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Editorial | Frailty and Fickleness
since His resurrection, but hadn’t raised the
obvious issue of Peter’s denials and now He
does it only after He has first eaten with Peter.
We must bear in mind that to eat together,
especially to take bread and give it to others,
implied acceptance and religious fellowship
(Jn. 21:13 - reminiscent of the breaking of
bread, the same words for ‘bread’, ‘take’ and
‘give’ are found in Mt. 26:26). The Lord firstly
fellowshipped with Peter and only then moved
on to probe the issue of his disloyalty, after
having first affirmed His abiding love for Peter.
He had tried to arrange circumstance to
provoke Peter to himself engage with the issue
- for the triple questioning, the triple invita-
tion to work for Him, all took place by a fire
of coals - just as Peter’s triple denials had. We
see clearly portrayed here the gentle, seeking
spirit of the Lord.
“You know that I love you” was met by the
Lord with the comment that Peter must feed
His sheep. This wasn’t so much a command-
ment / commission, as the Lord explaining
that Peter’s love for Him personally would be
reflected in the degree to which Peter loved
the Lord’s sheep. John grasped this clearly,
when he underlines throughout his letters that
we cannot have love for God without loving
our brethren. The Father and Son are to be
identified with their people. “Lovest thou
me?” was a question for Peter’s benefit, not in
order to give the Lord information which He
didn’t then have. His great sensitivity to Peter
led Him to foresee the obvious question in
Peter’s mind: ‘Has He forgiven me?’. And the
Lord is saying that Peter knows the answer
insofar as Peter knows how much he loves
Jesus, on the principle that whoever loves
much has been forgiven much (Lk. 7:47).The
allusion back to that incident in Luke 7 is
confirmed by the way that the phrase ‘to love
more’ occurs elsewhere only there, in Lk.
7:42: “Which of them will love him [Jesus]
most?” [s.w. “more”]. Jesus had already
forgiven Peter; the answer to Peter’s concern
about whether he had been forgiven was really
‘Yes you have, if you believe it; and if you
believe it, you will love me, and according to
how much you love me, you will know how
much forgiveness you have received’. In all
this, we see the careful sensitivity of the
Lord Jesus to His people, foreseeing and
feeling our doubts and fears, our questions;
and responding to them in a profound way.
The Lord Jesus is the same today as He was
yesterday. The Gospel records are the history
of only what He began to do and teach people
(Acts 1:1). He didn’t interact with a few
people for 33 years and then speed off to
Heaven, to get on with other things until He
returns to earth. No. He is as active in your
life and mine as He was in that of Peter.
In Practice
The command not to murder has its basis in
the fact that human life is not for us to use as
we will (Ex. 20:13; Lev. 17:11; Gen. 9:6). It is
God’s life within those other people around us.
Others, therefore, are not for us to use as we
will. Gentleness and sensitivity to the life of
others, in family life, the workplace, on the
road... is therefore an outcome of our belief
that the ‘other’ person likewise has been
created by God and has life from Him. To drive
in an unkind way, to act in a thoughtless way
to others’ detriment, is therefore the same
basic error as taking human life in murder.
When it comes to our brethren, we have in
them a unique, God-arranged opportunity to
express His sensitivity to us, and our love for
Him, through our sensitivity to them. How will
they feel if I write this, what are their needs,
concerns, fears, questions, insecurities... how
will my action, my words, help them towards
God’s Kingdom? It all seems too great a chal-
lenge, for life passes too quickly for us to be
able to work out a sensitive response to every
situation we enter, every phone call we take.
But this is where the concept of the spirit /
mind / disposition of Jesus comes so power-
fully into play. If we make Him our daily study
and meditation, then we can have the mind /
spirit of Christ, and somehow we will naturally
respond as He would. For “the knowledge of
Him” gives us the spirit of wisdom, that we
may know how to respond to every man (Eph.
1:17; Col. 4:6).
| Duncan Heaster