_RESTORATION OF PETER._
"So when they had broken their fast, Jesus saith to Simon Peter,
Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these? He saith unto
Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him,
Feed My lambs. He saith to him again a second time, Simon, son of
John, lovest thou Me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest
that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Tend My sheep. He saith unto
him the third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me? Peter was
grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me? And
he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I
love Thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep."--JOHN xxi. 15-17.
To the interpretation of this dialogue between the Lord and Peter we
must bring a remembrance of the immediately preceding incident. The
evening before had found several of those who had followed Jesus
standing among the boats that lay by the sea of Galilee. Boat after boat
put out from shore; and as the familiar sights and smells and sounds
awakened slumbering instincts and stirred old associations, Peter with
characteristic restlessness and independence turned away to where his
own old boat lay, saying, "I go a-fishing." The rest only needed the
example. And as we watch each man taking his old place at the oar or
getting ready the nets, we recognise how slight a hold the Apostolic
call had taken of these men, and how ready they were to fall back to
their old life. They lack sufficient inward impulse to go and proclaim
Christ to men; they have no plans; the one inevitable thing is that they
must earn a livelihood. And had they that night succeeded as of old in
their fishing, the charm of the old life might have been too strong for
them. But, like many other men, their failure in accomplishing their own
purpose prepared them to discern and to fulfil the Divine purpose, and
from catching fish worth so much a pound they became the most
influential factors in this world's history. For the Lord had need of
them, and again called them to labour for Him, showing them how easily
He could maintain them in life and how full their nets would be when
cast under His direction.
When the Lord made Himself known by His miraculous action while yet the
disciples were too far off to see His features, Peter on the moment
forgot the fish he had toiled for all night, and though master of the
vessel left the net to sink or go to pieces for all he cared, and sprang
into the water to greet his Lord. Jesus Himself was the first to see the
significance of the act. This vehemence of welcome was most grateful to
Him. It witnessed to an affection which was at this crisis the most
valuable element in the world. And that it was shown not by solemn
protestations made in public or as part of a religious service, but in
so apparently secular and trivial an incident, makes it all the more
valuable. Jesus hailed with the deepest satisfaction Peter's impetuous
abandonment of his fishing gear and impatient springing to greet Him,
because as plainly as possible it showed that after all Christ was
incomparably more to him than the old life. And therefore when the first
excitement had cooled down Jesus gives Peter an opportunity of putting
this in words by asking him, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more
than these?" Am I to interpret this action of yours as really meaning
what it seems to mean--that I am more to you than boat, nets, old ways,
old associations? Your letting go the net at the critical moment, and so
risking the loss of all, seemed to say that you love Me more than your
sole means of gaining a livelihood. Well, is it so? Am I to draw this
conclusion? Am I to understand that with a mind made up you do love Me
more than these things? If so, the way is again clear for Me to commit
to your care what I love and prize upon earth--to say again, "Feed My
sheep."
Thus mildly does the Lord rebuke Peter by suggesting that in his recent
conduct there were appearances which must prevent these present
expressions of his love from being accepted as perfectly genuine and
trustworthy. Thus gracefully does He give Peter opportunity to renew the
profession of attachment he had so shamefully denied by three times over
swearing that he not only did not love Jesus, but knew nothing whatever
about the man. And if Peter at first resented the severity of the
scrutiny, he must afterwards have perceived that no greater kindness
could have been done him than thus to press him to clear and resolved
confession. Peter had probably sometimes compared himself to Judas, and
thought that the difference between his denial and Judas' betrayal was
slight. But the Lord distinguished. He saw that Peter's sin was
unpremeditated, a sin of surprise, while his heart was essentially
sound.
We also must distinguish between the forgetfulness of Christ, to which
we are carried by the blinding and confusing throng of this world's ways
and fashions and temptations, and a betrayal of Christ that has in it
something deliberate. We admit that we have acted _as if_ we had no
desire to serve Christ and to bring our whole life within His kingdom;
but it is one thing to deny Christ through thoughtlessness, through
inadvertence, through sudden passion or insidious, unperceived
temptation--another thing consciously and habitually to betake ourselves
to ways which He condemns, and to let the whole form, appearance, and
meaning of our life plainly declare that our regard for Him is very
slight when compared with our regard for success in our calling or
anything that nearly touches our personal interests. Jesus lets Peter
breakfast first, He lets him settle, before He puts His question,
because it matters little what we say or do in a moment of excitement.
