On Simon Peter and the Love of God

By Paul Cooke |

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? -- Romans 8:32

Dear Friends, I think it’s pretty easy not to think of ourselves as sinners. Oh, we know we’re not perfect, “we’re only human,” and all that, as people are often inclined to say, but we feel often enough that we’re at least okay, and sometimes we even convince ourselves we’re pretty good, pretty nice. It was that way at first for Jesus’ disciple, Peter, but the Gospels show in the briefest of episodes of its being brought home to him how utterly destitute of goodness he was. And that revelation was given to him in a way that was compassionate and without condemnation, for it seems God was using this to teach him how much He loved Peter despite his sinfulness. This is the case for you and me, too. To see how this is so, let’s look for an instant at Luke 5:1-11, a scene showing Peter after a whole night of doing what he knew best—fishing.

The Miraculous Draft of Fishes

Raphael, “Peter and the Miraculous Catch of Fish” (1515), Public Domain

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” 5Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. 8When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” 11So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him. -- Luke 5:1-11

Why does Simon Peter beseech Jesus in v. 8, saying “go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”? You’re proud of what you do best; you think you know your business, and yet you’re not doing well—you’ve had a night of disappointment. You’re discouraged and tired. Then Jesus says one little thing and something unheard-of happens—an enormous catch! Suddenly all your efforts and all your savvy are shown up as so small, so fruitless, and you realize something about yourself—that in so many ways you are identified with what you do and what you do proves such an insufficient self-justification. Yet by means of this thing—your fishing, or whatever it may be—you have been telling yourself and the world about who you are. Peter saw in an instant that Jesus was someone so transcendent, so good—and that he was so far from that, so that he cried out, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” Jesus’ person casts my efforts to prove myself good into such stark relief and I realize all of a sudden what a fraud I am, how vain is my boasting—and how overwhelmed I am by the goodness of Jesus Christ.

But look what Jesus says at this very moment: “Don’t be afraid” and he adds, far from condemning Peter for his sins, that he wants Peter to be with him, that he’s going to make Peter into someone who will find himself because he’s with Jesus—that Jesus will give his life meaning and purpose that it never had before. He would do that for us, too. But we do tend to be afraid of seeing ourselves not as others see us, or as we so often imagine seeing ourselves, but as God really sees us. Yes, a glimpse of this comes to us at rare times, showing how lost, how phony, how selfish, how needy we really are. But Jesus is so compassionate, so exceedingly loving—he doesn’t condemn. John the Apostle wrote of Jesus, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17).

Or take a second example of it being brought home to Peter how utterly destitute and needy he was—it’s the occasion of Peter’s declaring he’d never betray Jesus in Luke 22:

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. 25Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. 26But you are not to be like that. 27For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves…. 31“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” 33But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” -- Luke 22:24-27, 31-33

Peter had an idea of himself which was noble and good, but he couldn’t live up to it. How often this is true of you and me. When this was brought home in Luke 22 he saw how needy he was:

Peter's Denial

Anton Robert Leinweber, “Peter’s Denial,” or “Sorrow of St. Peter,” 1921, Public Domain

Then seizing [Jesus] they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. 55And when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. 56A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.” 57But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said. 58A little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” “Man, I am not!” Peter replied. 59About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.” 60Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. 61The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” 62And he went outside and wept bitterly. -- Luke 22:45-62

When we fail to be who we think we are under the severe testing of experience, beset by fear and the most painful realization of how entirely self-interested and cowardly we can be, we are apt—seeing what a failure we’ve turned out to be—to be utterly in despair. We realize then that we really are sinners and we feel condemned and lost. But let’s see what happened with and to Peter after this:

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” 4But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” -- Mark 16:1-7

After Jesus was crucified, died and was buried on Good Friday, the Scriptures tell us he rose from the dead on the third day—the day we call “Easter Sunday.” And as we see here, three women who were among the disciples came early to the tomb and found it empty. An angel met them. What did that angel say? “He is risen!” But what else? In v. 7 he said, “But go tell his disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you into Galilee.” Why is Peter given special mention? Because, shamed and distraught at his sin, at his failure, he very likely considered himself unworthy of being counted among them anymore. But this was not God’s viewpoint—Peter was still His, and very much included, for God does not condemn the repentant.

When we confess our sins, when we know our neediness, then we know more clearly than ever God’s forgiveness and love. And we read of Peter (called by his other name, Cephas), singled out again in I Corinthians 15:3-5, in a discussion of those who saw Jesus after his resurrection: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.” Peter is again singled out in this way, showing that the Lord appeared one-on-one to Peter after the Resurrection, to tell us that the Lord went to him to show him he was still beloved of God. And I wonder if Peter did not again fall at Jesus’ feet as he’d done in Luke 5—but now assured he was of the love of God for him!

