John the Apostle in the Bible

John the Apostle was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus and, by tradition, the author of the Gospel of John, three epistles, and the book of Revelation. A fisherman from Galilee, he was the son of Zebedee and the brother of James. Jesus called him from his nets: "he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them" (Matthew 4:21). John belonged to Jesus' inner circle. Along with Peter and James, he witnessed events the other disciples did not, such as the raising of Jairus' daughter, when Jesus "suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John" (Mark 5:37). In his youth he could be fiery and zealous; he and his brother once wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village (Luke 9:54), earning the name "sons of thunder." Yet John is most tenderly remembered as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 13:23), who leaned on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper. From the cross, Jesus entrusted His mother to John's care: "Woman, behold thy son!" (John 19:26). John was also the disciple who followed close behind (John 21:20) and who, with Peter, astonished the rulers by his boldness, for they perceived that he "had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13). In his old age, exiled "in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God" (Revelation 1:9), John received the visions of Revelation. His life models transformation: a thunderous young zealot reshaped by Christ's love into the great apostle of love, whose writings call the church to believe in the Son of God and to love one another.