Do You Love Me?

John 21:2-17
A few months from now we will celebrate love.  Valentine’s Day is a day where people all over this country will be telling their wives, girlfriends, or husbands “Honey I love you”.  They’ll be buying candy and flowers, going out to eat, and all these kinds of things.  Telling their loved ones “I love you”.
 
At the time that our scripture takes place Jesus had been crucified and He had been resurrected.   In the first part of this chapter Peter tells the other guys (paraphrasing), Hey I’m going fishing, and they say I’m going with you.  Remember, Jesus had called several fishermen to become His disciples.  So they get into the boat and they go.  
 
They fished all night and they didn’t catch anything but the next morning Jesus was standing on the shore. Jesus asked them “Children have you any meat?” and they said “No, we haven’t caught anything”.  They told Him they’d been out all night long and hadn’t caught anything. Jesus told them “cast your net on the right side”.  When they cast their net on the right side they got this multitude of fish.  When they got them to the shore Jesus had prepared breakfast.  He told them in the 12th verse to “Come and dine”.
 
Jesus has been crucified and rose from the grave but here He is fixing breakfast for the guys that had been fishing all night.
 
But we see on down in the 15th verse of that chapter Jesus has a question for Peter.
Do you love me?
 
Jesus tells Peter “If you love me, keep my commandments”. Then He said “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you”.
 
Jesus wasn’t talking about that friendship type of love -that “phileo” or friendly type of love. He wasn’t talking about that feeling type of love - you know how you say “Oooh, I really love you girl”.  He wasn’t talking about that type of love.
 
He was talking about “agape” love, unconditional love – God’s love.  The type of love Jesus was talking about was the type of love that would esteem another higher than one’s self.  A higher love, this is the type of love that Jesus was telling Peter about. 
 
Jesus was commissioning Peter to become a pastor.  That’s what He was doing when He said “Feed my lambs” and “Feed my sheep”.  You ask, Who were the lambs; who were the sheep? The people; we the people are His lambs and His sheep.
 
In other words Jesus was saying Peter, you don’t need to be going back there doing the old things I called you from.  You need to be doing what I called you to do, and that is to pastor - to share the Word.  And later in the book of Acts Peter delivered the first message; over three thousand folks got saved at his preaching.  That’s what Jesus was calling Peter to do; He was calling Peter to pastor His people.
 
Just think for a moment - what if He was standing right before each one of us?  What if He asked us that question - Do you love me?  If we love him, we’ll keep His commandments.  If we love Him, as He said, we will love one another as God has loved us.   If we really love Him we will love our neighbors, we’ll love our brothers; we’ll reach out to those who maybe have drawn back from us, if we really love Him.
 
So He’s asking Peter that question this morning – Peter, do you love me?  Just like Peter, He doesn’t want us going backwards.  He doesn’t want us going back to the old life.
 
I’ve told people that before I go back to where I was 35 years ago, I would rather die. God is my witness, I would rather for Him to snatch the breath out of me because if I go back I might not make it back to where I am now. I might not make it back.  So I’d rather go now - I’d rather die in Christ than to die outside of Christ.  If I die in Christ I’ll go to heaven.  If I die outside of Christ ain’t but two places to go, and I don’t want to go to hell.
 
So I won’t go back.  After receiving the call of Jesus, Peter didn’t go back.  Jesus poses the question to all of us – Do you love me?  He will know the answer not by what we say, but what we do.  Don’t turn back.  Love Jesus.  Love one another.
~J.T.