15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to Him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
This is such a relevant and encouraging passage for all Christians. In the account of the restoration of Peter, we learn that not only are sinners forgiven but we can also be restored after falling into sin.
Jesus, speaking of Satan in John 8:44 says, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
One of the greatest lies that Satan uses to erode the faith of Christians is that when we do give into temptation and fall into sin, we might as well continue in that sin, because we’ve somehow blown it, and God has given up on us. That was your last chance, and now there’s no way back.
The easiest answer to that deception is to consider the cross. Why would Jesus allow Himself to endure not only such physical agony, but the spiritual torment of being separated from the Father on our behalf, only for us to lose it all when we sin after being saved? The story of Peter teaches us that when we turn to Christ in genuine repentance, God grants us the grace and forgiveness we need.
The antidote to the lies of the devil is always the Word of God. At the end of the Gospel of John, we learn of not only Peter’s forgiveness and restoration, but also of his commission to apostolic service in the early days of the Christian church. Peter was a central character in the book of Acts, as the first generation of Christians took the Gospel message into the world.
Peter sinned grievously. He denied even knowing Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest, so his restoration encourages us that we can be not only restored and forgiven, but that God can still use us in service to Christ and His church.
In the first half of John 21, Jesus met the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee after miraculously filling their net with fish. John writes in verses 9 and 10, “When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.’”
We can only imagine how Peter must have felt. This was an exciting time for the disciples. Jesus had risen from the dead, and they now believed this to be true. They had no more doubts, but like an elephant in the room, Peter’s thoughts during these post-resurrection appearances of Jesus must have constantly gone back to that night when he denied Jesus.
On this day, they sat next to a fire, sharing a meal after a long night’s fishing. Surely Peter must have remembered a previous occasion, as he gathered around another fire. “Then they seized Him and led Him away, bringing Him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, ‘This man also was with Him.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know Him.’ And a little later someone else saw him and said, ‘You also are one of them.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I am not.’ And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, ‘Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are talking about.’ And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to Him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.” (Luke 22:54-62)
John MacArthur writes, “Luke alone records that Jesus made eye contact with Peter. The verb used suggests an intent, fixed look.” We’re not given much detail on the kind of look Jesus gave Peter, but we do know that it broke Peter’s heart. Distraught at his denial, Perter went away, weeping bitterly.
And now, sitting next to a fire once more, Jesus looked at Peter again and asked him three times whether he loved Him, one question for each of Peter’s denials.
It’s been said many times that the key to understanding Jesus’ questions and Peter’s answers is found in the different Greek words John used in this passage for love. In the first two of Jesus’ questions, He asked for Peter’s love using a verb form of the word agape, which is the highest form of love. It is a divine love that involves the whole will. Peter answered by using the word phileo, which refers to a lower form of love, implying affection and friendship.
The general understanding is that Peter was too ashamed to affirm anything but the lower form of love for Jesus, and this view is supported by the fact that John records that Jesus, when He asked Peter the third time, “Do you love me,” used phileo, rather than agape in the original Greek text. The idea is that Jesus lowered His demand from agape to phileo, accepting Peter’s commitment as it was at the time. There is a problem with this simple interpretation for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, John tended to use the words agape and phileo interchangeably. An example is in 20:2 and 21:7, where John speaks of himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” In chapter 20 he used agape and phileo in the next chapter.
And secondly, the conversation that Jesus had with Peter in John 21 would’ve been in Aramaic, not Greek. What all of this means is that to focus mainly on the different Greek words that John uses for love actually detracts from the deeper message of love and grace we find in how Jesus forgave and restored Peter.
So what did Jesus mean, and how are we to understand His questions to Peter?
In verse 15, Jesus began not only by asking whether Peter loved Him, but by specifying, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Some commentators have suggested that Jesus was referring here to the catch of fish the disciples had just brought ashore, the point being that Peter had to decide between fishing as a career or ministry. It’s not wrong to assume this, as every Christian needs to decide just how seriously we are to take the call to discipleship of Jesus Christ. Of course, not everyone is called to full time ministry or evangelism. It’s been said quite correctly that you can wash the dishes to the glory of God. The truth is that for Christians, there is not meant to be a distinction between our secular and church lives. It’s all sacred. Everything we do, we do for God.
Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” So there is some merit in the assumption that Jesus was referring to the fish when He asked Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
However, it is more likely that Jesus was talking about Peter’s bold but foolhardy claim in Matthew 26. “Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.’ Peter answered Him, ‘Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.’ Peter said to Him, ‘Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!’” (Matthew 26:31-35)
Now that Peter had fallen away, Jesus was asking him, “Do you still think that you love me more than the others do?”
The others would have been sitting right there, so we can imagine how Peter felt and how he must have been squirming in his seat as John continues, “He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ He said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to Him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’” (John 21:16-17)
By asking Peter three times if he loved Him, Jesus was not rubbing salt in his wounds or trying to embarrass Peter in front of the other disciples. Rather, He was deliberately and methodically guiding Peter to genuine repentance. It must have been very painful for Peter, but this is the whole point.
When we turn to Jesus Christ in true repentance, we don’t do so whistling a happy tune with a spring in our step. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and the depth of depravity in our own hearts - when we really begin to understand just how much we have grieved God with our sin - that realisation should break us as we quite literally throw ourselves at His mercy, because there is nothing else we can do.
Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:11-14)
Our only legitimate response when confronted with the perfect holiness of God should be the same as Peter’s when he first realised just who this man was when Jesus provided them with a miraculous catch of fish the first time in Luke 5. “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’” (Luke 5:8)
What was the prophet Isaiah’s response when he was given just the tiniest glimpse of the holiness of God? “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
John tells us in verse 17 that Peter was grieved when Jesus asked him the third time. This grief was necessary for Peter, just as it is necessary for us to grieve over our sin. James 4:8-10 says, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.”
Our sin should grieve us.
In Matthew 5 Jesus teaches what have become known as the Beatitudes, and in verse 4 He says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Our first thought here is usually the comfort we find in God as we mourn the deaths of those we love. Absolutely we do. We do need and find the peace and comfort of Christ in those desperately sad times, but that’s not what Jesus was actually referring to here. The previous verse helps us to understand what He really meant.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:3-4) And who are the poor in spirit? Those who recognise their total depravity and how far removed they are from the holiness of God.
The Reformation Study Bible says of these two verses, “Every human being is spiritually destitute in God’s sight, but only those who see this poverty - who mourn over sin and thirst for righteousness - will be comforted and inherit the kingdom of heaven. The context indicates that these are mourning over sin and evil, especially their own, and over the failure of mankind to give proper glory to God.”
And so, with each question from Jesus, Peter would have remembered each of the three times he had denied Him, and this grieved Peter. This grief was a necessary part of Jesus’ prompting of repentance, because this brought true restoration.
Jesus was in a sense, homing in on the full extent of Peter’s betrayal, and all Peter could do was appeal to Jesus’ omniscience - His perfect knowledge of all things. “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” (John 21:17)
This is where we find comfort and encouragement in knowing our forgiveness is complete. Peter shows us that only a genuine believer can take comfort in God’s true knowledge of our hearts. It is God who draws us to Himself. It is God who convicts us of our sin and our need of a Saviour. It is God who grants us repentance and saving faith, and it is God who assures us that we are His for eternity. We sang it with the Sunday School children last week: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Notice also how Jesus addresses Peter in this passage. In his Gospel, John has only ever referred to Peter as Peter, or Simon Peter, beginning back in chapter 1 when Jesus called him to be one of His disciples. “One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).” (John 1:40-42)
This refers directly to Peter’s great confession of faith in Matthew 16 on which Jesus said He will build His church, but now, in John 21, Jesus reverts to Peter’s former name. Three times He says to Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
He did this to remind Peter of his weakness and to humble him. Before Peter could be called to the office of apostle, he had to “revisit” the time when he was first saved, as it were. The lesson to us is, more important than our calling to Christian service is our calling to salvation through faith in Jesus.
It is our Christian duty and our joy to serve Christ and His church in whatever way He has called and equipped us, but the greater joy is that we are saved in the first place. There are times when our prayer should be the same as David’s in Psalm 51: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”
Whatever badge, label or office we may hold in the life, work and witness of the church, none of them are more important than this one: We are sinners saved by grace. We have the joy of salvation.
Until Jesus had addressed Peter’s great sin, Peter would not have been as effective in his office as apostle as he did become. It was not cruel or insensitive of Jesus to require that Peter work step by step through each stage of his betrayal. On the contrary, Jesus treated him with grace. He brought true spiritual healing to Peter, and perhaps it was only now that Peter truly understood the words of the risen Christ. “Peace be with you.”
