When I saw Jesus asking Peter if he loved Him, I felt like He was talking to me.
Read: John 21
I was a teenager when I first preached through John 21. I was influenced by the ministry of the late great Dr. Warren Wiersbe. I was reading his commentary on the Gospel of John and I was struck by the uniqueness of this story that wasn’t covered in any of the other three Gospels.
I was beginning to come into my own as I tried to understand my relationship with Christ, and when I saw Jesus asking Peter if he loved Him, I felt like He was talking to me.
That was well over 20 years ago at this point, and I have always regarded this text as one of my favorite passages in John’s Gospel, but it wasn’t until this year that I discovered something that I had never realized before.
JESUS QUESTIONS PETER
The story is fairly straightforward. Jesus met up with Peter, John, and a few of the other disciples who, after the resurrection, had gone back to their old occupation of fishing. Peter was notably discouraged, which flies in the face of how we would expect to find him after the realization that Jesus had risen from the dead. However, something heavy was weighing on Peter’s heart.
Peter had denied his Lord three times before the crucifixion, so the fact that Jesus asked him if he loved Him three times in this encounter makes the comparison obvious. Peter was rather brash in his encounters with Jesus. He refused to allow Jesus to wash his feet. He had boldly proclaimed that he would die with Jesus. He cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant before running for his life when Jesus was captured in the Garden of Gethsemane. Then, most dramatically, he had denied Jesus just as predicted. So when the rooster crowed at the break of dawn, all of his foolishness and failures were brought to the light, and he was ashamed.
I can relate to Peter. I’ve done some pretty shameful things in my own life, none of which I am comfortable revisiting. What makes it even worse is when you know someone else is aware of what you have done, but you haven’t had a chance to talk it out yet. It’s like that feeling as a child when a parent says, “We’re going to have a long talk about that when we get home.” The anxiety building up to the conversation seems harder to bear than the consequences that are sure to follow.
This was Jesus’ chance to finally address the elephant in the room with Peter. Jesus planned to use him to build the foundations of the Church, but Peter felt worthless and didn’t see how he could come back from his mistakes. So, how did Jesus break the ice? He asked Peter if he loved Him.
DO YOU LOVE ME?
We have a disadvantage in understanding this encounter between Jesus and Peter. We only have one word for ‘Love’ in our English vocabulary. Well, that’s not particularly true, because we could just use a thesaurus and find any number of synonyms, but that is entirely the point because they all carry the same weight of meaning. In ancient Greek, they had several distinct words for ‘Love’ which vary based on context and intention. There was a word for romantic love, ‘Érōs.’ ‘Storgé’ was used for familial love. There was even a word for an obligatory love associated with duty or logic, ‘Prágma.’ John masterfully utilized the Greek language to elaborate on the subtext of this encounter between Peter and Jesus.
The first two times that Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” He used the word ‘Agápē,’ which means ‘Unconditional love.’ However, when Peter answered Jesus, he used a different word, ‘Phileō,’ evoking a brotherly love. What can we make of this? Was Peter unable to express his emotions? Or was his shame weighing so heavily on him that Peter couldn’t bring himself to commit his unconditional love for Jesus after he had already failed Him so many times?
Regardless, Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him a third time, except this time, Jesus used ‘Phileō,’ as if to say, “Do you love me even to the level as a friend as you have said?” To this, Peter is grieved and responds, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I phileō you.” And Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.”
FEED MY SHEEP
I have to admit, that for all of these years since I first encountered this text, I have come away with the lesson that we are incapable of loving God unconditionally, so Jesus has to stoop down to our level to get us to love others with the little that we could offer. I always seem to fall short in loving God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength, and, like Peter, I find myself confronted with Jesus’ question, ashamed that I seem incapable of loving Him as He loved me. Apart from simply trying to will myself into being better, I have never been able to bridge the gap of my perceived limitations to love Jesus unconditionally.
It wasn’t until this last season of preaching through the Gospel of John that it dawned on me. When Jesus washed the disciples' feet, He told them that He expected them to do as He had done, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13:14-15).
Jesus demonstrates a love that is not based on circumstances, it is pure. It flows out of His character. Jesus is love. The two are indistinguishable. We can’t even know what love is apart from abiding in Christ.
When you look at love the way that Jesus defines it, it seems incomprehensible. Our love is based on conditions. It flows out of our feelings. It’s difficult to shake a bad attitude when showing kindness to our enemies. It doesn’t come easily or naturally.
But Jesus has already told us what it takes to love as He loves, and He does it again at the end of John’s Gospel. How will we go from ‘Phileo’ to ‘Agápe’ love? By washing feet and feeding sheep.
First, Jesus is telling us to love other people as He loved us. We cannot do that without first considering the gospel, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The way to love unconditionally is to first consider how much we are loved by God. He loved us while we were still sinners. We have offended God more than anyone could ever offend us, and He has forgiven us more than we could ever forgive our enemies.
Second, love is a fruit of the Spirit, and as a fruit, it is only capable of being produced in us as long as we are attached to the vine. This means that we must first abide in Christ if we are going to be able to love anyone else. This love has to come from Jesus Himself. He is the source. If love is going to become a part of our character and not based on conditions, it is going to require a complete transformation from the inside out.
Finally, Jesus has provided for us certain disciplines to exercise this love so that it can be worked out in our lives. He tells us to love others as He loved us: to wash feet and feed His sheep. This requires that we deny ourselves and serve others even when they hate us and persecute us. This ‘new commandment’ has a way of teaching us humility, self denial, and obedience over our natural tendencies of pride, selfishness, and self-justification. This principle is seen throughout the rest of the New Testament. The Apostles seem to hammer home this point. We are called to love and serve others as though we are serving Christ. It is through the messiness of relationships that we are repeatedly reminded of our need to hold the gospel front and center in all of our relationships: to press deeper into Christ, to be filled with His love, and to practice this love by sharing it with those around us.
Adam Miller is the President and host of Songtime Radio and serves as the pastor of South Chatham Community Church.
You can hear his teaching on our daily broadcast on the radio or online, watch his preaching live on Facebook, and read his articles on our website.
