But when he ceased speaking, he said to Simon, Draw out into the deep [water] and let down your nets for a haul.
The teaching ends, and the Lord turns from the crowd to one man. Verse 4 is where He speaks to that man about the trade he knew best.
Peter had lent the boat for the preaching. The command lands on a man who fished all night and caught nothing.
The Lord taught these simple people. When it was all over He said, in effect, "I am going to pay you, Peter, for the loan of your boat." And what does Simon say? "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing." That was experience speaking, and what would reason add? If they caught no fish in the night, they are not likely to catch any in the daylight. That is what reason would say. But do you know what faith said? Faith is always obedient.
The same water, the same net, the same man — but a different starting point.
Peter had done that all night; but up to this it was by the will of man, now it is at the word of the Lord. Peter believes this word, and submits to it. The first result of God's word is to produce faith, and faith accepts its authority and obeys. The Lord has spoken; that is enough for faith.
Hearing His word is one thing. Letting it hold you is another.
The word had authority in the conscience. Peter and Andrew had seen Jesus before, but had not yet stayed with Him. Their faith did not yet have enough power to attach them to Christ. Many people now, as always, admit the authority of the word, yet its power does not attach them to His person. Their everyday work absorbs them. The word has not laid hold of their souls, so it does not make them walk fully with Christ. Now we see obedience to His word when it comes to them. They put out at His word, and at His word they let down their nets.
Peter fished this lake for a living. The order came from someone with no claim to the trade.
A seaman is apt to think that he understands his own business best... He bows to One who, by any natural reckoning, could know nothing of a fisherman's work. Yet Peter has confidence that He is the Messiah. He learns that He is this and, far more, that He had the mind and grace of God. Now it would become clear whether He had all power at His command. Simon had reason to know His divine energy towards men on earth. But here was something new: One who had dominion over the fish of the sea. Sin had greatly hindered the exercise, and even the proof, of the wide dominion first granted to man. But here was the repairer of all breaches. In Peter's ship was the Second Man, the Lord from heaven.
One writer draws out what the Lord taught Peter before anything else:
Simon Peter had another important lesson to learn on the sea. But first the Lord taught him this: He could command even the creatures of the deep, and they obeyed His will. How necessary that every servant should know the power of his Master!
The command was plural. Peter's answer, in the older translations, is singular — and commentators make much of the gap. (The ESV reads "nets" in verse 5, following a different manuscript reading; writers here are working from the older text.)
When the Lord finished speaking, He called for action. He told Simon to put out into the deeper water and let down the nets. Simon protested that he and others had worked all night (the most likely time for catching fish) without success. Yet he accepted the Lord's word in measure at least: he let down one net, though the Lord had said "nets." Too often, sadly, our obedience is only partial... The catch loaded two boats to capacity and left them near to sinking. The blessing that God is willing to give is more than our limited vessels can accommodate.
The overflow is read as a picture of how God gives:
He fills the human vessels with blessings such as they are unable to contain without breaking, and which surpass the needs of the disciple.
The word "deep" carries an invitation beyond the lake.
After teaching the people, the Lord says to Peter, "Put out into the deep." Peter did so. What the disciples then saw gave them a wonderful impression of the greatness of Christ. Let us put out into the deep. We shall find that the depths of God are lit up with the glory, the preciousness and the pre-eminence of Jesus. That is what the deep yielded for Peter. That is what it will yield for us: fresh and wonderful impressions of the greatness of Christ.
- Loan — Peter lends a boat for preaching. The Lord repays him with a catch that a whole night's work could not win.
- Word — the same net, the same lake, but let down at Christ's word instead of man's will. He has spoken: that is enough for faith.
- Deep — the order came where Peter's skill said it was hopeless. It revealed One with dominion over the fish of the sea.
- Nets — He said "nets"; Peter let down one. Even partial obedience brought more blessing than the boats could hold.
- Depth — what the deep gave Peter it gives still: a fresh impression of the greatness of Christ.
And Simon answering said to him, Master, having laboured through the whole night we have taken nothing, but at thy word I will let down the net.
Peter calls Jesus "Master." The Greek word he uses (epistatēs) means someone set over the work:
ἐπιστάτης, 'superintendent, overseer.' Luke 5:5; Luke 8:24, 45; Luke 9:33, 49; Luke 17:13.
