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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreat Texts of the Bible by James Hastings - John 21:15 - 21:17
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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.—Joh_21:15-17.
It was my happiness a few years ago to set eyes upon the Lake of Galilee, gazing with strange emotions upon the waters and the mountain-shores from the garden of the Scottish Mission Hospital (scene of a noble work for God) at Tiberias, and afterwards from a boat, built probably on lines unaltered for two thousand years, and worked by fishermen, clad probably in the very fashion of the Apostles. Wonderful was the charm of the thought that this was indeed the scene of the Gospels; the eyes of the Son of Man knew just those outlines of cliff, and field, and shore, and that snowy dome of Hermon looking on from the northern horizon. His feet trod this shell-wrought strand, aye, and the waves too into which those smooth waters can be tossed so soon. Somewhere yonder, on the further side (for surely it was on that more solitary margin), this last scene of St. John’s narrative was enacted; there was kindled the ruddy fire, there the water flashed into silver as Simon Peter wrestled his way through. Along that shore, whose line lies so distinct between lake and hills, he followed the steps of Jesus, and turned to see John following too. It was a moving thing to look thus with waking eyes on the region as it is. Yet, such is the power, the artless magic, of the narrative of the Apostle, that I know not whether the actual gain to realization was very great. The Gospel had created so visible a landscape that the eyes had less to add to the picture than I had hoped.1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, The Secret of the Presence, 144.]
1. The occasion.—The time is morning; morning so full of memories, so full of hope and high resolve. The mists are clearing from the lake and shore: the darkness is passing away, stirred by the fresh breeze of dawn. There are together those whose names are so often found associated; Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the two sons of Zebedee. They are on the sea of Tiberias, fishing just as before Christ called them to be fishers of men. The fruitless night-toil, and their success when in obedience to Christ they cast their net on the right side of the ship, were fitted to remind them of His former miracle, and of their former call. John marks, as significant of a difference between this and the former miracle, that for all the fishes were so many, yet did not the net break—a hopeful difference, promising that their new mission should be better than the old. Called anew to draw men to Christ, they shall be better preachers than they were; they shall not “catch men” for the Kingdom, they shall be enabled to bring them all in and retain them in the Kingdom. The months that have gone by, seemingly so fruitless—months during which they made so many blunders, months which appeared to come to so entire a close in the death of their Master—have not gone by for nothing. Their past experience, their blunders and anxieties and sorrows, all will be seen to have fitted them for their new work, when again the Lord shall bid them to it. This, at least, we shall see to be true of St. Peter; three times reminded of his weakness, three times made to feel the pains of penitence, he is each time bidden to tend the flock. He will be better able to tend the flock because of what he has learnt of his feebleness and folly.
The narrative seems to me full of subtle suggestions. It illustrates our Christian life, which is ever new, yet ever old; full of strange events, the meaning of which becomes, as we muse upon them, familiar and intelligible. Every daybreak shows us the old world under new aspects; the objects which loom so strangely in the obscurity, we see, as we gaze on them, to be quite familiar. In the dim morning light, the disciples knew not that it was Jesus who stood on the shore; perhaps some mysterious change had passed upon Him in the grave, the risen Saviour not appearing quite like the Master whom they had followed; but the miracle revealed that it was He. It was a new call with which He presently bade them, but it was the fulfilment of His first bidding, “Follow me.” It was a new miracle He wrought, a new experience through which they were passing now; but how thoroughly was it the same as what had gone before! It is this constant freshness and changeless identity of life, this novelty of circumstance having in it the old meaning of love and grace, the new duty which is but a repetition of the old call, which makes us rejoice in the one purpose we perceive ever enlarging and fulfilling itself. It is as we recognize, “I am the same, and God is the same amid all changes,” that we rest amid ceaseless variation, and learn the lessons to which, day by day, God is opening our ears.1 [Note: A. Mackennal, Christ’s Healing Touch, 174.]