The question is, what is our deliberate choice and preference--not what
is our judgment, for of that there can be little question; but when we
are self-possessed and cool, when the whole man within us is in
equilibrium, not violently pulled one way or other, when we feel, as
sometimes we do, that we are seeing ourselves as we actually are, do we
then recognise that Christ is more to us than any gain, success, or
pleasure the world can offer?
There are many who when the alternative is laid before them in cold
blood choose without hesitation to abide with Christ at all costs. Were
we at this moment as conscious as Peter was when this question fell from
the lips of the living Person before him, whose eyes were looking for
his reply, that we now must give our answer, many of us, God helping us,
would say with Peter, "Thou knowest that I love Thee." We could not say
that our old associations are easily broken, that it costs us nothing to
hang up the nets with which so skilfully we have gathered in the world's
substance to us, or to take a last look of the boat which has so
faithfully and merrily carried us over many a threatening wave and made
our hearts glad within us. But our hearts are not set on these things;
they do not command us as Thou dost; and we can abandon whatever hinders
us from following and serving Thee. Happy the man who with Peter feels
that the question is an easily answered one, who can say, "I may often
have blundered, I may often have shown myself greedy of gain and glory,
but Thou knowest that I love Thee."
In this restoration of Peter our Lord, then, tests not the conduct, but
the heart. He recognises that while the conduct is the legitimate and
normal test of a man's feeling, yet there are times at which it is fair
and useful to examine the heart itself apart from present manifestations
of its condition; and that the solace which a poor soul gets after great
sin, in refusing to attempt to show the consistency of his conduct with
love to Christ, and in clinging simply to the consciousness that with
all his sin there is most certainly a surviving love to Christ, is a
solace sanctioned by Christ, and which He would have it enjoy. This is
encouraging, because a Christian is often conscious that, if he is to be
judged solely by his conduct, he must be condemned. He is conscious of
blemishes in his life that seem quite to contradict the idea that he is
animated by a regard for Christ. He knows that men who see his
infirmities and outbreaks may be justified in supposing him a
self-deceived or pretentious hypocrite, and yet in his own soul he is
conscious of love to Christ. He can as little doubt this as he can doubt
that he has shamefully denied this in his conduct. He would rather be
judged by omniscience than by a judgment that can scrutinise only his
outward conduct. He appeals in his own heart from those who know in part
to Him who knows all things. He knows perfectly well that if men are to
be expected to believe that he is a Christian he must prove this by his
conduct; nay, he understands that love must find for itself a constant
and consistent expression in conduct; but it remains an indubitable
satisfaction to be conscious that, despite all his conduct has said to
the contrary, he does in his soul love the Lord.
The determination of Christ to clear away all misunderstanding and all
doubtfulness about the relation His professed followers hold to Him is
strikingly exhibited in His subjecting Peter to a second and third
interrogation. He invites Peter to search deeply into his spirit and to
ascertain the very truth. It is the most momentous of all questions; and
our Lord positively refuses to take a superficial, careless,
matter-of-course answer. He will thus question, and thrice question, and
probe to the quick all His followers. He seeks to scatter all doubt
about our relation to Him, and to make our living connection with Him
clear to our own consciousness, and to place our whole life on this
solid basis of a clear, mutual understanding between Him and us. Our
happiness depends upon our meeting His question with care and sincerity.
Only the highest degree of human friendship will permit this persistent
questioning, this beating of us back and back on our own feelings,
deeper and deeper into the very heart of our affections, as if still it
were doubtful whether we had not given an answer out of mere politeness
or profession or sentiment. The highest degree of human friendship
demands certainty, a basis on which it can build, a love it can entirely
trust. Christ had made good His right thus to question His followers and
to require a love that was sure of itself, because on His part He was
conscious of such a love and had given proof that His affection was no
mere sentimental, unfruitful compassion, but a commanding, consuming,
irrepressible, unconquerable love--a love that left Him no choice, but
compelled Him to devote Himself to men and do them all the good in His
power.