The first half of Peter's answer is not an excuse but a report of emptiness. That emptiness is the point of the whole scene:
The miracle the Lord worked was fitted in every way to reach those involved. They confessed their own powerlessness: "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!" Man could do nothing in such a case. If Jesus could, it was because everything was at His disposal. "But at your word I will let down the nets."
Peter was the expert in that boat. Everything he knew about fishing argued against trying again in daylight:
His answer is at once a confession of failure, and of faith. Failure in his own efforts, and faith in the One who now tells him to lower his nets. Daylight is not the time when fish enter a net, so the man who wants to catch them goes out by night. Reason would have said: if there were none to be caught last night, there are sure to be none in broad daylight. But reason is of no use in drawing near to God. Faith alone understands Him. His words, "But at your word I will let down the nets," show both the obedience of faith and its confidence.
Peter gives up more than an opinion here. He gives up his expert judgment, in his own boat. He also speaks only for himself.
He let down his nets for a catch. In doing so he set aside all trust in his own judgment and in that of the fishermen with him. Granted, it was no great matter. The smaller the occasion, the clearer the principle. Happy is the believer who takes his stand from the start on this high rung of the ladder of faith. He runs his business not as a man of the world, but by the word of the Lord... He simply said — "I will let down the nets," whether his partners would join him in it or not. There was no looking to them, or waiting for them. His faith was personal. He knew the mind of Christ and obeyed, looking to Him alone for the blessing of obedience.
In older translations Peter answers with one net, though the Lord had said "nets." Not every writer presses this, but one draws a lesson from it:
Simon protested that he and the others had worked all night without success. Night is the most likely time for catching fish. Yet he did accept the Lord's word, at least in part. He let down one net, though the Lord had said "nets." Sadly, our obedience is often only partial. The fish were too many for the net and it broke.
(Older translations read "net" here, while the ESV reads "nets." That is why not every writer draws out this point.)
Nothing outward has changed: the same lake, the same men, the same work. What changed is whose word sends them out:
Peter had done that all night; but until now it was by the will of man; now it is at the word of the Lord. Peter believes this word, and submits to it. The first result of God's word is to produce faith, and faith accepts its authority and obeys. The Lord has spoken; that is enough for faith... He fills the human vessels with blessings they cannot hold without breaking. These blessings go beyond the needs of the disciple.
- Empty — Peter's night of work ends with nothing. That confessed weakness is the ground on which Christ acts.
- But — one word turns the sentence. Peter states his failure, then sets it aside for the word of the One speaking.
- Word — the Lord has spoken, and that is enough for faith. Reason objects, but faith asks for no other evidence.
- Personal — Peter obeys in his own trade, in a small matter. He does not wait to see if his partners will join him.
- Overflow — obedience given in part still brings back more than the net can hold.
And having done this, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes. And their net broke.
Peter had just told Jesus that a whole night of skilled work produced nothing. He let the net down anyway. The catch is so large that the gear itself gives way. Two questions follow: what does the size of the haul say about Jesus, and what does the torn net say about us?
Everything Peter knew about fishing argued against letting the net down again.
His answer is at once a confession of failure, and of faith. Failure as regards his own efforts, and faith in the One who now tells him to lower his nets. Daylight is not the time when fish enter a net, so the man who wants to catch them goes out by night. Reason would have said, "If there were none to be caught last night, there will surely be none in broad daylight." But reason is of no help in coming near to God.
Peter acted without waiting for his partners to agree. That makes the scene a model for daily work:
Happy is the believer who takes his stand on this high rung of the ladder of faith from the very start. He runs his business not as a man of the world, but by the word of the Lord. It will keep him out of much mud. Of course, such a believer trusts Jesus for everything, small or great. Even so, he cannot commit others to this practical, everyday obedience of faith. Simon did not.
The catch showed Peter something about Jesus he had not yet seen. His authority reached past people and into the sea itself.
Simon had reason to know that He had divine energy toward men on earth. But now there was a new thing: One who had dominion over the fish of the sea. Sin had badly hindered the use, and even the proof, of the wide dominion first given to men. But here was the repairer of all breaches; in Peter's ship was the Second Man, the Lord from heaven.
Blessing on that scale creates a problem of its own.
The boats filled until they began to sink. That is usually how things go in this world when blessing comes. Earthen vessels are too weak to keep the blessing. All sorts of disorders follow. It is not that the treasure is not good, but that even God's servants are indeed feeble. Even so, Peter learned a weighty lesson there. He had a good deal more to learn before he was nothing in his own eyes.
