Disciple of the Forerunner

Before he became the first to follow Christ, the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called (Prōtoklētos) was a disciple of St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner, at the Jordan. The Gospel of John records that Andrew was one of the two disciples standing with the Baptist when he pointed to Jesus and cried, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36), and that upon hearing this testimony Andrew left his teacher to follow the One whom the Forerunner had named. Of all the Twelve, Andrew alone is explicitly identified in the Gospels as a former disciple of the Baptist, making his story the clearest scriptural example of the continuity between the Forerunner’s ministry of repentance and the calling of Christ’s apostles.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Gospel Witness: John 1:35–40

The fourth Gospel is the only source that records Andrew’s discipleship under the Forerunner, and it does so as part of its carefully structured opening week of the public ministry. On the day after John the Baptist has borne witness before the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem (John 1:19–28), and after he has identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the Baptist again stands at the Jordan: “The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:35–37).

The narrative continues with one of the most intimate scenes in the Gospels. Jesus turns and asks the two, “What do you seek?”; they reply, “Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying?”; and he answers, “Come and see.” The text then notes the detail that “they came and saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour” (John 1:38–39). Only after this do we learn the identity of one of the pair: “One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother” (John 1:40). Andrew’s first act after abiding with Jesus is to find his brother Simon and bring him to Christ with the confession, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

Several features of this account are decisive for understanding Andrew. First, the text states unambiguously that Andrew was already a disciple (mathētēs) of John before he was a disciple of Jesus; his attachment to the Forerunner is not an inference but a datum of the Gospel. Second, the verb the evangelist uses for the two men’s response — they “followed” (ēkolouthēsan) Jesus — is the same word the Gospels use throughout for discipleship, signaling that this following is the beginning of a permanent allegiance, not mere curiosity. As Raymond E. Brown observes in The Gospel According to John (I–XII) (Anchor Bible 29, 1966), the careful day-by-day framework of John 1:19–2:11 presents the gathering of the first disciples as a deliberate transfer of allegiance from the Baptist to Jesus, with the Baptist himself initiating the movement by his testimony.

The Forerunner’s Testimony as the Hinge

The reason Andrew turns from his first teacher to Jesus is not a private impulse but the explicit testimony of the Forerunner. The phrase “Behold, the Lamb of God” (John 1:36) repeats, in abbreviated form, the fuller declaration of the previous day: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). The expression draws together a cluster of Old Testament images — the Passover lamb whose blood delivered Israel (Exodus 12), the lamb led to the slaughter of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:7), and the daily lamb of the Temple offering — and applies them to Jesus as the one whose self-offering will accomplish the true deliverance from sin. Brown notes that the title is among the most theologically loaded christological designations in the Gospel, and that its placement at the very threshold of the narrative frames the whole of Jesus’ ministry under the sign of sacrificial atonement (Brown, John I–XII, on 1:29 and 1:36).

For Andrew, this testimony is the hinge on which his life turns. The Forerunner’s vocation, as the Synoptic Gospels describe it, was precisely to prepare a people for the Lord: John “preach[ed] a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (cf. Matthew 3:1–12), calling Israel to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2) and pointing beyond himself to “one who is mightier than I” (Matthew 3:11). Andrew had already received this formation. When he heard the Baptist name Jesus as the Lamb of God, he was a man already shaped by repentance and already taught to expect the Messiah; the testimony did not create his longing but directed it to its object. The Forerunner thus fulfilled his own definition of his ministry — “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30) — by giving his disciple to Christ.

The Unnamed Second Disciple

The Gospel names Andrew but leaves his companion unidentified: “One of the two who heard John speak… was Andrew” (John 1:40), with the other left anonymous. From antiquity, this silent second disciple has traditionally been identified with John the son of Zebedee, the evangelist himself, on the grounds that the fourth Gospel characteristically refrains from naming its own author and the beloved disciple. This identification is an ancient and widely held inference, but it must be honestly labeled as such: the text itself does not name the second disciple, and the conclusion rests on the wider pattern of Johannine anonymity rather than on any explicit statement. Brown discusses the traditional identification and the reasons for caution in his commentary, treating it as plausible but unproven (Brown, John I–XII, on 1:35–40). For Andrew’s own story, the point is independent of this question: whatever the identity of his companion, Andrew is securely placed among the Baptist’s disciples by the Gospel itself.

The Patristic Reading: Chrysostom on Andrew’s Response

The Fathers gave close attention to Andrew’s movement from the Forerunner to Christ. St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Gospel of St. John (Homilies 18–19, on John 1:35–42), reflects at length on the disposition that made Andrew responsive to the Baptist’s word. Chrysostom praises the Forerunner for not keeping his disciples for himself but directing them to the greater teacher, and he marvels that the two did not merely hear the testimony but acted on it, leaving John to follow Jesus (Chrysostom, Homilies on John, 18). He reads the question “Where do you dwell?” not as idle curiosity but as the sign of men who wished to converse with Jesus privately and at length, and he commends the eagerness of those who, having found, do not delay (Chrysostom, Homilies on John, 19).

Chrysostom is especially struck by what Andrew does next. Having abided with Christ, Andrew immediately seeks out his brother: “He did not keep the treasure to himself, but hastened and ran to his brother to impart to him the good things he had received” (cf. Chrysostom, Homilies on John, 19, on John 1:41–42). For Chrysostom this is the natural fruit of genuine discipleship — the one who has received the Forerunner’s formation and then met the Lamb of God cannot but become himself a herald. Andrew, formed by the Forerunner, becomes the first link in the chain by which the Gospel spreads: he brings Peter, who will become the chief of the apostles.

Andrew as a Bridge Figure in the Economy of Salvation

Andrew’s discipleship under the Baptist gives him a distinctive place in the economy of salvation as a bridge between the two phases of God’s preparation of his people. The Forerunner stands at the boundary of the old covenant and the new, “more than a prophet” (Matthew 11:9), the last and greatest of those who pointed forward to Christ. Andrew, his disciple, steps across that boundary first among the Twelve. In him the work of the Forerunner — the awakening of repentance and messianic hope — passes directly into the apostolic work of following and proclaiming Christ. Peter M. Peterson, in Andrew, Brother of Simon Peter (Brill, 1958), surveys how the early tradition seized upon this priority, building from the secure Gospel datum of John 1:35–40 the title Prōtoklētos, “the First-Called,” which became the apostle’s enduring designation in the Christian East.

It is worth stating plainly where the certainty lies. Andrew’s prior discipleship under the Forerunner is not a later legend or a pious embellishment; it is firmly anchored in the Gospel text of John 1:35–40, attested by the evangelist himself. This distinguishes it sharply from the many later traditions concerning Andrew’s missionary journeys — to Scythia, to Byzantium, to the lands around the Black Sea — which, however venerable and beloved in Orthodox memory, rest on apocryphal acts and later ecclesiastical tradition rather than on the canonical Gospels. The disciple of the Forerunner is the Andrew of Scripture; the apostle of the nations is, in large measure, the Andrew of the Church’s living tradition. Both belong to the saint, but they stand on different evidential foundations, and an honest account keeps them distinct.

References

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. Cited: John 1:19–42 (esp. 1:29, 1:35–40, 1:36, 1:41); John 3:30; Matthew 3:1–12 (esp. 3:2, 3:11); Matthew 11:9; Exodus 12; Isaiah 53:7.
St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14. Cited by homily: Homilies 18–19 (on John 1:35–42).
Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (I–XII), Anchor Bible 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
Peter M. Peterson, Andrew, Brother of Simon Peter, Novum Testamentum Supplements 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1958).