43 "The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”"
John 1:43-45
The other disciples sought Christ and found Him, but here, Christ seeks out Philip unsought. This bears testimony to the variety of religious experience and to the danger we fall into when we tend, as we sometimes do, to insist that everyone must come to a knowledge of salvation in the same way. Everyone does not come the same way, and there can therefore be no 'cut-and-dried' blueprint of salvation. Some come, and find, after long and earnest seeking, and others, as those that stumble on something unsought. Our Lord describes this in two of His parables in Matthew 13:44-46, about the man who found treasure hid in his field and the man who found the pearl of great price. With the one, it was treasure unsought, with the other it was his trade: his job was seeking pearls. But, once he had been found, the previous pattern began to assert itself: the word of authority, and the call to obedience. We should particularly note what Philip said to Nathaniel in 45 - not, 'I have found...' but 'We have found...'. John's writing here is very compact, almost elliptical, and we must assume that when Philip was found by Jesus he was introduced into the disciple band to become part of it. This is very significant. The New Testament does not recognise a Christian experience that exists apart from the fellowship of believers. To be a 'loner' is something entirely anomalous, and there is no warrant or encouragement for it in the Scriptures. To want to be 'out on a limb' argues an independence of spirit that has little in common with the New Testament doctrine of membership in the body of Christ.