Do You Love Me? Another in our series of questions that Jesus asked; this is a question that Jesus put to Peter. Here’s the background:

Jesus had been crucified, buried, and raised from the dead. In the meantime, Peter had gone back to his old job as a fisherman. John MacArthur says in The MacArthur New Testament Commentary* that “Peter, impatient at Jesus’ delay in meeting the disciples and beleaguered by his own failures, had impulsively decided to return to being a fisherman” (John 21:3). 

The resurrected Jesus meets up with the disciples one morning while they were out fishing. He is on the shore and has prepared a fire to cook some fish for breakfast. “Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead” (John 21:12-14).

Jesus then turns to Peter, who had denied knowing him three times prior to the crucifixion, and asks him three times “Do you love me?”  MacArthur points out the different forms of the verb “love” used by Jesus and Peter. The first two times, Jesus uses a higher form of the verb that implies total commitment. Peter’s reply each time, as well as Jesus on the third time, uses a lower form of the verb that implies affection but falls short of actual commitment. Peter is probably unwilling to make rash claims like he did before, like “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!”  Instead, he acknowledges Jesus’ omniscience in saying, “You know that I love you” (John 21:15-17).

First, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him more than these. “These” must refer to the trappings of the fisherman life that Peter had resumed. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, he had challenged Peter to be a fisher of men rather than of fish, and he was calling Peter back to this commitment. Each time he asks Peter “Do you love me” and each time that Peter responds with “You know that I love you,” Jesus then responds with a call for Peter to be a pastor and shepherd of Jesus’ flock. He tells Peter that it won’t be easy and that he won’t always have his own way. Then he said to Peter, “Follow me.”

One of the first things that impressed me about our ministry here at Nashville Rescue Mission is that we are a place of second (and more) chances because God is the God of second (and more) chances. By this, I do not mean that it’s a second chance for us to try harder, to be better. I am referring to a second chance to receive grace. Jesus reached out to Peter. For every one of Peter’s denials, Jesus lovingly showed Peter grace with an opportunity to respond to that grace. I am quite sure that most of my own personal growth in discipleship has come from the painful process of my failing and then being lovingly restored by my Savior. Maybe yours, too? And our experience certainly helps us to be more empathetic with the people around us when they fail.

Recognizing the grace that has been shown to each of us, we strive to show grace to those we serve. This doesn’t mean that we don’t require accountability and don’t impose consequences, but it does mean that we are quick to forgive and accept with a goal of reconciliation and recovery and restoration. That’s why it is difficult to calculate the Mission’s “success rate” at any given time because we know that for each of us, our walk is a journey with peaks and valleys and diversions, and it’s mostly impossible to determine when any of us have finally arrived until the day Jesus finally takes us home. Thank God for grace, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The other thing to remember is that along with Jesus’ gift of grace to us is a call to follow Him, using the gifts He has given each one of us. As Peter himself wrote later on in his ministry: “Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:1–3).

And the Apostle Paul (himself a trophy of God’s grace) wrote in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Two of the greatest men in the New Testament, Peter and Paul, testify so powerfully to what Christ can do in the heart of a sinful creature. There’s hope for you, hope for me, and hope for all those we serve.

In Christ,

Judy

*https://www.gty.org/library/bibleqnas-library/QA0304/simon-peter-do-you-love-me