as an act of friendship rather than jealousy, the explanation of why the evangelist recalls the reclining at the supper — that Peter, who then could not ask and passed the question to John, now asks on John’s behalf — the sentence that the Lord does not order every man’s matters by a single rule, the charge to attend to one’s own work, the reason for the separation of the two apostles, and the observation about the evangelist’s correction of the rumour at verse 23. www.newadvent.org/fathers/240188.htm
Refusals. The entry does not decide what until I return means, printing Meyer’s six rejected interpretations and his own, and against them the position of Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible that the sentence is a refusal to answer; verse 23 is quoted as the evangelist’s own caution against treating it as a statement. It does not decide whether Peter’s question came from jealousy or from love, printing Meyer on one side and Chrysostom on the other and observing that the answer given is the same either way. It does not adopt the Cambridge Bible’s count of the verb in chapter 15, no search having been made. It makes no claim about how or when St John died, which is the subject of the rumour verse 23 corrects. It does not treat the difference of word order at verse 22 as carrying anything beyond emphasis. It does not re-expound John 21:15–19, which is Week 50. What could not be established: whether any of the interpretations Meyer names is defended in the works he attributes them to, none of which was opened; and whether any Father besides Chrysostom reads Peter’s question as friendship, no other patristic text having been opened for this range.
Fifty-one more like it
If one week changed how you read that passage, Abide in Me has fifty-one others, each given the same treatment.