In the days after the resurrection, we find that John was often found accompanying Peter, at least so long as Peter remained in Judea: they were the first of the disciples at the tomb, (6) the first to do miracles demonstrative of their authority as apostles, (7) and the first to be persecuted for their faith in the risen Christ. (8)

After those early events with Peter recorded in Acts, John’s trail becomes more difficult to track. The traditions of the early church have him suffering persecution at the hands of the emperor Domitian, who attempted to execute him by plunging him into boiling oil, from which he emerged unharmed. Following this failed attempt at execution, John was sent instead into exile on the island of Patmos, off the coast of modern-day Turkey, not far from Ephesus. (9) It was on this island that he was given the vision we have recorded in the book of Revelation.

Upon the death of Domitian, John was released from his exile, and appears to have spent the remainder of his life in Ephesus, shepherding the flock there and training up the next generation of leaders within the church, including Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch. It is in his role as shepherd that we read an account laid down by Clement of Alexandria of the apostle, as an old man, pursuing a wayward youth, seeking him at great personal danger, and calling him with tears to repent of his sins and return to the faith he had abandoned. “For you I will surrender my life,” John pleads with the sinner, “Stand, believe; Christ has sent me.”(10) The young man repents, and is restored to the fellowship of the church, and is held out as “…a great example of true repentance and a great token of regeneration, a trophy of the resurrection for which we hope; when at the end of the world, the angels, radiant with joy, hymning and opening the heavens, shall receive into the celestial abodes those who truly repent; and before all, the Saviour Himself goes to meet them, welcoming them; holding forth the shadowless, ceaseless light; conducting them, to the Father’s bosom, to eternal life, to the kingdom of heaven.”(11)

We see in this account the fruit of a life transformed. Christ had pursued and loved John to the point of death, even death on a cross, and so John was willing to pursue this man, risking suffering and death in doing so. This is nothing less than the natural outflowing of a heart that revels in the love of and imitation of his savior, the one who seeks and saves the lost.

It is from Ephesus that it is supposed that John wrote his epistles, and in his twilight years, his account of the life and ministry of Jesus, which we have preserved for us as the Gospel of John, written down that we “…may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [we] may have life in his name.” (12)