The weakness went deeper than the nets and boats.
They had no strength in themselves even to receive it… The Lord reveals Himself to Peter, and that shows Peter to himself. When we know the eye of God is on us, we see in ourselves what He saw.
One writer notes that the Lord said nets, and Peter let down one. (Older translations read "the net" in verses 5 and 6, where the ESV reads "the nets.")
Now the Lord had said to him, "Let down your nets, all the nets you have." But Peter was doubtful. He thought, "We shall not catch many fish, if any. I will let down one net only; that will be enough." So he let down the net. It enclosed a great multitude of fish, so many that it broke.
A later catch, in John 21, ended differently.
"Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn." When the gospel haul was pictured (Luke 5:6), the net broke. But here the Lord was present, and the net did not break. The gospel net gathered fish, and does now; but as a whole, the net broke, and they began to sink.
Why the difference? One writer traces it to the part man plays:
There could be no breakdown or failure with God, so the broken net must have to do with the responsibility of man… The picture of the net in Luke 5 seems to answer to the present system God has set up to gather men in for blessing… Man in responsibility — that is, in his ability to respond — has always failed, even in the most favoured circumstances. God shows carefully from His word that the present time is no exception. Yet a person can be separate from it in spirit.
- Word first. Peter's night of failure came from his own efforts; the haul came when the net went down on the word of the Lord.
- Word obeyed. Faith acts before it sees. It is also personal: Simon did not wait for his partners to agree.
- Word answered. The catch showed a Man with dominion over the fish of the sea. Seeing Christ is what showed Peter to himself.
- Word overflowing. Nets tore and boats began to sink. The blessing was greater than the vessels that held it.
- Word completed. The net breaks here; in John 21 it holds. That is the gap between what man is responsible for and what the Lord does Himself.
And they beckoned to their partners who were in the other ship to come and help them, and they came, and filled both the ships, so that they were sinking.
Peter had let down one net at the word of Jesus, and the haul was so large that the net began to tear. Now the catch outgrows the crew. The fishermen signal to the men in the second boat. Even two boats cannot hold what one word of Christ has given.
The nets and boats were never built to hold what the Lord was handing over.
He fills the human vessels with blessings they cannot hold without breaking, blessings that go beyond what the disciple needs. His companions arrive with a second ship, and it sinks too, so great are the riches given by the Lord of glory.
The trouble went further than a torn net.
They did not even have the strength to receive the catch on their own.
The Lord's instruction was plural; Peter's obedience was singular. Commentators notice that detail and read the broken net in its light.
Simon protested that he and others had worked all night without success — and night was the most likely time for catching fish. Yet he accepted the Lord's word at least in part: he let down one net, though the Lord had said "nets." Sadly, our obedience is often only partial. The fish were too many for the net and it broke (v.7). … The blessing that God is willing to give is more than our limited vessels can hold.
The word for "partners" here is not the word used three verses later. One word can point to men who share the same water, the other to men who share the same boat.
In Luke 5:7 a different word is translated "partners." It describes men who only shared the privilege of fishing in the lake, since these fishermen were in different ships. But in verse 10 of the same chapter our word describes partners in a closer relationship. They shared the ownership of one ship and its nets, so they also shared the fish they caught.
Commentators differ. Others read the two words here as much the same:
In Luke 5 the two words are used in a general way. "They signaled to their partners" (v. 7), while the word in verse 10 shows they had a share in common. There is nothing very definite to mark them apart. A word can carry a looser sense in one place and a stricter sense in another.
The miracle was not only about fish. It showed these men what their new work would look like.
It was a beautiful picture of the gospel work they were called to from that day on. Apart from Him they could do nothing; His power did the work. Yet He still let them feel the weakness of human responsibility, for the nets were breaking and the boats sinking under the weight of the very blessing He gave.
The same men fish again in John 21, after the resurrection. That time nothing tears, and the difference is deliberate.
Throwing in the net and getting a great haul without the net breaking is a little picture of what will be at the end. … In Luke 5 the net broke, and the ships began to sink. Here it is not so, and the Holy Spirit marks this out as different. Christ's work in the coming age is perfect. He is there after the resurrection, and what He brings about does not in itself rest on man's responsibility — the net does not break. At the beginning, in Luke 5, the disciples gathered a great mass of fish, but the net broke: the arrangement that was meant to hold the fish could not keep them in it.