Peter's self-knowledge is aided by the form the question now takes. He
is no longer asked to compare the hold Christ has upon him with his
interest in other things; but he is asked simply and absolutely whether
love is the right name for that which connects him with his Lord.
"_Lovest thou Me?_" Separating yourself and Me from all others, looking
straight and simply at Me only, is "love" the right name for that which
connects us? Is it love, and not mere impulse? Is it love, and not
sentiment or fancy? Is it love, and not sense of duty or of what is
becoming? Is it love, and not mere mistake? For no mistake is more
disastrous than that which takes something else for love.
Now, to apprehend the significance of this question is to apprehend what
Christianity is. Our Lord was on the point of leaving the world; and He
left its future, the future of the sheep He loved so well and had spent
His all upon, in the keeping of Peter and the rest, and the one security
He demanded of them was the confession of love for Himself. He did not
draw up a creed or a series of articles binding them to this and that
duty, to special methods of governing the Church or to special truths
they were to teach it; He did not summon them into the house of Peter or
of Zebedee, and bid them affix their signatures or marks to such a
document. He rested the whole future of the work He had begun at such
cost on their love for Him. This security alone He took from them. This
was the sufficient guarantee of their fidelity and of their wisdom. It
is not great mental ability that is wanted for the furtherance of
Christ's aims in the world. It is love of what is best, devotion to
goodness. No question is made about their knowledge; they are not asked
what views they have about the death of Christ; they are not required to
analyse their feelings and say whence their love has sprung--whether
from a due sense of their indebtedness to Him for delivering them from
sin and its consequence, or from the grace and beauty of His character,
or from His tender and patient consideration of them. There is no
omission of anything vital owing to His being hurried in these morning
hours. Three times over the question comes, and the third is as the
first, a question solely and exclusively as to their love. Three times
over the question comes, and three times over, when love is
unhesitatingly confessed, comes the Apostolic commission, "Feed My
sheep." Love is enough--enough not only to save the Apostles themselves,
but enough to save the world.
The significance of this cannot be exaggerated. What is Christianity? It
is God's way of getting hold of us, of attaching us to what is good, of
making us holy, perfect men. And the method He uses is the presentation
of goodness in a personal form. He makes goodness supremely attractive
by exhibiting to us its reality and its beauty and its permanent and
multiplying power in Jesus Christ. Absolutely simple and absolutely
natural is God's method. The building up of systems of theology, the
elaborate organisation of churches, the various, expensive, and
complicated methods of men, how artificial do they seem when set
alongside of the simplicity and naturalness of God's method! Men are to
be made perfect. Show them, then, that human perfection is perfect love
for them, and can they fail to love it and themselves become perfect?
That is all. The mission of Christ and the salvation of men through Him
are as natural and as simple as the mother's caress of her child. Christ
came to earth because He loved men and could not help coming. Being on
earth, He expresses what is in Him--His love, His goodness. By His
loving all men and satisfying all their needs, men came to feel that
this was the Perfect One, and humbly gave themselves to Him. As simply
as love works in all human affairs and relationships, so simply does it
work here.
And God's method is as effectual as it is simple. Men do learn to love
Christ. And this love secures everything. As a bond between two persons,
nothing but love is to be depended upon. Love alone carries us out of
ourselves and makes other interests than our own dear to us.
But Christ requires us to love Him and invites us to consider whether we
do now love Him, because this love is an index to all that is in us of a
moral kind. There is so much implied in our love of Him, and so much
inextricably intertwined with it, that its presence or absence speaks
volumes regarding our whole inward condition. It is quite true that
nothing is more difficult to understand than the causes of love. It
seems to ally itself with equal readiness with pity and with admiration.
It is attracted sometimes by similarity of disposition, sometimes by
contrast. It is now stirred by gratitude and again by the conferring of
favours. Some persons whom we feel we ought to love we do not draw to.
Others who seem comparatively unattractive strongly draw us. But there
are always some persons in every society who are universally beloved;
and these are persons who are not only good, but whose goodness is
presented in an attractive form--who have some personal charm, in
appearance or manner or disposition. If some churlish person does not
own the ascendency, you know that the churlishness goes deep into the
character.