Jesus’ kindness is shown that in each of Peter’s steps of remembering his denial, Jesus assured him not only of forgiveness but of full restoration too. It would’ve been cruel had Jesus left Peter in doubt as to his acceptance, but Jesus did not leave any doubt.
Neither does He want us to have any doubts about our forgiveness and salvation. John was to write later in his first epistle, “This is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:11-13)
Peter was not destroyed by his sin, as grievous as it was. Instead, he was lifted up by the amazing grace and love that saved him.
This should encourage us to seriously examine our sins in the presence of God. We have no secrets from Him. Even (and especially) those that we have tried desperately to ignore and forget, those sins that we just can’t wipe from our minds as much as we want to. God knows them all.
The wonderful news is that while we should weep and mourn over those things, Jesus died for them too. It’s been said before that the only way we can measure the height of God’s love for us is by comparing it with the depth of our sin. When we do that, and we realise that the height of His love is infinitely higher than the depth of our sin, we will finally begin understanding the wonderful love of God. It was on the cross that Jesus suffered for our redemption.
Another lesson Peter had to learn was just how dangerous his self-confidence was. In John 13:37 Peter foolishly boasted that he would lay down his life for Jesus. What Peter really needed was for Jesus to lay down His life for Peter.
A. W. Pink wrote, “That fall was necessary in order to reveal to Peter the condition of his heart, to show him the worthlessness of self-confidence, and to humble his proud spirit.”
As Jesus led Peter through his repentance with three piercing, yet necessary questions, He also restored Peter with three commissions to care for and pastor His people.
“Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”
Peter was being called specifically to the office of pastor and apostle here, but as the church, when we learn to love God, we will automatically love and care for His people too. Loving God is the highest priority of our lives.
The theologian Ligon Duncan tells of a wonderful conversation he had with a dear old lady after church one Sunday morning. “The older I grow, the more I love the Lord’s people,” she told him. “Isn’t that sweet,” he thought, but she continued, however, “The older I grow, the more I love the Lord’s people and the less I trust them.” Duncan later wrote, “The Lord’s people will hurt you. You will seek to serve the Lord’s people; they will let you down. When that happens, you are being given the privilege of reflecting your Saviour, because He washed the feet of the disciples who abandoned Him.”
It is only love for Christ and His church that empowers us to continue serving each other, but what a joy it is to serve.
James Boice writes, “Do you love me? Yes, Lord. Take care of my sheep. This love does not get wrapped up in mystical experiences. It cares for others. John said it well in his first letter, ‘Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.’ If we love Christ, we will love those others for whom He also died and we will do our best to serve them in love.”
Just as Peter, we all have our faults, but the glory of the cross and the truth of the Gospel is that Jesus has taken the punishment we deserve on our behalf. Not only has He forgiven and restored us, but He now equips us by His Holy Spirit to take the message of joy and hope to those who need to hear it.
If Jesus can do what He did for Peter, we can know with absolute assurance that He will do the same for you and for me.
“Do you love me?” Jesus asks. It is so important that we that answer this question of ourselves, because if we cannot or will not love Jesus Christ first, He cannot and will not use us for His glory.
Notice that Jesus did not ask, “Do you love me perfectly?” He doesn’t ask, “Do you love me as I deserve?”
He simply asks for our love. If we belong to Him, then like Peter, even with our pride, our shame and our guilt, we can know that we are His, because He laid down His life for us. Then, like Peter, we too can say, “Lord, you know that I love you.”
The last verse of one of William Cowper’s hymns says it so well: “Lord, it is my chief complaint that my love is weak and faint; yet I love Thee, and adore; O for grace to love Thee more!”
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 21:15-17
It has been well documented that the reason Jesus asked Peter 3 times if he loved Him was because Peter denied Him 3 times.
Why was Peter grieved or hurt by this, and what does this teach us about the severity of sin, and the high cost of our forgiveness?
Share with your group (if you feel able) how God has shown you grace and mercy when you have not deserved it, but desperately needed it.
Peter became a central character in the book of Acts, as Jesus commissioned him to be one of the apostles, three times calling him to tend and feed His sheep.
How (if at all) does Peter’s call apply to the lives of Christians today?
How would you answer Jesus’ question “Do you love me?”
How do you understand Peter’s reply in verse 17?