Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 93

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 93 - John 21:17
Loving for discipling

John continues to instruct us by telling us about things that Jesus did and said in those brief few days between his resurrection and his return to his Father’s side. This next episode is what was said, or part of what was said, between Jesus and Peter. The last of the three challenges of Jesus to Peter is ‘The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” (21: 17) followed by, in the last phrase of that verse, by his charge to Peter, ‘Feed my sheep.”. (the variations in the wording in these verse between lambs and sheep and feeding and taking care of are of no great significance.) Peter must have been expecting a right telling off after his three denials, though it is possible he had already received that in Jerusalem. Again this comes with two main emphases: that what we do is always to be done in an atmosphere of love and that the main work to be done by his disciples is discipling - making more spiritually strong and devout Christian believers.

First then in this study (the discipling we will think about in the next one): our action in love. Love is a difficult word because it has so many meanings. I may properly say ‘I love my wife’ and ‘I love my iPad’ though those two statements don’t really have the same meaning. Love has two main components: an emotional attitudinal meaning and an active, practical part.

 

When I talk about loving my iPad there is no emotional part in that love; it is purely that I greatly like what I can do with it and what it enables me to do. When I talk about loving my wife there is a great deal of emotion and attitude in what I mean and I will also have to live with, work with her, and do many things with her: that is the practical part.

All that we do in Jesus, every contact we make with other people is to occur in an atmosphere of love; that is an atmosphere containing both a good emotional atmosphere and a willingness to do things for the other person: both the two main aspects of love. This is all made very clear to us in this first epistle John wrote. He says things like: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” in 4:7-12. And “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.” which is from 3:21,22.

 

And what were his commands? They were quite simple, ‘love your neighbour’! By simple I mean that they are very simple and easy to state but they are horrendously difficult to obey in practice! (Because of the particular circumstance to which he was writing John speaks almost exclusively here about our attitude to our fellow believers. Jesus cast his net wider - to all the world, following the example of his Father in the well known verse 3:16 “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

That is how we are to approach all that we endeavour to do in the work of the kingdom.

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