John 21:15

John 21:15

The last Scene with Peter

I. Every one has felt that the threefold question of Christ to Peter, alluded to the threefold betrayal. There lay in the question a mild rebuke, so exquisitely given that it would not sting, but soften the heart. It was a trial also; it was so spoken as to try whether the apostle had the same boastful spirit. Would he now exalt himself, put himself forward as the first? Was the element of self-conceit still mingled with his impulsive affection? We see in the reply how the apostle was changed. He accepted the reproof without a word of self-justification. He answered true to the testing power of the words on his heart. He did not even trust his own knowledge of his love, but appealed from himself to Christ. "Thou knowest, only Thou, Thou knowest that I love Thee."

II. "Follow Me." This links the first interview by the lake with the last. As it was said, Peter looked round, and there lay the lake, its waves dancing in the morning light. The nets were on the sand, the multitude of fishes were glittering in them; the boats were drawn up upon the shore; his partners were again by his side, and Jesus had come upon them. It was the same scene he had seen before when he said, in his impulse, that he was a sinful man. Nature was the same; she who is always the same in the midst of our stormiest change; but in all else she was different. Peter looked back, and an eternity seemed to roll between the first meeting and this last. The confession of sin he had then made was true, but it was that of an untried child; nor did he know how true it was. Since then he had known what it was to be tried, to fail, to touch the depths of miserable guilt and human weakness. He had passed through a tempest, and he was now a man. He had at the first meeting given up all, in quick impulse, and gone after Christ, in admiration and enthusiasm. But his love had no foundation on a rock, only on the shifting sands of human feeling; and when the wind and rain arose, the fair house fell. Now he knew that love meant, not the momentary rush of quick delight alone, but the steady direction of his whole being towards the will and wish of One who had redeemed him from an abyss of failure, who had forgiven him a base betrayal; not the passionate thought now and again of the person loved, in gusts of imagination, but that deep-rooted love which, having woven its fibres through every power of character, would never let him dream of following any other Master.

S. A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life,p. 15.

References: John 21:15. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1684; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 163; S. Greg, A Layman's Legacy,p. 129; A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons,p. 193.