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Andrew

Andrew appears by name only a handful of times, and on almost every occasion he is doing the same thing: bringing somebody else to Jesus. It is a small enough pattern that it could be coincidence, except that it includes the moment the entire apostolic band began.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Lessons about Jesus

Jesus received the people Andrew brought — a brother, a boy with a packed lunch, a group of foreigners — and none of them were screened first. Andrew's instinct that anyone could simply be brought turns out to have been correct.

Memory verse

✝️ John 1:41 (ESV)

41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ).

Be transformed

Andrew's whole recorded ministry is introductions. He brought Peter, and Peter preached at Pentecost to three thousand. If your contribution to the kingdom looks like putting other people in front of Jesus rather than standing in front of them yourself, you are in well-attested company.

Prayer

Lord, make us quick to bring people to you and slow to decide in advance whether you will want them. Give us Andrew's reflex — that the right response to finding you is to go and fetch somebody.

The name

Ἀνδρέας (Andreas, an-DREH-as, G406), from ἀνήρ (anēr, G435), "man" — so, "manly." It is a straightforwardly Greek name, not a Hebrew or Aramaic one. Andrew and Philip are the only two of the Twelve whose names are purely Greek, and both came from Bethsaida — a reminder that Galilee in the first century was not culturally sealed off.

Background

A fisherman, Simon Peter's brother, from Bethsaida (John 1:44), working the Sea of Galilee in partnership with James and John.

He was, before anything else, a disciple of John the Baptist. He is one of the two who hear John say "Behold, the Lamb of God!" and simply follow Jesus instead (John 1:35-37). That makes Andrew one of the first two disciples Jesus ever had — and the first, on any reading, to go recruiting.

What Scripture records

Three of Andrew's four named appearances are the same action:

  • He brings his brother. Having spent one afternoon with Jesus, "he first found his own brother Simon" (John 1:41) and brought him. Peter — who heads every list of the Twelve — is in the group because Andrew went and got him.
  • He brings the boy with the loaves. Faced with a crowd of five thousand, it is Andrew who notices and reports: "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?" (John 6:9). The question is half faith and half arithmetic, and Jesus used what he brought.
  • He brings the Greeks. When Gentile worshippers at the feast ask to see Jesus, they approach Philip, and Philip fetches Andrew, and the two of them go together (John 12:20-22).
  • He asks about the end. With Peter, James and John, he asks privately about the destruction of the temple (Mark 13:3) — the one occasion where the inner three become four.

After Acts 1:13 he disappears from the record entirely.

What tradition says

Eusebius, citing Origen, assigns Andrew the region north of the Black Sea:

Parthia, according to tradition, was allotted to Thomas as his field of labor, Scythia to Andrew, and Asia to John, who, after he had lived some time there, died at Ephesus.

— Eusebius, Church History 3.1, attributing the account to Origen's Commentary on Genesis

"Scythia" here means the area north of the Black Sea. Later tradition has Andrew martyred by crucifixion at Patras in Achaia, though Schaff's editor notes that his activity in Greece "rests upon a late tradition." The familiar X-shaped cross — the saltire that became Scotland's flag, Andrew being its patron — is medieval; the Scottish connection itself "dates back only to the eighth century." Neither belongs in an account of the first century.

Worth knowing how uncertain this whole field is. The same editor's verdict on apostolic traditions generally: "The efforts to derive from the varying traditions any trustworthy particulars as to the apostles themselves is almost wholly vain." See Patristic Sources for how this site grades them.

Takeaway

There is no record of Andrew preaching a sermon, writing a letter, or leading anything. What the text preserves is a man who kept walking people over to Jesus and then getting out of the way — including the brother who would immediately and permanently outrank him.

References

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version (Crossway). Etymology from Strong's Greek Dictionary (public domain), G406. The Greek-name observation is developed further in The Twelve: Disciples and Apostles.