To Encourage You

John 21:15 “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’”

The greatest commandment in the Bible is this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).  It is with this very issue that Jesus confronted Peter after the resurrection – and after Peter had denied Christ three times.  Jesus asks Peter point blank, “Peter, do you love me?”  The word “love” that Jesus uses here is “agapao” in the original Greek in which the New Testament was written.  It means self-sacrificial service for others. It is an act of the will.  And it is the love of God.  Peter’s answer to this question was “Yes Lord; you know that I love you.” However, the word Peter uses here is “phileo,” i.e., brotherly love, rather than agapao. In contrast to agapao, phileo refers to the affections. It is a feeling of fondness.  Peter thereby tempered his reply, confessing to Jesus that his love was not the highest form of love.  He had been humbled from his former proud condition in which he had boldly told Jesus such things as “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away” (Matthew 26:33), and “I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37). 

You see, Peter didn’t know his own heart.  He didn’t realize that his love for Jesus was no match for Jesus’ love for him.  Jesus loved Peter infinitely and unconditionally. He loved Peter (and us) enough to lay down his life on the cross for us (Ephesians 5:25).  Peter’s love was so much weaker than this.  When confessing love for Jesus could mean risk to his own safety, Peter clammed up and actually denied that he even knew Christ. 

It is so easy for any of us to say that we are Christians and to claim that we love Christ.  To have at least some affection for Christ, a phileo kind of love, is essential.  Better this than to give no thought to Christ, or even hate Him.  However, to love God in the same way that God loves us goes far beyond this.  The agapao love of God is always demonstrated in some way. It is accompanied by self-sacrificial action.  It’s the kind of love that God showed when He “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).  It’s the love whereby, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). 

In Jesus’ question to Peter in John 21:15, notice that he follows Peter’s response with a command, i.e., “feed my lambs.”  In other words, to love me with agapao love, Peter, you need to show it by doing what I command.  If you love me, obey me.  That will be a mark of any true believer in Christ. Rather than just having a warm feeling in our heart for Him, we will live for Him. We will follow Him wherever He leads.  But like Peter, we will come to realize that this is impossible without God’s love in our hearts, and that love is only there as a spiritual fruit, a gift from God himself (Galatians 5:22). 

We love, only because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).  Our love for Him is a humble act of gratitude in response for the great love that God has poured out on us, for “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). 

Do we really love Jesus?  If we do, there will be evidence in your life and mine.  It will be the evidence that goes beyond the phileo love of fondness to the agapao love of self-sacrificial service to the One who gave His all for us. 

May God help us confess the weakness of our own love and pray for the power to love with the agapao love of God.