When therefore they had dined, Jesus says to Simon Peter, Simon, [son] of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He says to him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I am attached to thee. He says to him, Feed my lambs.
Peter had once claimed to love Christ more than anyone else did. Then he denied Him. Now, after breakfast on the shore, the risen Lord undoes that boast in front of the other disciples.
The Lord never mentions the denial. He aims at the cause behind it. He does not even call him Peter here; He uses the old name, Simon.
The Lord goes to the root of the matter. He does not speak of Peter's denying Him, but penetrates to its cause. Peter fell through confidence in himself, at least in his love to his Master... He calls him by his natural name. He knew well where the secret lay that gave the enemy his opening. He wanted to awaken a true sense of it in the apostle's soul.
Peter had once measured himself against the others out loud. The Lord now hands that comparison back to him.
"Do you love Me more than these?" Peter had said that he loved Him more, and yet had denied Him. Sadly, all had abandoned Him. But only Peter had denied Him. So he can no longer rely on his love compared with the love of others. Humbled in this way, he appeals not to his feelings but to the Saviour's knowledge. He does not add, "More than these," because he compares himself with Christ, and in humility he counts others better than himself.
The question and the answer do not use the same Greek word. English versions like the ESV render both as "love," so the change is hidden in translation.
The Greek word for love here is "agape." It is a strong word. It is used of God's love for His Son and for the world. It means a pure concern for the greatest good of its object. But in reply Peter refuses to use this word. He uses "phileo" instead, a word that means tender affection: "You know that I have affection for You." In other words, he can no longer trust the strength of his love. Yet he is honestly attached to the Lord.
What follows the confession is astonishing. Christ does not set Peter aside from service. He gives him the care of what He values most.
You might expect that at most He would take Peter back with divine patience. Instead, at that very moment, the Lord pours out on him the strongest testimony of grace. Peter is humbled by his fall and brought to complete dependence on grace. There grace shows itself in all its fullness. The Lord commits what He most loved to him — the sheep whom He had just redeemed.
The breaking and the commission are not two separate events. One qualifies him for the other.
What a volume of love there is in those words of the Lord to poor Peter, "Feed My lambs!" It is as if He would say: "I am going to make a channel of you for love to flow through. I am breaking you down so that you may be able to feed My lambs. You wanted to be a strong disciple. I am making you see your weakness. I am giving you a broken heart, so that you may be strong." There is nothing like a broken heart for a shepherd. When he has come to the end of self, there will be room in it for the lambs.
The Lord's charges are not all the same. Lambs and sheep need different care.
Two different words are also used here. It is "Feed My lambs" and "Shepherd My sheep." Lambs do not need correction and control so much as the food that makes sure they grow. The sheep need this too, and so the last word is "feed" as well as "shepherd" My sheep.
Why does the Lord do this in front of everyone?
The Lord sought out His conscience-stricken sheep at once after His resurrection and restored him to personal communion with Himself. But public restoration always takes a little longer. This way the Lord reaches deeper still into the soul, and His servant is better fitted for public service in true humility of faith. He also aims to reach the hearts and consciences of the other disciples. They must learn to judge themselves instead of keeping any lingering criticism of their fellow-servant. Then they can rejoice fully in his restoration.
- Trust misplaced. The denial was only the symptom. The real problem was Peter's confidence in his own love, and that is what the question targets.
- Trust probed. "More than these" hands Peter's own boast back to him, and he no longer dares to repeat it.
- Trust surrendered. Peter refuses the stronger word for love. He appeals not to his feelings but to what Christ knows.
- Trust restored. At that very point Christ entrusts him with what is dearest to Him — the lambs and the sheep.
- Trust proved. The care asked for is feeding, not scolding, and a heart broken of self is the one with room for the flock.
He says to him again a second time, Simon, [son] of Jonas, lovest thou me? He says to him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I am attached to thee. He says to him, Shepherd my sheep.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
He says to him the third time, Simon, [son] of Jonas, art thou attached to me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, Art thou attached to me? and said to him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I am attached to thee. Jesus says to him, Feed my sheep.
Peter had denied his Master three times. Now the Lord asks him three times whether he loves Him. The question is not for information. It is the last stage of a restoration, and it ends with the Lord placing His flock in the hands of the man who failed.
The count is deliberate, and Peter felt it.
Why three? The Lord's enemies had asked Peter three times if he was a follower of Jesus, and three times he had denied the truth. So Simon knew that the Lord was searching and testing him. He felt the point of the knife in his heart, and knew that he deserved to be exposed.
In the original language the Lord and Peter do not use the same word for love.
The Lord's word for "love" is the one used for divine love, which never fails. Peter's word expresses brotherly affection, and that kind of love often fails — as his own did towards the Lord. On the third occasion the Lord comes down to Peter's word and says, "Are you attached to Me?"… Peter had boasted of more love for Christ than anyone. Now he admits that it took divine insight to discover that he had any love at all.
