Modern society suffers from what has been accurately described as the “social cancer of performance”. We are a culture obsessed with the extraordinary. We celebrate charismatic leaders, magnetic personalities, and the voices that command the largest audiences. But when we examine how Jesus of Nazareth built His inner circle, we see a striking departure from this worldly metric of success. Christ did not surround Himself with the political elite or the wealthy; He chose the profoundly ordinary.
Nowhere is this divine preference more evident than in the life of Andrew.
If you read the Gospel of John, you might notice something slightly humorous, yet deeply poignant about how Andrew is treated. The author seems to worry that his readers won’t know who Andrew is. Consequently, two out of three times Andrew is mentioned, he is introduced with a clarifier: “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother” (John 1:40).
Everyone knew Simon Peter. Peter was the magnetic, larger-than-life figure who would go on to preach the earth-shattering sermon at Pentecost. Peter lived in the spotlight. Andrew lived in the shadows. He belonged to that vast majority of humanity we might call the “middle ranks”—the ordinary.
Yet, history often forgets a crucial detail: Peter was a great man, but it was an ordinary disciple who brought him to the feet of Christ.
John 1:41 tells us that Andrew “first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias.” Andrew didn’t possess a theological degree. He hadn’t attended a modern seminar on personal evangelism. He simply experienced the joy of discovering the Messiah and immediately shared that priceless treasure with his brother. His attitude was not one of hoarding a secret, but of joyous proclamation.
Living in the Shadow of Two Crosses It has been said that Andrew lived his life under the shadow of two crosses: the cross of Christ, and the superior figure of his own brother. It is incredibly easy for us to become paralyzed by the talents God didn’t give us. We sit idly by, wishing we had Peter’s boldness, Paul’s intellect, or David’s poetry. We become more interested in receiving credit than in pointing to the cross. We fall into the trap of thinking, “If I cannot be great, I will do nothing.”
But Andrew never tried to imitate Peter. He was willing to be exactly who he was and to do the work commensurate with his own abilities. He embodied the spirit of the old adage: “Lord, I ain’t very much, but I is all I got”.
The Fruit You Can Bear
What contribution can an ordinary Christian make? If you cannot preach from a pulpit, serve as a shepherd of the flock, or travel as a foreign missionary, is your life useless? Absolutely not.
The Apostle Paul gives us the ultimate job description for the ordinary believer in Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”
These are fruits every single one of us can bear. They are desperately needed in our communities today. When these fruits grace our lives, we become a well of water springing up to eternal life. We become a walking declaration to a lost and hurting world that “we have found the Christ.” If you want to be a soul-winner, you simply must have a winning life.
We may never know who the most “powerful” worker in the church is today. But this one thing is certain: when called forth to display the wares of Christian service, Andrew will not stand empty-handed. A significant part of Simon Peter’s greatness was first born in Andrew’s ordinary faithfulness.
Embrace your ordinary. God specializes in doing extraordinary things through it.