The Calling Of The First Disciples
THE CALLING OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES
LUKE 5:1-11
Jesus doesn’t reject unworthy people; he gives them a new start and a new life.
Forms of mystic interpretation which make Scripture strange and remote have done their worst with this human story. The deep water (5:4) is represented as the Gentile world; Peter’s reluctance to put out as a foreshadowing of the story in Acts where he was led in his despite to bring the message to the Gentiles, a hesitation only overcome by the Lord’s specific command …
Such strained exegesis harms preaching and withdraws the gospel from ordinary men and women, who desperately need it. The Bible is meant to be understood, and any form of interpretation which destroys simplicity may be commonly dismissed forthwith as human perversity.
The story, in fact, is exquisitely simple. The low shore of the lake runs south towards Tiberias in a wavering line, once crowded with the busy fishermen of Capernaum. It was here that the first disciples were called, vigorous and able men, active in Galilee’s chief industry, and converts, it seems, of John’s great religious awakening, which had deeply marked the common people of the land. Christ taught in the place of business, amid all the coming and going along the line of little bays. So the message of the church, rightly emphasized, touches all life. Christ, who had preached in Capernaum’s synagogue, went also to Capernaum’s fishermen at their place of labor.
Peter obeyed, though he saw no meaning in the command, and in the great haul of fish he saw, as he had never seen before, not even at the time of healing in his home, the glory of the Lord. His first reaction was like that of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5), an overwhelming consciousness of unworthiness, inadequacy and sin. Ever ready in such emergencies to rush to speech (Mark 9:5-6; John 21:3), Peter begged Christ to leave him. It is the heart’s desire (Psalm 37:4) which God regards, not the stumbling fashion of our words. Look on to 5:32.
Note Observe several marks of Luke’s authorship: he calls Gennesaret a “lake”—his less-traveled fellow-evangelists call it a “sea”; he uses a technical medical term (“full of leprosy”); he gives prominence to the call of Peter, the apostle in whom the Gentile world was particularly interested.