- Word. One word from Christ filled the nets that a whole night of skilled work had left empty. The catch came from Him, not from their method.
- Overflow. The gift outran the vessel. Nets tore, a second boat came, and both boats sank low. What He gives goes past what we can hold.
- Weakness. Their limits showed in receiving too. They had no strength even to take in what He gave.
- Partners. The men in the other boat shared the lake. The word in verse 10 can go further, describing partners who owned boat and nets together. Commentators differ on how sharp that line is.
- Picture. This is the pattern of their coming gospel work. His power supplies everything. Their responsibility strains under it — until the day of the haul that does not break the net.
But Simon Peter, seeing it, fell at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord.
A borrowed boat, a night of empty nets, then a catch so heavy that two boats start to sink. Peter's response is not delight but dread. Why does a miracle like this make a fisherman beg the Lord to leave? And why does he beg it from as close as he can get, at Jesus' knees?
Peter's cry answers what the catch told him about the Man in his boat.
When Peter saw the huge catch of fish, the Spirit was forming a link that would never break. He cried, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." What had taught him that? The catch of fish was the expression, to his conscience, of divine glory. The veil had dropped off the face of the Nazarene, and the glory of God shone out. Who but God could have commanded the wealth of the lake into Peter's net?
Notice what Peter confesses. He does not list failures; he names a condition.
As long as he was busy washing his nets, he knew neither God nor himself. Now he knows both. And it is a remarkable thing: he does not judge what he has done, but what he is. Many souls admit that they must repent of their guilty acts and judge them. But they have never been brought to see the source of those acts. Underneath the sins there is "a sinful man." The sense of God's presence opens our eyes and shows us what we are. It makes us see that our only refuge is with the One who could condemn us.
The words and the posture pull in opposite directions. Unlike Adam, who hid, Peter moves toward the One he feels unfit to face.
Peter does not run away from the Lord, the way Adam hid himself. He is drawn to Him. At the same time, in his own conscience he stands there a judged, convicted, sinful man. His conscience takes Christ's side against himself. "Depart from me," he says, but he says it at Jesus' knees. This might seem like a contradiction. But it was really love for the Lord and care for His honor, because His word had revealed Christ to him. His heart does not have perfect peace, but Christ has taken possession of it.
This double movement is not unique to Peter.
He felt the full weight of how unfit he was for Jesus, but he could not do without Him. It has been the same with every soul God has awakened, from that day to this.
Two things reached Peter at once.
Love attracted Peter; Luke 5. Why does he not run away? Why go up to Him and say, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord"? The love and grace drew him, and the light that the love had brought in convicted him. Light shows me what I am in God's sight, and it brings me there, so that I am in the light as He is.
Peter asks the Lord to go, and says it at His knees. Both halves come from one work of the Spirit.
There is the deep sense of sinfulness and guilt, and yet that mysterious clinging of the heart to the One whose moral glory has humbled us in the dust. "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." But where were these glowing words said? At the knees of a Savior-God. Did Peter imagine that Jesus was going to depart from him?... We do not and cannot believe it. The Spirit of God always combines these two things — the awareness of complete unworthiness and an earnest clinging to Christ. The first is conviction; the second conversion.
Peter's words place him in long company.
God produces this spirit of self-judgment in all who really have to do with Him. Examples of it fill Scripture. When Abraham found himself in the presence of God, he said, I "am but dust and ashes." Isaiah said, "I am lost." Daniel said, "my radiant appearance was fearfully changed." Peter said, "I am a sinful man, O Lord." And Paul said, "sinners, of whom I am the foremost." And all of these were outstanding saints in their day. They would not have been outstanding if they had not had such an experience. Have we had it?
- Glory first. The catch was not a lucky haul but a lifted veil; Peter saw the God who commands the sea, and only then saw himself.
- Light next. In that presence he judged not what he had done but what he was — "a sinful man," the source under the acts.
- Love holds. He asked the Lord to leave, and said it at His knees. Love had already taken hold of him.
- Grace answers. Conviction and clinging always come together: the sense of unworthiness, and the refusal to let Christ go.
- Every saint. Abraham, Isaiah, Daniel, Peter, Paul — the same self-judgment marks all who meet God. Have we known it?
For astonishment had laid hold on him, and on all those who were with him, at the haul of fishes which they had taken;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.