Commentators differ on what exactly grieved him. Some point to the repetition; others to the changed word:
It was not that He asked three times if he loved Him. What hurt terribly was the change of word. The Lord dropped His own word for "love" and used the weak word, as though He questioned whether Peter loved Him at all.
Peter had already met the risen Lord in private. Something deeper than the act of denial still had to come out — and the name the Lord uses points to it.
The actual sin had been dealt with at the private interview. Peter had judged the evil fruit of the old tree and confessed it to the Lord, and his conscience had been relieved. But the evil root that produced the bad fruit still had to be exposed and judged. Only then would his heart be fully restored to fellowship with the Lord. The Lord does this work in public for our profit. We all have the root of evil in us, even if we have not fallen into particular sins… So the Lord addresses Peter not by his new name of grace, but by his natural name, "Simon, son of John".
Peter no longer argues from his own record.
It is a wonderful thing to be satisfied with what God knows about us. You see it strikingly in restored Peter, when the Lord tested him on the very point he had boasted about. He says, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." He had confidence in himself before. Now he falls back on what his Lord knows of him. He had found out what he was, and he has not a word to say for himself. His comfort is, "You know."
The questioning ends in work, not in dismissal. Notice what the Lord tests before He hands over the sheep.
It is interesting to notice that the Lord's question is not "Do you love My sheep?" but "Do you love ME?" Then come the words: "Feed My lambs"; "Tend My sheep"; "Feed My sheep." This reminds us in passing that no amount of affection for the sheep will supply enough drive to keep serving them without growing weary.
The Lord's word for the sheep here is a tender one.
The Lord says: "Feed My dear sheep." These are the only times in the New Testament where "sheep" appears in this small, affectionate form. "Lamb" appears in it only here as well, apart from Revelation. What depth of meaning the Lord adds to His words by putting in that little ending three times!
All of this happens in front of the other disciples.
Here, in plain language, you have Peter restored in public in the most beautiful way… In the presence of them all He openly says, "I trust that man absolutely. I put into his hands the objects of My tenderest love and care — My lambs and My sheep, for him to feed by his ministry."… When Peter trusted himself, he failed. When the springs of his self-confidence were broken, that was the moment Christ could trust him.
- Threefold — Three denials, three questions. Peter counts them and feels how deep the Lord is probing.
- Downward — In the third question the Lord uses Peter's own weaker word for love, and that is where the grief bites.
- Root — The private meeting cleared his conscience. The public questions reach the self-confidence under the sin.
- Refuge — Peter has no claim left to make for himself. He rests on what Christ knows: "You know."
- Trust — The Lord tests love for Himself, not love for the sheep. He gives His flock to the man who has stopped trusting himself.
Verily, verily, I say to thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst where thou desiredst; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and bring thee where thou dost not desire.
Peter had denied his Lord three times, and now, on the shore, the risen Christ tells him plainly how his life will end. The words look back to the young man who boasted about prison and death, and forward to an old man led where he would not choose to go.
These words close a searching conversation. They are not a rebuke but a restoration.
The Lord never blames Peter for the fault. Instead He probes him — probes the root that produced it. When He has fully humbled him, so that Peter has to fall back on the Lord's own divine knowledge that he did love Him, then He entrusts to Peter all that is dearest to Himself... That is exactly what Peter had claimed he would do; he had said, "I will follow you to prison and death." Now He says, Of your own will you cannot. It is a beautiful expression of the Lord's love and a pattern of the Lord's restoring grace.
The picture turns on a belt — where the ESV says "dress yourself," older translations read "gird yourself." To belt yourself is to hold your own strength and use it as you please.
At the start of his career he had, so to speak, his own strength at his disposal (the belt is what braces a man's waist). Self-confidence was the result; he went where he wanted, and walked in independence... At the close of his career, old age would weaken his natural strength. Then he would depend on another for strength, and would let others guide him where his own will might never have led him, "into prison, and to death."
Peter had used that freedom days earlier, and it had collapsed.
He had just ventured to go where he wanted, into the high priest's house. As far as his bold words promised, you might have thought he had belted up his robe like a man about to do great deeds of courage.
No one hearing this would have missed what "stretch out your hands" described. It was the gesture of a man fixed to a cross.
Crucifixion was common enough then for the lowest slaves and the guiltiest criminals, so everyone understood what it meant to be "lifted up," to have your arms stretched out by the force of someone else... Even so, another man carrying him where he would not go proves how little of self was to be in Peter's death on the cross. That stands in contrast with those who at a later day sought a martyr's death to win this crown. Peter's end on earth was to be suffering and death for Christ, and Christ would give him strength to endure at the right moment. Not heroism nor asceticism is the Christian badge, but obedience.
One tradition, reported and not Scripture, says "he was crucified head downward because he asked for it, so that he might not die like his Lord" (For the Young).
Peter had once offered the Lord a death he could not deliver. The Lord now promises him that very death, with the boasting gone.
As a helpless old man, Peter could no longer boast of his own strength or courage. Then God would give him a rare privilege: not only death for Christ's sake — which in younger days he had tried to face and failed at so shamefully — but the very death the Lord Himself had suffered, with its long agony and shame.