2. The language.—The passage is marked in the original by a variety of language which does not appear in the English translation. There are two different Greek words for each of the English words “love,” “know,” and “feed,” and three Greek words for “sheep” or “lambs.” And there is significance in other words besides these. Take them separately—
(1) “Simon, Son of John.” The Master’s use of the old name “Simon,” instead of the new name, “Peter,” was suggestive of much. It was not to imply that he had forfeited all right to the new name; but it was a gentle reminder to him of the weakness which had led to his denial; and it would recall to him the Master’s words before his fall, when He purposely abstained from giving him the name that implied firmness and strength, but used instead the old name, “Simon,” which bore to “Peter” the same relation as “Jacob” (the “supplanter”) bore to “Israel” (the “prince of God”)—“Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” Very lovingly had Jesus already assured the penitent disciple of His forgiveness. One of the first messages He sent as the Risen One was a message specially to Peter. One of the first private interviews He gave to any disciple was given to Peter; and from that interview he must have come away knowing himself to be a fully pardoned man. Still, the use of the old name here again must have gone to Peter’s heart, making him think, with new shame and sorrow, of his old self-confidence and pride.
(2) “Lovest thou me?” The distinctions between the two Greek verbs used are various and delicate; but they may all be traced to the radical difference between them. It is not a difference in the warmth, but in the character, of affection. The one signifies the love based upon appreciation of another; the other simple personal attachment. The one word would express the love that would give itself up for another; the second word that which gives itself up to another. The one would be a confident, the other a confiding love. In this narrative the one might be represented if, in English, we said, “I am thy friend”; the other, if we said, “Thou art my friend.” It is the former of these words that Christ here uses: “Simon, son of Jonas, esteemest thou me more, art thou more my friend, than thy fellow disciples?” This was just what Peter had professed, “Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.” “I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.” “Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee.”
We can now understand Peter’s reply. Once he would have said, “I know that I am Thy friend.” Once he did assert his knowledge of himself against Christ’s knowledge of him; he was sure he was to be trusted. But he has lost his self-confidence. He cannot compare himself with others now. He will not even assert himself to be a friend, ready to devote himself for Christ’s sake; he will not profess esteem for Jesus. He chooses the humbler, trustful word: “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.”
Again, Christ asks him, “If not more than these, yet art thou my friend at all? Is there any of the active devoted love in thee? any of the passion that will assert itself on my behalf?” And still the same humble, clinging answer comes from Peter. Even this he will not affirm. How can he profess what he is ready for? How can he be confident who has so painfully learnt that there is nothing for him but meekly and gratefully to trust in Jesus? “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.”
Now, Christ takes Peter’s own word: He will not wound him by reminding him of his past boastful professions; let it be as Peter would have it, the trusting affection of the disciple. “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” “Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me?” Surely Jesus cannot doubt that. He must know that the disciple clings to his Lord. Christ must know that He is all in all to Peter. He saith unto Him, “Lord, thou knowest all things; Thou seest my heart, Thou knowest what sort of a man I was and am, how vain my self-confidence; Thou knowest me to be weak, rash, changeful; but Thou knowest, too, that under all my boasting, all my mistakes, there was love for Thee, and that it remains. Lord, Thou knowest that I cannot make professions, that I am heart-sick of professions, but Thou knowest that this is true; thou knowest that I love Thee.”
And this confession Christ accepts; this confession He ever will accept. Distinguish between the profession of love to Christ and the confession of it. In profession the person most prominent in our thoughts is “I, who make it”; in confession, “He, whose name I am confessing.” The confession of love to Christ is the sweetest language that can fall from human lips; it shows that the life has found its rest and meaning. Christ is known, and He will keep faithful to all eternity; He will solace in all tribulation, and succour in all difficulty; He will guide with His counsel, and afterwards receive to glory, every meek soul that utters it. The profession of love to Christ is painful to hear. It is full of danger; it is boastful, self-confident. He who makes it will have, by many a sore trial, through many a bitter experience of failure, to come to a humbler mind. It is not in what we are to Christ, but in what Christ is to us, that our rest and security lie.
