Trust & Obey

Do you find a piece of scripture keeps getting put in your path? You wake up, open your daily devotional, and there’s this verse that stands out to you. You spend some time thinking about it, but move on. The next day, you go to church and, ironically, the pastor preaches on the same passage or mentions it in light of another part of scripture. It strikes you as serendipitous, but you move on. It pops up one more time two days later: that’s when we know we are being tapped, and it’s time to engage. This has been happening to me with John 21:15-19. So, yesterday, I realized I needed to crack open my Bible and engage.

“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.’ He said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.’ (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” – John 21:15-19 (ESV)

As I spent time reflecting on Jesus and Peter’s conversation, I kept rereading the passage and started getting bored because there’s a lot of repetition. So, I asked God, “What am I supposed to see here?” and after closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths, I saw what I needed to see. It wasn’t the words on the page, but the words not on the page that made Jesus’ question that much richer.

If someone hurts your feelings, what do you say? It’s often something along the lines of “Are you sorry for what you did?” or “Will you never do that again?” Jesus doesn’t do any of that. He asks Peter, “Do you love me?” He’s asking Peter, “Are you committed to me?” When Peter says: “Yes, Lord, you know that I do.” Jesus tells him to walk out his commitment, “Feed my sheep.” This isn’t a “how sorry are you?” discussion; this is a “how committed are you?” discussion. Jesus clarifies Peter’s commitment to following Him. Jesus is asking because Peter’s road is only going to get harder, and the end for him will be brutal (he is martyred later on by being crucified upside down). So if he can’t stick it out now, can he at all? Peter declares he can and he will! So Jesus ends with, “Follow me.”

What about us? It’s a lot easier to say “Sorry, God! Sorry, Jesus!” when we have screwed up and say that’s good enough. We want to slap a Band-Aid on our sin and then maybe do it again later, instead of showing our open wound to God so He can restore us. We want what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace,” not “costly grace.” It’s easy to want the heavenly insurance policy of cheap grace, instead of the dangerously life-altering costly grace. Why? Because it’s far easier to pat ourselves on the back and say “I tried!” than to go to the Father and ask to be changed at the cost of our autonomy. Bonhoeffer condenses the cost as “Discipleship the end, voluntary poverty the means” (The Cost of Discipleship, 30), meaning that if we want the result of being Christ’s disciple, we must lose ourselves.

It’s intimidating to commit, but like Peter, we have to do it. There’s no “kind of a Christian” path. We either obey or we disobey. We have to see our need for Christ as more important than loss of independence. We need to pick up our cross and follow him, regardless of the cost.