The blood of Christ had already dealt with the denial. Here the Lord adds something more: the chance Peter thought he had thrown away.
His Saviour's blood had blotted out his sin, but he would also be allowed to blot it out by his own act. He would get the chance to go to prison and death for his Lord. Not in self-confidence and boasting this time, but in such humility of heart and joy in his Lord that his death would glorify God.
Peter's end looks like the loss of everything that made him useful.
He had become weak, and by that had gained divine strength... This was to be his privilege. Emptied of self and passive, when old he would stretch out his hands for another to belt him and carry him where he did not want to go. It went against his nature and will, but both were set aside. Then the spirit of his Master enabled him to follow Him.
That reverses our instinct about a wasted old age. God is glorified "in this complete breaking down of man, when he is old, weak, and led by others against his wishes, and might look like a useless vessel. How often our judgement is wrong about what suits and honours God" (H. L. Rossier).
- Girded. Young Peter belted on his own strength and walked where he pleased. The verse marks that independence as past.
- Ungirded. Another will do the belting. Old age and being carried where he does not want to go are not the ruin of his service but its shape.
- Restored. The Lord probes the root of the failure first. Then He hands back the death Peter once boasted about, with the boasting gone.
- Strengthened. Weakness is the channel. Peter grew weak, and by that gained divine strength — so no one could claim the courage as his own.
- Glorifying. Death, "instead of being the judgement of God to overwhelm Peter," became the means by which Peter could glorify God (C. H. Mackintosh).
But he said this signifying by what death he should glorify God. And having said this, he says to him, Follow me.
Peter had boasted he would go to prison and to death for his Lord, and then he denied Him. Now Jesus tells him how his life will end, calls that death a way of glorifying God, and sends him back on the road with two words: "Follow me."
Verse 18 sets up verse 19 with a picture of a belt. One writer explains what the belt stands for, and what changed:
At the start of his life he had his own strength at his disposal (the belt is what strengthens a man's waist). The result was self-confidence. He went where he wished, and walked in independence… At the end of his life, old age would have drained his natural strength. Then he would depend on another for strength. He would agree to let others guide him, and they would lead him where perhaps his own will would never have taken him — "into prison, and to death." It would happen, but not by man's strength. It would happen in the weakness of old age… God would be glorified in this complete breaking down of man, when, old, weak, and led by others against his wishes, he might seem to have become a useless vessel.
The note in the verse points to the kind of death, not just the fact of it. One writer finds grace in that:
See how grace leaves no ground for boasting, and yet secures honour beyond anything we ever dared to hope for… As a helpless old man, Peter could no longer boast of his own strength or courage. Then God gave him a rare privilege. It was not only death for Christ's sake, which in younger days he had tried to face and failed in so shamefully. It was that very death which the Lord had suffered, with its long agony and shame. The Lord, as we are plainly told, spoke as He did to point not to death so much as to "by what" sort of death Peter was to glorify God. And after saying this, He says to him, Follow Me.
A man's dying could bring God glory. Death looked like the final verdict on a failed disciple. Here it becomes something else:
Death, instead of being God's judgement to overwhelm Peter, was turned into a means by which Peter could glorify God.
Peter had once had his moment to stand for Christ and lost it. The verse announces that the moment will come again — and this time it will hold:
The Lord seems to say to him: You had a chance before, Peter, but you lost it. I am going to give you another opportunity of witnessing for Me. More than that, you shall not turn aside… He would give him another chance to be a witness for Him, and this time His grace would sustain him. What he had failed to do by his own will, he was yet to do by the will of God. In a day to come he would die for his Lord, energised and sustained by God for it.
"Follow me" is not a new call. It is where the disciples started, and Peter hears it again after all that has happened:
The original starting point of the disciples, as it must be, was "Follow me" — the one right path in a world that was wrong, and that path was the perfection of Jesus. But there was confidence in self. So Peter had to go through the terribly humbling process of his fall, while Christ kept praying for him and watching over him. Self-confidence is broken down, and his will too — he did not go where he wanted, but was bound and led by another. So, emptied of self-confidence, he could serve what was dearest to Jesus… and suffer with Him, the very thing he could not do before. And now Jesus says again, "Follow me." He could follow so far as self was judged — known and judged through real experience.
Short as the words are, one writer treats them as the servant's whole path:
Here we have in two words the path of the servant of Christ — "Follow Me." The Lord had just given Peter the sweetest pledges of His love and confidence… Now, in one brief but full sentence, He opens his proper path before him — "Follow Me." This is enough. It includes all the rest.
- Broken first. Peter's self-confidence caused the denial. It had to be judged before "Follow me" could hold.
- Then girded. Another man ties the belt Peter once tied himself. Strength from God takes over from his own.
- Then given. The death he once boasted he was ready for comes back as a gift — one writer calls it the very death his Master died.
- Then glory. Old, weak and led where he did not want to go, Peter looks useless. The verse calls it glorifying God.
- Then follow. The same two words from the beginning hold the whole path of a servant.