Observe the period of Peter’s life when this confession is made. It is not his earliest confession; he has been brought to it through painful self-knowledge; it is the utterance of a tried maturity. It is a custom among many Christians to demand this as a pass-word to Christian fellowship; to refuse the recognition of discipleship to all who cannot utter it. I cannot think that this is wise. To set young converts on an estimate of their feeling towards the Saviour, instead of encouraging them to trust in Him, is full of peril. Christian discipleship sometimes begins with love to Christ; and singularly blessed are they with whom it does. But in other ways souls are drawn to Christ: the weary go to Him for rest, the guilty for pardon, the helpless for succour; the dissatisfied, who long for a better life, seek the life that is in Christ. Such will say, “I trust in Christ,” “I have found Christ,” “I am following Christ”; but the words, perhaps, halt on their lips, “I love Christ.” It is not for us to insist on their utterance. They are not for our ears, but for His. And He knows how, from the trusting, the obedient, and the earnest, to draw at length the full confession, “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.”1 [Note: A. Mackennal, Christ’s Healing Touch, 178.]
(3) “Feed my lambs.” There is variation in Christ’s thrice repeated charge—” Feed my lambs,” “Shepherd my sheep,” “Feed my little sheep.” All were to be cared for, and all modes of watchfulness and help were to be displayed. Fold as well as feed them; guide and guard and heal them; keep them from straying, strengthen the feeble, bind up the bruised, bring again that which is driven away, seek that which is lost.
3. Three questions, three answers, and three commands.—In this story St. Peter has been already three times the foremost. To him the Lord speaks, now not for the first time singling him out.
(1) The first question is, “Lovest thou me more than these?” These words refer to an earlier time, the time when He had said to the disciples, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night,” and St. Peter had replied, “Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.” Yet he had fled with the rest. And when he came back to the house where his Lord was being tried, he three times denied Him. Was this like loving Him more than the rest? Yet, again, his recent act might be looked at as a sign of his character, his leaping from the ship into the sea, and dragging the net alone. These words therefore did not convey a real reproach, but a lesson: the love might be the greatest, yet also the least to be trusted. There was a good beginning, but it had not ripened into its proper nature. St. Peter had learnt something by those humbling days. He answers “Yea”; he could do that unflinchingly; but he dares not claim to be above his brethren; he drops, in answering, all allusion to them. Christ simply replies, “Feed my lambs.” He craved no personal cleaving to Himself, as man cleaves to man. He spoke only as the shepherd of the sheep, whose whole care was for the sheep for whom He had died. Such also must be the care of those who love Him. Henceforth St. Peter must show his love by his anxiety to sustain the life of other men; that was to be the test of his love.
(2) A second time Christ repeats the question; but now He needs not to recall the old boast; He leaves out the words, “more than these.” He would ask, putting aside all comparison with others, “Canst thou say that thou lovest me?” The answer is the same as before—a full acknowledgment that He is Lord, a firm persuasion that his Lord knows him. Again Christ replies, slightly altering the expression, “Tend my sheep.” Not only the lambs, the weak and ignorant, had to be fed, but even the strong and wise ones, the full-grown sheep, had to be ruled and guided. Mere pity for the helpless lambs was not enough. St. Peter must not think that there were any to whom he owed no duty.
(3) Once more Christ renews the question. Three times St. Peter had denied Him, and three times his love is to be proved. St. Peter’s impatience breaks out. He thought it enough that Christ should try him once or at most twice. “He was grieved”; he exclaimed at the seeming needlessness of the question: “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee”—Thou canst find out whether I love Thee or not. This is but a small thing, a part of the Lord’s all-embracing knowledge. But Christ will not let go the former command; He repeats, “Feed my sheep”; all alike need support as well as guidance.
