May 22, 2016  John 21:15-25

A hard night’s work, an early morning breakfast with the Lord Himself – what were the disciples expecting next?  Probably not what happened with Peter.  Awkward questions and self-conscious answers were made even more uncomfortable by their repetition.  What was Jesus doing and how was Peter responding?

One of the first observations made in our discussion group was the way Jesus addressed Peter:  “Simon, son of John” (think, “Simon Johnson”).  He used that full name all three times (John 21:15, 16, 17).  As one group member pointed out, children learn early in life that a parent or teacher calling their full name usually means trouble.  (“Michael Lee” was never a good sign.)  That negative implication may or may not have been true in the culture of first-century Palestine.  Our group considered several possible reasons why Jesus may have used that form.  Perhaps He was identifying Peter or indicating their close relationship.  However, it is interesting to note that Jesus only addressed Peter this way (Simon, son of John) one other time in this Gospel (John 1:42) when Simon was given the name Cephas or Peter, meaning “rock.”  After his three-fold denial of Jesus, Peter probably no longer felt like a rock.  He may not have felt like someone who had been following Jesus and growing spiritually for three years.  Someone in our discussion suggested that Peter felt like “the old me.”  Jesus was addressing him that way, as he was before he was given his new name at the beginning of their relationship.  He had gone back to fishing (v. 3) just as he was before Jesus called him.  One commentator suggested the sobering idea that the use of the earlier name was “as if he were no longer (or not yet!) a disciple.”[1]

Jesus may have addressed Simon son of John as if he was not the rock, but He did not leave him there.  The questions He asked and Simon’s replies resulted in a rapid restoration of Peter the Rock.  Our group noted that John’s narration (written years later) continued to use the name Peter.  The three-fold questions (matching Peter’s three-fold denial; John 13:38; 18:17, 25, 27) form a pattern.  Sometimes organizing a pattern in a Biblical passage can help see similarities and differences to aid our understanding.  Quite a bit of discussion was involved, but the summary is shown below.  The Greek words in parentheses are explained in the text following the table:

This simple outline reveals some clear similarities as well as some variations in the pattern.  Jesus seems to soften His question the second time, dropping the “more than these” condition.  Peter’s answers to the first two questions are identical, but the third time he sounds more emphatic with the addition of “You know all things.”  The third question also “grieves” Peter.  The response from Jesus after Peter answers consists of various combinations of tend/shepherd actions toward the lambs/sheep.

Considerable discussion grew out of just about every item in that table.  Since we have not been using prepared handouts for the last several weeks, we have the advantage (and the complication) of different translations used by different members of the group.  Jesus’ first two questions in verses 15 and 16 were translated as “truly love” in some (older?) NIV versions.  Others use “with total commitment and devotion” (Amplified) or “really love” (TLB).  Those translations are trying to distinguish between the two different words used in this passage for “love:”  agapao, ἀγαπάω and phileo, φιλέω.  One (agapao) is the kind of sacrificial, unconditional, never-changing love that God has for us and that Christ calls us to have for each other.  Phileo is also love, but more like close friendship (think of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love).  Jesus asks (or challenges?) Peter’s commitment using agapao.  Peter responds all three times using phileo.  Following the lead of the Amplified Bible, the first two exchanges could be translated as, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me [with total commitment and devotion]?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You [with a deep, personal affection, as for a close friend].”[2]  The third time Jesus changes to phileo as well.  Our group decided that the “grief” Peter felt was a combination of Jesus’ repeated question as well as the change in the content of His question.  The second and third questions of Jesus reduce the weight of (or in one member’s words, “ratchet back”) the questions by first dropping the “more than these” and then using the less demanding word for love.

As much as this grieved Peter, one person in our group pointed out the beauty of Jesus meeting him where he was.  Maybe Peter was not willing to use agapao because he remembered his past failures.  Even worse, maybe (as another member pointed out) he was remembering his past empty boasting.  “Even though all may fall away yet I will not….Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You” (Mark 14:29, 31).  Remembering those words of Peter helped answer another question we had about the meaning of “more than these” in Jesus’ first question.  Did He mean, “Do you love me more than these other disciples love Me?” or “Do you love me more than you love these other disciples?” or even “Do you love me more than you love all these things, your boat and your fishing?”  (“These” is masculine, making the third option less likely.  “These things” would more commonly be a neuter pronoun.)  If Jesus is thinking of Peter’s earlier boast about his loyalty exceeding the devotion of all the other disciples, He was probably asking, “Are you My most committed follower?”  When Peter avoided the word agapao in his answer, Jesus lowered the bar to simply, “Do you love Me” without any comparison to others’ commitment.  Jesus is asking for a realistic commitment, not a perfect commitment.  He expects us to grow, but not to be fully grown before He will meet us.

