Come with me to an upper room. The sun has set. Jesus and his apostles are eating. The atmosphere is tense.

Jesus has come to Jerusalem for Passover, knowing the religious leaders there want him dead. Now, he sits in the midst of twelve who have journeyed with him, learned from him, committed their lives to him – the twelve to whom he has entrusted the most.

His sober demeanor, the set of his jaw, the tone of his voice, tell them the danger is real. And near. But nothing prepares them for the bombshell he drops.

The worst blow will not come from those openly hostile to him.
It will come from one of them.

“The one eating my bread has turned against me,” Jesus quotes from Psalm 41:9. Then, “in deep anguish of spirit,” he declares, “I tell you that one of you will betray me.”¹

In the shock and confusion that follow, we may miss the amazing still-shot captured in John 13:23:

There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom
one of His disciples,
whom Jesus loved.²

In the custom of the day, Jesus and his disciples are not seated in chairs, but rather reclining on cushions large enough to hold three or more people. Next to Jesus on his right, John leans on his left side, with his feet extended and so lying that his head naturally rests next to Jesus’ chest.

“To recline near to one in this manner denoted intimacy, and was what was meant by lying ‘in the bosom’ of another.”³

In a room in chaos, John rests in the place of intimacy with Jesus.

Holy intimacy

How had John gotten there?

Three years earlier, as Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he passed two brothers. They were followers of John the Baptist. Seekers of truth. And serious fishermen. They fished with their father Zebedee, who probably looked to his two sons to continue the family business when he retired. Their names were James and John.

If you had asked John before that day to name the most important things in his life, I suspect he’d have said his family and his boat (his means of livelihood). John was in that boat with his father and brother, mending nets, when Jesus walked by.

Jesus called. John responded. He left boat and father to follow Christ.

As he followed step by step, John saw what Jesus did, he heard what Jesus said, he began to understand what motivated Jesus, what delighted him, what grieved and angered him. John paid attention as Jesus trusted his followers with truths about himself that he didn’t tell the crowds.

John stayed with Jesus when others got offended and left. John stayed when leaders with religious and political clout grew increasingly incensed. He followed when Jesus went to the most dangerous place he could have gone.

And now, in an upper room filled with intimates, John is so near Jesus as to feel his ragged breathing when he announces the unthinkable: “One of you will betray me.”

Stunned, John doesn’t stiffen or back off. Instead, he leans in even closer to his Lord.

Hear God’s heartbeat

In the place of intimacy with Jesus:

• John asks (at Peter’s urging), “Lord, who is it?”
• John alone hears Jesus answer, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.”

John watches, almost from the perspective of Christ himself:

• As Jesus dips a piece of bread and gives it to Judas.
• As Judas accepts the shared bread.
• And then as Judas brazenly gets up and goes out to betray his teacher and friend.

There, in the darkness of that moment, I believe John hears something else.

Picture yourself as a child who is afraid or upset. You climb up into a loving parent’s lap. Maybe you hear your loved one’s soothing voice. But when the voice falls silent and you sit, ear to chest, what else do you hear?

Leaning back on Jesus’ chest,
at the moment of Jesus’ betrayal,
John hears the heartbeat of God.

John heard God’s heart beat for him.

How do we know? Decades later when John wrote his Gospel, it’s in describing this moment that he first calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

In recounting Jesus’ death and resurrection, John uses the phrase four more times.⁴ It’s a statement, not of pride, but of awe: “Jesus loves me. This I know.”

John heard God’s heart beat for the world.

How do we know? Jesus has just announced his betrayal. He has even identified the betrayer (but only to the person sitting closest to him).

That person, John, has heard the anguish in Jesus’ voice. He can sense the agony in Jesus’ body, the agony Jesus will express just moments later in Gethsemane.

Yet as John watches, Judas rises to do his worst – and Jesus does not stop him. He doesn’t yell out to them all, “It’s him, guys! Get him!” Quite the opposite, in fact.

Why? Ephesians 5:2 says simply:

Christ loved us and gave himself up for us
as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

In the place of intimacy with Jesus, John hears the heartbeat of God’s unfathomable love for us all.

See God’s heart break

Come with me to the foot of the cross. The day is dark. The atmosphere is suffocating.

John alone of the Twelve is there, alongside some women, who are also Jesus’ disciples and close friends. In horror, John witnesses Jesus’ suffering. He hears Jesus’ cry, “It is finished!” He sees Jesus bow his head and give up his spirit.

In shock, John watches as soldiers break the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus. And then John looks on as one soldier pierces Jesus’ side with a spear, “bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.”⁵

Some commentators say the presence of blood and water together indicate that when Jesus died, his heart ruptured. It literally burst. There at the cross, John saw God’s heart break for the world.

Echo God’s heartcry

Come with me to an upper room. The sun has set on the first day of a new week. The eleven have gathered. Grief-stricken, ashamed, frightened, they have locked the doors.

And yet – the atmosphere is electric.

The tomb is empty! Peter and John have seen it.

Jesus has risen! The women who stood at the cross have seen him alive. He has sent them to tell the news.

And now, Jesus stands in the midst of his quaking friends, showing them his hands and side. As their sorrow turns to joy, he says to them,

Peace be with you!
As the Father has sent me,
I am sending you.⁶

John is there. He will go out from that room to spend the rest of his life echoing God’s heartcry.

John will speak out boldly about Jesus,
even when threatened and imprisoned by the religious leaders.

He will heal in Jesus’ name.

He will suffer exile in Christ’s behalf.

He’ll write four New Testament books
to help people know the Lord.

One of these books will be translated into more languages than any other book in the world. It will result in the changed lives of more people than any other portion of the Bible. We call it the Gospel of John. It contains the most beloved expression of God’s heartcry ever written:

For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish
but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Disciple whom Jesus loves

May you, too, embrace intimacy with Jesus. For from that place, even in darkness and chaos:

• You will hear God’s heart beat for you.
• You will see God’s heart break for you.
• You will answer God’s heartcry for you.

And also:

• You will hear God’s heart beat for “them” – for those who are not you, those who are different from you, those who do not like you, who abuse and betray you, and those who otherwise would not matter to you.
• You will see God’s heart break for them – in the very same way and to the same degree that it breaks for you.
• You will echo God’s heartcry: “God loves every one of us! THIS. MUCH.”

Disciple whom Jesus loves, may all of your life lead to, and flow from, the place of intimacy with him.

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This post was originally published May 26, 2019, under the title, “God’s Heartbeat.”

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

See also

• Mary Magdalene stuck her neck out
• I AM the one you seek (currently under renovation)
• “It is finished” – but how?
• Now and forever: Resting in God’s love
• Heartcry of one who overcomes
• God who loves fiercely
• God of the covenant name

Footnotes

1. John 13:18, 21 CJB. ↩︎
2. That’s the 1995 New American Standard translation. We may also miss seeing this stunning – and holy – picture of intimacy with Christ because a number of English Bible versions have opted to omit the uncomfortable wording. ↩︎
3. Barnes’ Notes, Electronic Database. Copyright © 1997 by Biblesoft. ↩︎
4. The disciple Jesus loved: John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 21. ↩︎
5. See John 19:25-35. ↩︎
6. See John 20:19-21. ↩︎