The reiteration in the interrogation did not express doubt as to the veracity of the answer, nor dissatisfaction with its terms; but it did express, and was meant to suggest to St. Peter and to the others, that the threefold denial needed to be obliterated by the threefold confession; and that every black mark that had been scored deep on the page by that denial needed to be covered over with the gilding or bright colouring of the triple acknowledgment. And so thrice having said, “I know him not!” Jesus, with a gracious violence, forced him to say thrice, “Thou knowest that I love thee.”1 [Note: A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, 78.]
How pleasant to me thy deep-blue wave,
O Sea of Galilee!
For the glorious One who came to save
Hath often stood by thee.
Fair are the lakes in the land I love,
Where pine and heather grow:
But thou hast loveliness far above
What Nature can bestow.
It is not that the wild gazelle
Comes down to drink thy tide:
But He that was pierced to save from hell
Oft wander’d by thy side.
It is not that the fig-tree grows,
And palms, in thy soft air,
But that Sharon’s fair and bleeding Rose
Once spread its fragrance there.
Graceful around thee the mountains meet,
Thou calm, reposing sea;
But ah, far more! the beautiful feet
Of Jesus walk’d o’er thee.
And was it beside this very sea
The new-risen Saviour said
Three times to Simon, “Lovest thou Me?
My lambs and sheep then feed”?
O Saviour! gone to God’s right hand!
Yet the same Saviour still,
Graved on Thy heart is this lovely strand,
And every fragrant hill.
Oh, give me, Lord, by this sacred wave,
Threefold Thy love divine,
That I may feed, till I find my grave,
Thy flock—both Thine and mine!1 [Note: R. M. M‘Cheyne.]
4. Thus Jesus thrice addressed the same question to St. Peter with apparently slight and yet significant variations. To that question he always received the same answer, only again with apparently slight modifications. And with equally slight changes the replies were followed up by seemingly the same injunctions. Yet, trifling as the variations appear to be—the questions slightly differing, the answers slightly differing, the counsels also slightly differing—there is a touching spiritual story in them, full of evangelical meaning and of deep spiritual interest.
The truths contained in the text are these—
I. Love is the Inspiration of Service.
II. Service is the Fulfilment of Love.
Love as the Inspiration of Service
1. Love is first and fundamental.—How significant and beautiful it is that the only thing that Jesus Christ cares to ask about is the man’s love! We might have expected: “Simon, son of Jonas, are you sorry for what you did? Simon, son of Jonas, will you promise never to do the like any more?” No. These things will come if the other thing is there: “Lovest thou me?” Jesus Christ desires from each of us, not obedience primarily, not repentance, not vows, not conduct, but a heart; and that being given, all the rest will follow. This is the distinguishing characteristic of Christian morality, that Jesus seeks first for the surrender of the affections, and believes, and is warranted in the belief, that if these are surrendered, all else will follow; and love being given, loyalty and service and repentance and hatred of self-will and of self-seeking will follow in her train.
No other religion presents anything which resembles this invitation to give God the heart. Give me thy observances, says the God of Pharisaism. Give me thy personality, says the God of Hegel. Give me thy reason, says the God of Kant. It remains for the God of Jesus Christ to say, Give Me thine heart. He makes it the essence and the glory of His doctrine. With Him to give the heart to God is not merely an obligation of piety; it is its root, its beginning, its middle, its end.1 [Note: Adolphe Monod.]
“Lovest thou me?” It is a question that goes down very deep; for it goes down to the eternal springs of all life. It is God’s and Nature’s great secret; and man’s only hope. Love is life, hatred is death. Love, in its essence, is attraction, combination, sympathy, blending. It is so even in what we call the unconscious world of matter. God’s immense laboratory, the Universe, so far as we know it, is the ceaseless arena of love-attractions and blendings. There is never an atom that is content alone; never a molecule that is at rest in its isolation; never a crystal that is not flashed into form by aspiration; never a leaf or bud or blade of grass that does not reach out after its beloved; never a throb that is not responded to throughout all space. Gravitation itself is like the ceaseless infinite breathing of an all-pervading Lover—attracting all things to itself. Throughout the Universe, so far as we can penetrate, every atom is crying to every other, “Lovest thou me?” Science calls it “affinity.” We might just as well call it “love.”
