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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 504. Andrew
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Literature
Brooke, S. A., The Spirit of the Christian Life (1902), 294.
Cuckson, J., Faith and Fellowship (1897), 223.
Deane, A. C., At the Master's Side (1905), 1.
Greenhough, J. G., in Men of the New Testament: Matthew to Timothy (1905), 81.
Hancock, B. M., Free Bondmen (1913), 52.
Jones, J. D., The Glorious Company of the Apostles (1904), 87.
Lightfoot, J. B., Sermons Preached on Special Occasions (1891), 1.
Lovell, R. H., First Types of the Christian Life (1895), 82.
Maclaren, A., A Year's Ministry, ii. (1888) 127.
Morgan, G. C., Discipleship (1898), 1.
Pearce, E. H., The Laws of the Earliest Gospel (1913), 5.
Punshon, W. M., Sermons (1882), 1.
Purves, G. T., Faith and Life (1902), 271.
Rattenbury, J. E., The Twelve (1914), 91.
Sidey, W. W., The First Christian Fellowship (1908), 1.
Skrine, J. H., Saints and Worthies (1901), 15.
Biblical World, xxxiii. (1909) 314 (E. Gates).
Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1898) 92 (M. R. James).
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1893) 128 (E. R. Bernard).
When Jesus emerged from His private life to enter upon the work of His public ministry, He was without followers or adherents of any sort. No existing ready-for-work society or church awaited Him or welcomed His coming. A certain group of Jews had been aroused by the preaching of John the Baptist into a fresh Messianic expectancy of a moral rather than a political sort. In this circle Jesus first appeared, and here was the only soil in any wise prepared for His teaching. He did not so much as succeed to the leadership of the rudimentary society brought together by John. Out of this society, however, He gathered His first disciples. Probably most of the disciples of John passed over to the company of Jesus finally, but only after the gradual dissolution of John's society. One of the very first to pass from John to Jesus was Andrew.
In the first three Gospels Andrew is only a name. We know nothing more about him than that he was the brother of Peter: but, as in the case of several of the obscure Apostles, St. John gives us some insight into the character and work of Andrew. We know that he was a fisherman, the brother of Simon Peter, the son of Jonas. We know that he was already one of John the Baptist's disciples when Jesus began His work, and that he was one of the first two disciples of Jesus. He, along with John, heard the great words of the Baptist, “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”; and these two disciples, hearing him speak, followed Jesus. “Jesus turned, and beheld them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? And they said unto him, Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), where abidest thou? He saith unto them, Come, and ye shall see. They came therefore and saw where he abode; and they abode with him that day: it was about the tenth hour.” Andrew thenceforth ranked himself as a believer in Jesus of Nazareth; and on the very day of his own acceptance of Jesus, he brought his brother Simon Peter to the Master.
Thereafter we hear of this Apostle on only four occasions. When the Galilæan ministry of Jesus was beginning, He called these men, whose faith He had already won, to be His constant followers; and He marked their call by the miraculous draught of fishes, which symbolized so well the task to which He was calling them and the power by which He would give them success. We are told that Andrew, as well as Peter, obeyed the summons, left all, and followed Jesus in order to be a “fisher of men.” When, again, the public ministry of Jesus was about half finished, He performed on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee that wonderful act of feeding, from a few loaves and fishes, five thousand men. St. John, whose clear memory often appears in such particulars as this, tells us that when the disciples were asked by Jesus how that vast multitude could be fed, Andrew replied, with a vague feeling, probably, that, absurd as the provision seemed, it might be a help, or at least a starting-point, for other supplies: “There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” Again, when the ministry of Jesus was nearing its close, certain Greeks wished to see the new Messiah, and applied to Philip. Philip consulted Andrew and together Andrew and Philip told Jesus. And, finally, when Christ gave on Mount Olivet to a few disciples that solemn prediction of the future,-of the fall of Jerusalem, and the troubles and persecutions which were impending, and of the end of the world itself,-we read not only that Peter and John and James were present,-those three whom so often Jesus took into special confidence,-but also that Andrew shared on this occasion the sad privilege of listening to the terrible prophecy.
With these few items our knowledge of the Apostle Andrew ends. Let us consider him as Disciple, as Missionary, and as Brother.