Come and See
COME AND SEE
Jesus' First Words in John's Gospel Might Surprise You
Come and See
John 1:35–51 — the simplest invitation in the gospel, and the one that changes everything.
Last weekend my family watched Prince Caspian. We are deep into the Chronicles of Narnia at our house, and as I sat there with the kids, I remembered why my favorite character in all of Narnia is probably Lucy Pevensie. Some of the characters revere Aslan from a respectful distance. Some are terrified of him — he is a lion, after all. Some are convinced he isn't real. But Lucy, almost from the very first page, has this daughter-with-her-dad kind of relationship with him. She sees Aslan when no one else does. She trusts him when everyone else is sure she's making it up. There's a kind of childlike intimacy in her faith that I keep wanting more of.
I bring her up because that's the kind of Jesus we finally get to meet this week. We've spent three Sundays building toward this moment in the Gospel of John. The Word who made the world. The light coming into the darkness. John the Baptist preparing the way. And then in verse 35, the camera finally turns to Jesus — and his very first words in this gospel are not a sermon, not a doctrine, not a creed.
It's a question.
"What are you looking for?"
Just sit on that for a minute. The first thing that comes out of Jesus' mouth in John is the question every human being is already asking. It echoes God's first question to Adam in Genesis 3 — Where are you? — both of them sounding innocent, both of them carrying the whole weight of the world. What are you really looking for? Peace? Purpose? Significance? A pathway to heaven? Jesus turns around and asks each of us, right out of the gate, what are you actually after?
The disciples flounder a little — uh, where are you staying, Rabbi? Maybe we'll send you a postcard? And Jesus, I picture him smiling, says the line that becomes the title of this whole sermon. Come and see.
Three words. No syllabus. No statement of faith. Come and see. Spend the day with me. Verse 39 even tells us what time it was — about four o'clock in the afternoon. John doesn't usually clutter his gospel with that kind of detail, but those disciples are telling this story decades later and they remember exactly when their lives changed. I know what they mean. I can still tell you the smell of the room at a middle-school church camp in Southern California where I first realized this God I'd been studying actually wanted a relationship with me. You don't forget the time of day Jesus walks up.
Then Andrew runs and finds his brother Simon. Philip finds his friend Nathanael. The whole rest of the chapter is a chain of people who spend an afternoon with Jesus and immediately go grab someone they love. They don't write a paper. They don't memorize answers. They just say, I think I found him — come and see.
Nathanael is my favorite of the bunch. He's the skeptic. He's been reading his Bible carefully — Nazareth? Really? I don't think so, Philip. And here's the part I want you to notice. Philip doesn't argue. He doesn't whip out a flowchart. He just borrows the same three words Jesus used the day before. Come and see. Philip has been with Jesus all of one afternoon, and he's already imitating his teacher's mannerisms. He doesn't have to be the expert. He just has to be the inviter, and let Jesus handle the rest.
That's been my own experience too. I love a good debate. I will sit with you for hours and chase any question down to its roots. But almost no one I've watched cross the line into following Jesus crossed it because of some brilliant answer I gave. They crossed it because they actually met Jesus and discovered he already knew them — under their own fig tree, in their own quiet place, in a way nobody else could.
Which is exactly what happens to Nathanael. Jesus sees right into him — here is an Israelite in whom there is nothing fake — and then, I saw you under the fig tree, before Philip ever called your name. Nobody knows what the fig tree means. Nobody. Two thousand years of commentaries and we are all still guessing. Nobody knows except Nathanael, and Jesus. And that's the point. Jesus says the one private thing only Nathanael could have heard, and the skeptic crumbles into a worshiper in two verses flat.
So here's the take-home, and it comes at us in two parts.
One — be Philip. Mark Markham and Roger Bell and the team have been quietly handing out little leather Jesus books in the lobby for years now — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John laid out chronologically, easy to slip into someone's hands. Grab one this week. Pray over a name. Find one story of Jesus that has worked on you, mark it, and when the moment opens up, just say, I have been impacted by this — I would love to know what you think of him. No flowchart. No expertise required. Just an invitation.
Two — let Jesus rewrite the question. The chapter ends with Jesus telling Nathanael he will see something even bigger — heaven open, and the angels of God going up and down on the Son of Man. That is a callback to Jacob's ladder in Genesis 28. You will see the ladder. And then comes the twist that runs through the whole rest of John's gospel: the ladder isn't a thing. The ladder is me. You came looking for a path to heaven, a system, a teaching, a religion you could climb — but what you are really looking for is a person. I am the way, the truth, and the life. It is not a ladder. It is Jesus. And he is closer than you thought.
So this week — what are you looking for? And who are you going to bring along to come and see?
