Thursday
Thursday
The Recommissioning of Peter
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”
John 21:17
Is it possible for backsliders to be restored, for those who have denied Christ to be given another chance? These questions greatly exercised the early church during the systematic persecutions of the third and early fourth centuries. What should be done with the lapsed? The church has tended to oscillate between extreme laxity (never disciplining anybody) and extreme severity (refusing restoration even to the penitent).
How Jesus treated Peter after he had denied him is an object lesson in reinstatement and recommissioning. To begin with, Jesus seems to have carefully chosen the context in which the restoration would take place. He had already met Peter in Jerusalem, but he chose the familiar surroundings of Galilee as the appropriate place. Seven of the apostles went fishing, we are told, waiting for Jesus to meet them according to his promise. The similarity of what happened next to an earlier incident on the lake of Galilee (the fruitless fishing expedition, the instruction to fish in another place, and the huge catch) must have helped John to recognize Jesus on the lakeside and Peter to dive in and swim to the shore. It looks like a deliberate restaging of the first time Jesus commissioned Peter.
After breakfast on the beach came the interview Peter was dreading. Three times he had denied Jesus. So three times Jesus asked him the same question: “Do you love me?” And three times Jesus recommissioned him, saying, “Feed my sheep.” Older commentators made much of the two Greek verbs for love. But we do not know what Aramaic words Jesus used, and the two Greek verbs have varied emphases.
The important point is that Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” He asked Peter not about the past but about the present, not about words or deeds but about Peter’s attitude of heart. Love for Christ takes priority, because it is forgiven sinners who love much. Following each profession of love came Jesus’s word of recommissioning. What is clear is that Peter’s denial, serious though it was, did not disqualify him. Jesus not only reinstated Peter in the favor of God but also recommissioned him for the service of God.
For further reading: John 21:1–17