But this poorly illustrates the ascendency of Christ and what our
denial of it implies. His goodness is perfect and it is complete. Not to
love Him is not to love goodness; it is to be out of sympathy with what
attracts pure and loving spirits. For whatever be the apparent or
obscure causes of love, this is certain--that we love that which best
fits and stimulates our whole nature. Love lies deeper than the will; we
cannot love because we wish to do so, any more than we can taste honey
bitter because we wish to do so. We cannot love a person because we know
that their influence is needful to forward our interests. But if love
lies deeper than the will, what power have we to love what at present
does not draw us? We have no power to do so immediately; but we can use
the means given us for altering, purifying, and elevating our nature. We
can believe in Christ's power to regenerate us, we can faithfully follow
and serve Him, and thus we shall learn one day to love Him.
But the presence or absence in us of the love of Christ is an index not
only to our present state, but a prophecy of all that is to be. The love
of Christ was that which enabled and impelled the Apostles to live great
and energetic lives. It was this simple affection which made a life of
aggression and reformation possible to them. This gave them the right
ideas and the sufficient impulse. And it is this affection which is open
to us all and which equally now as at first impels to all good. Let the
love of Christ possess any soul and that soul cannot avoid being a
blessing to the world around. Christ scarcely needed to say to Peter,
"Feed My sheep; be helpful to those for whom I died," because in time
Peter must have seen that this was his calling. Love gives us sympathy
and intelligence. Our conscience is enlightened by sympathy with the
person we love; through their desires, which we wish to gratify, we see
higher aims than our own, aims which gradually become our own. And
wherever the love of Christ exists, there sooner or later will the
purposes of Christ be understood, His aims be accepted, His fervent
desire and energetic endeavour for the highest spiritual condition of
the race become energetic in us and carry us forward to all good.
Indeed, Jesus warns Peter of the uncontrollable power of this affection
he expressed. "When you were younger," He says, "you girded yourself and
walked where you would; but when you are old another shall gird you, and
carry you on to martyrdom." For he who is possessed by the love of
Christ is as little his own master and can as little shrink from what
that love carries him to as the man that is carried to execution by a
Roman guard. Self-possession terminates when the soul can truly say,
"Thou knowest that I love Thee." There is henceforth no choosing of ways
of our own; our highest and best self is evoked in all its power, and
asserts itself by complete abnegation of self and eager identification
of self with Christ. This new affection commands the whole life and the
whole nature. No more can the man spend himself in self-chosen
activities, in girding himself for great deeds of individual
glorification, or in walking in ways that promise pleasure or profit to
self; he willingly stretches forth his hands, and is carried to much
that flesh and blood shrink from, but which is all made inevitable,
welcome, and blessed to him through the joy of that love that has
appointed it.
But are we not thus pronouncing our own condemnation? This is, it is
easy to see, the true and natural education of the human spirit--to love
Christ, and so learn to see with His eyes and become enamoured of His
aims and grow up to His likeness. But where in us is this absorbing,
educating, impelling, irresistible power? To recognise the beauty and
the certainty of God's method is not the difficulty; the difficulty is
to use it, to find in ourselves that which carries us into the presence
of Christ, saying, "Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love
Thee." Admiration we have; reverence we have; faith we have; but there
is more than these needed. None of these will impel us to life-long
obedience. Love alone can carry us away from sinful and selfish ways.
But this testing question, "Lovest thou Me?" was not the first but the
last put to Peter by our Lord. It was only put after they had passed
through many searching experiences together. And if we feel that for us
to adopt as our own Peter's assured answer would only be to deceive
ourselves and trifle with the most serious of matters, we are to
consider that Christ seeks to win our love also, and that the ecstasy of
confessing our love with assurance is reserved even for us. It is
possible we may already have more love than we think. It is no uncommon
thing to love a person and not know it until some unusual emergency or
conjuncture of circumstances reveals us to ourselves. But if we are
neither conscious of love nor can detect any marks of it in our life, if
we know ourselves to be indifferent to others, deeply selfish, unable to
love what is high and self-sacrificing, let us candidly admit the full
significance of this, and even while plainly seeing what we are, let us
not relinquish the great hope of being at length able to give our heart
to what is best and of being bound by an ever-increasing love to the
Lord.