Everywhere, too, Nature—the great patient Mother—stands waiting for the lover’s appeal. It is true that we can capture many of her treasures without affection; but never her joys and benedictions so. She is very wonderful in her teachings, and very gracious in her consolations to her lovers; but there must be love if there is to be communion. You will only be miserable in her solitudes if you are without love. Night and day she whispers to the wanderer, “Lovest thou me?” Emerson was right. We get her stare—not her music—because we love her not. You accuse Nature of cruelty; you say,
Nature has miscarried wholly
Into failure, into folly.
Alas! thine is the bankruptcy
Blessed Nature so to see.
These young atheists
Who invade our hills
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
The old men studied magic in the flowers,
And human fortunes in astronomy,
And an omnipotence in chemistry,
Preferring things to names, for these were men,
Were unitarians of the united world,
And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
They caught the footsteps of the Same. Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
The injured elements say, “Not in us”;
And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant and mineral say, “Not in us”;
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain,
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them; yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
And, in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve.
We praise the “strong men,” the empire-makers, the remorseless soldiers, the commercial pioneers; and, indeed, they have their mission, and some of them deserve their meed of praise; but these are not the great instruments of nature and of God. The poets, the artists, the moralists, the idealists, the Buddhas, the Christs, the lovers, are the saviours of the world.
“Lovest thou me?” is the question which determines every stage of evolution. From beast to man, and from the beast-man to the angel-man—all is a question of love. Until love comes, no high manhood comes, and, by so much as love lingers, the beast lingers. “Lovest thou me?” is the preliminary question which is the secret of that Divine Shekinah, that symbol of the Divine Presence—the Home. “Lovest thou me?” whispers about all the subsidences of family feuds, and tribal isolations, and clannish spite, and class pride, and national greed. It is the mightiest factor in true nation-making; it is the life and soul of sane and sober patriotism; it is the advance-guard, the evangel, of the great ideal—the Brotherhood of Man. In fine, it is that which determines all the upward evolutionary stages of the race.1 [Note: J. P. Hopps, Sermons of Life and Love, 7.]
In simple and homely ways see how true it is that love is life and joy and progress. It is nothing to accumulate treasure, and to surround yourself with splendid defences against the intrusions of the careworn world, if you have a loveless and careworn heart. There is profound truth in Hood’s quaintly humorous but pathetically serious lines concerning
Love that sweetens sugarless tea,
And makes contentment and joy agree
With the coarsest boarding and bedding;
Love that no golden ties can attach,
But nestles under the humblest thatch,
And will fly away from an Emperor’s match,
To dance at a Penny Wedding.2 [Note: Ibid. 12.]
It is amazing to find how Christ simplifies religion and morality and reduces them to their elemental terms. He deliberately stakes everything on this single qualification. “Lovest thou me?” is His sole test for discipleship. It seems as if nothing else seriously mattered in His judgment, compared with this one master passion of the soul. “Lovest thou me?”—will there be any other question for us to answer at the last assize?1 [Note: T. H. Darlow, The Upward Calling, 322.]
What is the beginning? Love. What the course? Love still.
What is the goal? The goal is Love on the happy hill.
Is there nothing then but Love, search we sky or earth?
There is nothing out of Love hath perpetual worth:
All things flag but only Love, all things fail or flee;
There is nothing left but Love worthy you and me.2 [Note: C. G. Rossetti.]
Let me take this as my Master’s question to myself; and see how deep it goes, not only into my feelings, but into my life. For it is not,” Believest thou Me?” or “Understandest thou Me?” or “Confessest thou Me?” or “Obeyest thou Me?” or even, “Servest thou Me?” It goes closer home. It is, “Lovest thou Me?”; and all these other things may be where love is not. Again, He does not ask, “Lovest thou My word?” or “Lovest thou My work?” or “Lovest thou My brethren?” He asks, “Lovest thou Me?” And yet again, He does not ask, “Art thou in the company of those that love Me?” He will not let me shelter myself by losing myself in a crowd who all profess to love Him. He brings me out into the light, to stand alone, and asks, “Lovest thou Me?”3 [Note: G. H. Knight, The Master’s Questions to His Disciples, 355.]
