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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I recently learned that smoke from a campfire does follow you due to how your body affects air currents near the fire, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
What is it about campfires? Fire is no doubt a powerful force that connects with mankind in profound ways. Movies like The Jungle Book, Castaway, and Stand By Me demonstrate great examples of this connection that we have with fire. When I was in high school, I went camping a couple of times with some of my friends. I mentioned earlier this season that I had a high school reunion coming up and as I write this, that reunion was 11 days ago. It was no surprise that my friends and I found ourselves talking about some of those moments we shared around the campfire.
This week I want to draw our attention to a couple of passages from the book of John in the New Testament that take place around a fire. But first, let me set the stage.
The night before Jesus was crucified he gathered his disciples into a room and shared one final meal with them. This was a very important meal in the Jewish tradition called Passover. The Jews had been observing Passover for thousands of years dating back to the time where God rescued the Israelites from slavery under the Egyptians. God gave the Israelites very specific instructions on how to observe Passover both as a meal and with sacrifices at the tabernacle, later the temple.
Because Jesus and his disciples were all Jews, it was important for them to gather together for the Passover meal. There are a bunch of other things in the meal related to Jesus creating the fulfillment of the Old Testament covenant and bringing in the New Testament covenant that are fascinating, but those are not the focus of today’s episode.
For today’s episode, let’s think about the disciples. If you were to gather up 12 of your friends for a meal, you can imagine the different characteristics and personality types that would be represented around that table. Jesus’ disciples were no different. Today we’re going to focus on one of the disciples named Peter.
Before Peter encountered Jesus, his profession was a fisherman. He would have been educated at a young age to understand the Jewish laws and customs, but as he grew older he would have to have been selected by a rabbi to continue studying and learning the Jewish law at a scholarly level. If he was rejected by all possible rabbis, he would have had to enter a trade, most likely the family trade. It would have been a high and exclusive honor to have been selected by a rabbi, and the vast majority of people were not.
Since Peter is a fisherman, we know that the latter was true of him. In fact, at that time his name wasn’t Peter, it was Simon. Simon’s brother, Andrew first encountered Jesus and then told Simon about the encounter. After meeting Jesus, Andrew immediately went and found Simon and told him that he’d found the messiah and took him to meet Jesus. Jesus’s first words to Simon were, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).
After meeting Jesus, the brothers went back to their trade. Some time later, Jesus came to the brothers while they were at their boats. They’d fished all night and caught nothing. Jesus told them to put their nets into the water again, and they caught so many fish, their nets began to break. Jesus then invited the brothers to follow him and become fishers of men. That is, the brothers were being selected to follow a rabbi, and this rabbi they had identified as being the messiah! It’s easy to understand why they dropped everything at that moment and joined the rabbi, Jesus.
As we read through the New Testament and learn more about Peter, we learn that he was definitely a Type A personality. He was confident, passionate, competitive, extroverted, even brash and impulsive.
Now, let’s go back inside the room where they had the passover meal. As they sat around the table, Jesus began to tell them that he would not be with them much longer. Giving them clues about his impending death, he told them that the wine and bread actually represented his broken body and spilled blood.
After dinner, they made their way to a nearby olive grove where Jesus often went to reflect and pray. Along the way he told them that all of them would fall away from him that very night. Peter, with his personality on full display exclaimed that he would never run away from Jesus, even if everyone else did. At this point Jesus famously told Peter that he would in fact deny knowing Jesus three times that very night.
Later that night Roman soldiers came to the garden to arrest Jesus. Once again, Peter being Peter, he took out his sword to defend Jesus, cutting off the ear of a man named Malchus in the process. As Jesus was taken away, Peter and all the disciples ran away just as Jesus had predicted.
Peter and John then followed the soldiers from a distance and made their way into the court area to watch the proceedings as closely as they could. A girl on duty asked Peter if he knew Jesus and he told her no. He then went into the inner courtyard and made his way to a charcoal fire to keep warm. Several servants and officials also stood around the fire and he was again asked if he knew Jesus. He denied knowing him. Later, a relative of Malchus recognized Peter and called him out on it, but once again, Peter denied it. Once again, Jesus’ prediction about Peter had proven true.
As the night turned into day, Jesus was sentenced to death, led out of the city to the place where criminals were crucified, and there, between two criminals, Jesus was crucified. Later that day, his body was taken from the cross and placed in a tomb.