Do we see that that love is no less for you or for me? As the Apostle Paul wrote, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Why did Jesus come into this world? What is the message of the Gospel and, really, of the entire Bible? Well, look how Paul prayed in one place:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge. -- Ephesians 3:17-19

The message is of love—the love that brought Jesus into the world and that led him to the cross and that raised him from the dead. In the passage just above it is declared to be beyond our knowing, and yet we are able to taste it as we meditate on what is recorded in God’s word and consider in our minds what Jesus did for us and who he actually is. For the Bible says he is the only Son of God and that he died as a sacrifice for sin—to atone for our sins, to pay for that failure that characterized Peter’s life, and characterizes our lives. We can’t appreciate that Good News until we accept the truth of our sinfulness—a state that makes us feel like crying as Peter did when he saw who Jesus was, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful person!”

The Bible shows Jesus to be the greatest gift given us by God, given that we might not die and then be forever banished from the presence of our Heavenly Father because of sin: “For 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” (John 3:16). We may also say that Jesus is God’s personal demonstration of His love for us: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus is the very epitome of God’s own self-giving, self-sacrificing character: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will He not also, along with him [that is, Jesus], graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Why was God willing to send his perfect Son to bear the penalty of sin in our place? We can’t comprehend it. It’s a mystery—so great is His love.

The Bible tells us that Jesus by his death satisfied the justice of God. As theologian Herman Bavinck has put it, “In the death of Christ God, in forgiving the sins which before had been committed, perfectly maintained His justice [in that all sin had to be paid for] and at the same time Himself opened up the way by which, while preserving His justice, He justified all those who in faith believe in what Jesus did for them.”1 Jesus said he laid down his life willingly, obeying his Father’s will: “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:17-18). Paul further explains the substance of what Jesus did at the cross, and what his Father did:

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when He held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, 26for He was looking ahead and including them in what He would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate His righteousness, for He himself is fair and just, and He makes sinners right in His sight when they believe in Jesus. -- Romans 3:23-26

When Jesus allowed himself to go to the cross, he was doing his Father’s will in an act ordained from the foundation of the world. That’s why in one place Jesus is even called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Do you remember what Jesus told his Peter as he was being arrested and he wanted to resist with weapon drawn?

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” -- Matthew 26:52-54

This was foreordained, then. Because of our sins, though there can be knowledge of God, there can be no fellowship with Him because God cannot embrace sin. The sin problem is thus what accounts for our loneliness, our purposelessness, our alienation from God, others and ourselves. We try our best to deny our almost-nothingness but in moments of truth—such as Peter had in Luke 5—we come face to face with the stark and insurmountable distance between ourselves and a holy God.

Yet Jesus came to bridge that—by taking upon himself the penalty due for all sin. Only he could do this because he was—and is—the only sinless man who ever lived. He was tempted to sin in every way, as the Bible tells us, but he never gave in: “For we do not have a high priest [Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the intercessor-High Priest of the Jewish Scriptures] who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). He understands.

Here we may see the love of God. We can do this because we are beholding the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures, for they declare it by telling us of this One who embodies the love of God. Jesus takes our guilt by putting himself into that relationship to the law of God in which each of us stands, that is, as guilty failures. Jesus, who alone was not a guilty failure, stands in for you and me, who are. He takes our grief, our shame, our alienation, our unhappiness, our pain, our sickness, and all the punishment for sin which is due us all, upon himself.

As the Scripture puts it, “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (II Corinthians 5:21). The curse which the first sin introduced into the history of the human race was taken away by Jesus, who put it upon himself: “But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing.” (Galatians 3:13). This is why it’s said that Christ died for us—and then rose again. He took our sins away by dying on that tree and put them on himself. It’s a mystery—the mystery of God’s love.

Crucifixion

Fra Angelico,“The Crucifixion,” 1420, Public Domain. Mary collapsed in grief, the lamenting Maries, the Apostle John, the attitudes of the soldiers and their horses, the angels, and Christ’s suffering and bleeding, are all seen.

Here’s how the Dutch theologian I mentioned earlier put it (Bavinck, p. 337):

This is the mystery of salvation, the mystery of Divine love. We do not understand the substitutionary suffering of Christ, because we, being haters of God and each other [before our rescue by God], cannot come anywhere near calculating what love enables one to do, and what eternal, infinite, Divine love can achieve. But we do not have to understand this mystery, either. We need only believe it gratefully, rest in it, and glory and rejoice in it….All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:5, 6). -- Herman Bavinck

The Apostle Paul wrote this word with which we’ll conclude: “God spared not His own Son but delivered him up for us all. How shall He not with him [Jesus] also give us freely all things?” (Romans 8:32). Doesn’t Paul here show Jesus to be the greatest gift of all? Paul knew it to be the case from his personal experience, and didn’t Peter understand this in such a wonderful way, as well?

The Father has given His Son, Jesus, to all who will believe, to be a loving friend, Lord, Savior and God. What a gift! And it is he who opened up the way for us to have the same fellowship he, Jesus, has with his Father! It is wonderful to learn how Peter learned of God’s inexhaustible love! What love is this! May our Heavenly Father help us to see that Jesus is our stronghold of love to whom we may always turn! God bless you,

~Paul


1The Wonderful Works of God (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), p. 337