2. Love is a personal affection.—From our own experience we know that love, as the best and utmost expression of our own personality, can find a worthy object only in another personality. No person can really love a thing. In easy-going speech a man talks of loving his family or his country. But it is never strictly true. What he really loves is each individual person belonging to his family or nation. There is no more difficulty in loving six than in loving two. But he can by no possibility love even one, unless that one be, like himself, a living person,—or at least potentially such, as is the new-born babe,—capable first of appreciating and then of reciprocating the self which, as with outstretched hands, a person offers when he loves. Nothing else, nothing less than this, is meant by Christ’s doctrine of the love of God. Its true significance and expression are for ever found in what St. Paul said concerning Christ Himself—“Who loved me and gave himself up for me.” That Divine love should be thus truly focused, without mistake and without difficulty, in each individual human being, is the distinctive, wonderful, awful assertion of the Christian gospel alone of all the religions upon earth.
3. Love is reciprocal.—Jesus was not thinking only of Simon Peter when He asked him, “Lovest thou me?” He was as truly thinking of Himself, and He was revealing to His denying and yet true servant the longing his Lord and Master had for his love. Indeed, this yearning for a return of affection is of the essence of all true love. We cannot love any one very dearly without desiring that our love should find an answering response in the heart thus loved, and it is because Jesus loves His own disciples so deeply that He seeks for their love as the one sweet requital for His own to them. It is this longing of the loving heart for love that explains, in part at all events, the first great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” The love of God for man goes forth to seek the answering love of man for God; and the sin and guilt of a cold and loveless heart are never fully and rightly felt until we realize that want of love to God is not only an injury to ourselves, but is an injury done to God.
Love that is centred in a personality can be satisfied with nothing less and nothing else than the reciprocating love of that person. On our own little human scale this is at once the glory and the tragedy of life. Its default is even more dreadful than death, as numberless poor pitiful suicides have testified. The old word is as true and tender, as fierce and insatiable as ever, “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.” If, as we sit in peace and comfort at the sweetest feast, or the liveliest entertainment, or the most solemn service, a voice that we could not doubt whispered in our ear that the one we loved most felt towards us no love in return, then the poet would be bitterly, crushingly true who wrote—
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one,
Yet the light of a whole world dies
With the setting sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one,
But the light of a whole life dies
If love be done.1 [Note: F. Ballard, Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 76.]
4. Love is unselfish.—“Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” I do not doubt your love. I did not doubt it even in the moment of your sad fall, but it was not that supreme affection to which I was entitled. You loved Me, but you really loved yourself better, and put your own desires before My will. Events, however, have been teaching you, experience has been leading you to truer views of Me and of yourself; tell Me now do you love Me? Is your love prepared now to sacrifice everything for Me, and in the event of others coming into a competition with Me, are you willing to give Me the preference, to yield to Me the first place in your heart? That is the only love Jesus can regard with complacence.
A German mystic in the fifteenth century, John of Goch, thus stated the relation between love and self. “What wings are to a bird, love is to us. They seem to add weight to the body: in reality, however, they elevate it into the air. In like manner the yoke of love, when imposed upon our sensuous nature, not only does not weigh it down, but lifts the spirit with the senses to heavenly things. Take from them their wings, and you take from birds the power of flying. Even so, separate love from the will, and the will is made incapable of every act that transcends nature.” Nevertheless how rarely we reckon those Christians to be in the front rank of the Church who are distinguished by nothing else except their immense power of affection. We still reserve the chief seats in our synagogues for the eloquent speakers, the munificent givers, the superior spiritual personages, who may fall far below others in simple, unwearying, self-forgetful tenderness.2 [Note: T. H. Darlow, The Upward Calling, 320.]