Peter seems to have learned a lesson about honesty, about responding to Jesus from exactly where he is, not from where he would like everyone else (including Jesus) to think he is.  “God meets us and works in our lives where we are, not where we pretend to be or where we say we are.”[3]  Telling ourselves or others or God that things are fine will not make it so.  We need to learn, like Peter, to trust that Jesus will meet us where we are, no matter how messy.

We considered the responses of Jesus to Peter’s phileo answers.  Jesus never reprimanded Peter for his answers.  As we just saw, He changed the questions to meet Peter.  But the response in each case pointed Peter to his role as a leader.  The consensus among us was that there is little or no intricate difference in meaning between tend/feed/care (different translations in the group) and shepherding lambs and sheep.  Jesus was using familiar pictures to give Peter a vision for what He was calling Him to.  The restoration from the denials was not just for Peter’s conscience but for the care of the soon-to-be church.  New lambs and mature sheep would all need his care and feeding and guidance.  Peter may have thought about references to God shepherding Israel (e.g., Isaiah 40:11), and one person commented about a letter Peter wrote years later, exhorting other leaders in the church to “shepherd the flock of God among you” (I Peter 5:2).  Peter got the message about his future, and he followed through on that mission.

After three exchanges of question-answer-response, Jesus has another message for Peter (v. 18).  If the questions and exhortations from Jesus were challenging, the next comments were sobering.  Jesus described (in a euphemism about “stretching out your hands” that Peter would eventually be crucified.  John’s commentary (v. 19) clarifies any doubt that this description was of Peter’s death, but that his death would glorify God.  Church tradition says that Peter was crucified upside down (as he requested) because he did not consider himself worthy to die in the same way as his Lord.[4]

Peter is still Peter.  At the end of this intense conversation with Jesus, he asks a seemingly random question.  “What about this man?” referring to John, the disciple whom Jesus loved (vv. 20-21).  Jesus chooses not to answer Peter’s idle curiosity, like Aslan in Narnia who “tells no-one any story but his own.”[5]  No matter how unusual God’s will might be for another person, it is not our place to question either the person or what God is doing in his life.  Even in the hypothetical case Jesus suggests, of John living until the Lord’s return, that should still not distract Peter from his main charge:  “Follow Me” even when Peter now knows that following will mean following all the way to a cross.

A concerned question came up at this point in the discussion.  John did not live until the return of Jesus.  Is this a problem with Scripture?  Here the importance of careful reading of the text becomes evident.  The questioner, after reading the verses again, realized that Jesus had said, “If….”  That brief discussion was a great illustration of exactly why John went to such lengths (v. 23) to clarify exactly what Jesus had said.  That misunderstanding in the first century could have led to serious doubts about the reliability of Scripture in general and John’s Gospel in particular.  As soon as John died (late in the first century), skeptics and cynics would have pointed to the saying as an unfulfilled prophecy.  John made sure that his readers (at least the sincere truth seekers) would see and understand the difference.

Another question that came up:  Why was John so indirect about identifying himself?  “The disciple whom Jesus loved” and “the one who had leaned back on His bosom at the supper” (v. 20), or “the other disciple” (John 20:3), “another disciple who was known to the high priest” (18:15), all seem to be elaborate ways to avoid referring to himself in first person.  Someone suggested the contrast with Paul who often refers to himself as “I” or “me” in his letters.  The exception that was noted was when Paul mentions “a man who was caught up to the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:1-4).  Most commentaries seem to agree that “a man” was Paul himself, who later sees God’s grace in the suffering that prevented self-exaltation based on the heavenly experience (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  Why in that one instance did Paul avoid directly identifying himself?  Perhaps both Paul and John were trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves and their experiences.  John probably rejoiced in the fact of his special relationship with Jesus, the one whom He loved.  But that was his story, between John and Jesus.  He had no wish to draw unneeded attention to that relationship.  However, at the close of the story he is telling in his Gospel, he wants to draw attention to another important fact.  This narrative, this brief twenty-one-chapter sketch didn’t come close to telling everything there was to tell (John 21:25; 20:30).  The important point is that the incomplete history was written by an eyewitness.  This story came from an active participant who had first-hand information based on intimate relationships with the central characters.  Indeed, he was one of the central characters himself.  He wants his readers to know the Central Character, as he said before, “these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).  That was John’s purpose for writing, and that has been the goal throughout the sixty-eight weeks of exploring the Gospel According to John.

[1] J. Ramsey Michaels, John in The New International Biblical Commentary (Peabody, Massachusetts:  Hendrickson, 1989) 359;  quoted in Rodney A. Whitacre, John in The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, Illinois:  InterVarsity Press, 1999), 494.

[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/John%2021:16

[3] Larry Crabb, “Spiritually Forming Conversations” (audio recording, NewWay Ministries, 2006 ) Part 2, approximately 31:40.  http://www.newwayministries.org/

[4] Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (Nashville, Tennessee:  Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995), 41.

[5] C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy (New York:  Collier Books, 1974), 159.