Service as the Fulfilment of Love
1. Service is the natural outlet of love.—The right conduct of the life is a consequence and fruit of the Incarnation. Incarnation is a name for nothing at all unless it be the name not only of the historic event but also of a personal experience, the entry of the Divine into the human energies of the man who declares that he believes rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly to say that a man has the love of Christ is to say, in humaner and more concrete speech, that the Incarnation has been actualized in particular life, that Christ is born in him, that the power of the life from heaven has been poured into this channel.
For him who would take on him the office of a pastor, the question is suggested, Why do you undertake the office? Is it from love of Christ, and from a sense of the obligation to show your gratitude for what He has done for you, in the way which He has commanded—namely, by services to His sheep? If any are actuated by lower motives they have reason to fear that they lie under the woe which, through the mouth of Ezekiel, God denounced against the shepherds who feed themselves and not the flock; who allow the flock to wander through the mountains, and on every high hill, and to be scattered on the face of the earth, while none searcheth or looketh after them.1 [Note: G. Salmon, Cathedral and University Sermons, 55.]
2. Service is love’s evidence.—In giving St. Peter the charge, “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep,” Christ was guarding him against a danger to which he was at this moment liable, the danger of sinking down into an indulgence of sentiment, of dwelling upon the words, “Thou knowest that I love thee,” and forfeiting in this sweet humiliation his calling as an Apostle, and its prize. There is a subtle charm in self-humiliation, an ensnaring luxury of penitence. We feel it in a self-assertive world. From the blare of trumpets, from the strife for mastery, from the restlessness of ambition, and the constant temptation to self-seeking, how blessed to retire to self-abasement before the Lord; how sweetly then from lowly lips falls the confession, “Thou knowest that I love thee.” To cherish this life alone is very dangerous. Hence comes the pride that apes humility; hence self-pleasing under the garb of lowliness. Worse than the hypocrisy which disfigures its countenance that it may appear unto men to fast is the subtle insincerity that disfigures itself that it may appear unto itself to fast. Christ sends St. Peter from confessing, as He sent Mary from adoring Him, to do His work. The world is the true sphere for lowliness; loving labour among others is the school of self-humiliation; love of Christ is perfected in the activities of a human sympathy.
What Christ wants from me is a practical expression of my theoretical love, an expression in act, as well as on the lip; and though it may be a hard, it will always be a blessed, answer, if I can give it, “Lord, thou seest all things, Thou seest that I love Thee.” And others ought to see it too. My love to Christ ought to be a visible love. Let me ask myself, therefore, what proofs of my love to Christ I am giving in my daily life. From my demeanour and conversation in my home would any one gather that I love my Lord and Saviour with an ardent love? If I never talk about Him as worthy of love, how can others believe that I regard Him so? If I never boldly take His part, when His laws are despised, or His authority is contemned; if I see, and do not rebuke, the sins that dishonour and grieve Him, how can I make good my profession of loyal love to Himself? If I never think of Him or speak of Him as a dear friend, who is gone away for a time, but is soon to come again; if my heart never thrills with joy in the hope of His “glorious appearing,” so that I am setting everything in order to meet His eye, how can I prove my possession of that love to which separation is a sorrow? Do I make my love to Him as plain and incontrovertible as He makes His love to me? I have never to ask Him, “Lovest Thou me?” If I did, He would answer in a moment, by pointing to the proof He gave of that, and say, “Behold my hands and my feet.” He bears in His glorifled body the “print of the nails,” proofs of His wonderful love to me. But what a contrast between that love and mine! His so strong, and mine so weak; His so changeless, and mine so fickle; His so active, and mine so indolent; His so open, and mine so secret; His so ardent, and mine so cold!1 [Note: G. H. Knight, The Master’s Questions to His Disciples, 357.]
3. While service is for all, it is also for each.—Let us recall the variety of words used—“lambs,” “sheep.” Under Divine Providence we have each a work to do for God, each a station and duties in the Divine society; some, sheep to feed, some, lambs to tend. The sheep must be fed individually—milk for the lambs and strong food for the sheep. One of the great intellectual pleasures of the ministry is preaching the same Gospel in many different ways; the boys’ brigade wants it put in one way, the men’s lecture in another, and the mothers’ meeting in another.
(1) The Lambs.—No other book recognizes the place of children so fully or so kindly as the Bible. The great books of the world are somewhat deficient in this. Their writers have had no time, found no occasion to dwell on children, and, perhaps, sometimes have been afraid to do so. The Bible does deal with children because of the infinite love of God, and His knowledge of human destiny. Our Lord Jesus Christ set the child in the midst of the stormy disputers, and made him the type of entrance into the Kingdom of heaven. How can any deeper interest gather around their life and their claim than that which is poured upon them by the words of the Risen Christ, “Feed my lambs”?
The Rev. Harry Venn has recorded this experience,—“The great danger is from surfeiting children with religious doctrines or over much talk. Doctrines they are too young to understand; and too frequent talking wearies them. Many parents err in expecting that the religion of a child should be the same as their own. I did not give mine formal instruction till they were eight years old, and then chiefly set before them the striking facts in the Old Testament, or the miracles in the New. I also laboured much to set before them the goodness of our God in things which they could understand, such as the comforts which we enjoyed together. Watching providential occurrences, I made use of them to give a body and substance to spiritual truth. One method used to affect them much—carrying them to see an afflicted child of God rejoicing in tribulation, and speaking of His love. To this day they tell of one and another whom they saw happy, though poor and in pain.”1 [Note: Memoir and Correspondence of Henry Venn, 429.]
It is a beautiful tradition of the Jewish Rabbis that when Moses was a shepherd under Jethro in the land of Midian, a little lamb went frisking from the flock and strayed into the wilderness. Moses, full of the spirit which loveth all things—both man, and bird, and beast—and faithful in little deeds as well as in great, pursued the lamb over rocks and through briars, and after long hours of weary search recovered it; and when he had recovered it he laid it in his bosom, saying, “Little lamb, thou knowest not what is good for thee; trust me, thy shepherd, who will guide thee aright.” And when God saw his tenderness, and the straying lamb, He said, “Thou shalt be a shepherd to My people Israel.”2 [Note: Dean Farrar.]
(2) The Sheep.—“Feed my sheep” comes next; feed the middle-aged, the strong, the vigorous; they also need to be directed in their Christian course, and to be guided to some field of earnest service for Christ, therefore shepherdize them. Do not try to govern these, but feed them. They may have far more prudence, and they certainly have more experience, than you have, and therefore do not rule them, but remind them of the deep things of God, and deal out to them an abundance of consoling truth. There is that good old man, he is a father in Christ; he knew the Lord fifty years before you were born; he has some peculiarities, and in them you must let him take his own course, but still feed him. His taste will appreciate solid meat, he knows a field of tender grass when he gets into it; feed him, then, for his infirmities require it.
Not to priests only is this said, but to every one of us also, who are also entrusted with a little flock. For do not despise it because it is a little flock. For “My Father,” He saith, “hath pleasure in them.” Each of us hath a sheep; let him lead that to the proper pastures.3 [Note: St. Chrysostom.]
We find the best interpretation of the three commands given by our Lord to St. Peter, by tracing their fulfilment in the Apostle’s life. In the early chapters of the Acts we find St. Peter standing forth as the spokesman and leader of the Church; yet the doctrinal content of his sermons is extremely simple, just such as we should teach to little children: St. Peter was feeding the lambs. Then another Apostle comes to the front; the Church needs a more developed doctrine, for the lambs have grown into sheep and now require the “strong meat” of the Word; St. Paul feeds the sheep, St. Peter aids the work by tending the sheep. In the First Epistle of St. Peter we find him again the leading exponent of Christian doctrine: it is now a fully developed doctrine, a great advance upon the simple teaching of his early days; now, under the guidance of God, he is feeding the sheep.1 [Note: H. O. Cavalier.]
Literature
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