The disciples, who had not yet come to understand all that was happening, were confused and devastated. They thought Jesus was the messiah and he would take over as the political ruler of the Jews, freeing them from Roman occupation.
On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. When Mary and the other women told the disciples about it, Peter being the competitive and impulsive guy he was, got up and ran all the way to the tomb to see for himself. Jesus then appeared to the disciples and others multiple times over the following days, but he was not yet done with Peter.
John chapter 21 tells us that after Jesus appeared to them, Peter and 6 of the other disciples returned to fishing. One morning, after having fished all night and caught nothing, Jesus came to them. Does this sound familiar? Jesus told them to try casting their nets again. When they did, they caught so many fish that they couldn’t pull the net into the boat. Once Peter realized it was Jesus, he jumped in the water and swam to shore. Type A personality on full display once again.
Once they all arrived on shore, Jesus told them to bring over some of the fish so they could eat breakfast together.
After they finished breakfast, Jesus said to Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter replied, “You know that I love you.” Again, Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?” and Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” A third time Jesus asked, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter, hurt because Jesus asked him a third time, said, “Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you.”
Here’s what I learned.
There is so much to unpack in this passage and we won’t unpack it all. For example, I’ve not included Jesus’ responses to Peter in the questions above, but there’s an entire series of lessons to be found there. Instead I want to look at some of the other things found in this exchange.
First, it’s no accident that Peter denied Jesus three times earlier, and Jesus asks him here three times here if he loves him. I think it’s intentional that Jesus asked Peter this question one time for each time he’d denied knowing him.
One other clue to this is what Peter found with Jesus when he came ashore the morning of this encounter. In John chapter 18 we read the account of Peter’s three denials. Verse 18 of that chapter says, “It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.” Some Bible versions give this passage a slightly more accurate translation by noting it was a charcoal fire. The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and that Greek word is anthrakia (anth-rak-ee-ah’) which is a heap of burning coals or charcoal fire. There are other Greek words for fire that are more commonly used, so the use of anthrakia here is an important nuance.
In fact, Anthrakia is only used one other time in the New Testament. Would you like to guess where? In John chapter 21 where Jesus encounters the disciples fishing. Jesus, knowing the kind of fire that Peter stood around as he denied him, has now made that same type of fire to prepare a meal for Peter. Peter denied Jesus three times, and now Jesus uses that fire as a centerpiece as they sit around it, bellies full, and Peter is asked three times if he loves Jesus.
When translating from one language to another, nuance is often hard to convey. With anthrakia we can use the modifier charcoal to help demonstrate the specifics of the word, but other words are not so easy to make clear. This challenge in translation is true with any language, not just Greek to English.
With this in mind, let’s look more closely at those questions again. In English, we really only have one word for love and we look at context clues to determine the deeper meaning. For example, I could say I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and I could also say I love my wife, and the context would tell you that I don’t mean the same thing. That is, my love for chocolate covered peanut butter and my wife are not the same.
In Biblical Greek, they had multiple words for love such as eros, phileo, and agape. Eros refers to the type of love between a husband and wife. It’s romantic, sexual love. It’s where we get words like erotic from. Phileo is a type of love that is an affinity or brotherly love. It’s where Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, gets its name from. Agape love is a self-sacrificing love. John 3:16, probably the most well-known verse in the Bible says, “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.” The word love in that verse is agape, or self-sacrificing love.
When Jesus first asks Peter if he loves him, Jesus uses the word agape. In other words, he’s asking Peter if Peter has self-sacrificing love for Jesus. Peter replies by telling Jesus that he has phileo love, or brotherly love.
The second time is the same. Jesus uses agape, and Peter replies with phileo. Finally, Jesus asks Peter if he has phileo love for Jesus which is why Peter was hurt by it. It’s like Jesus is asking him, do you REALLY have phileo love? Peter confirms that he does.
Peter had denied knowing Jesus. He had gone back to fishing. Jesus was making an effort here to help Peter understand something important. Jesus telling the men to cast their nets one more time isn’t the only thing here that mirrors Peter’s early encounters with Jesus. Remember that very first encounter? In that encounter Jesus said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Peter.”
That fateful morning after Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus had found Peter fishing again. Jesus had already called Peter out of fishing and into ministry. He’d already told Peter that he was to be a fisher of men and that he was building his church on Peter. So when he found Peter in that boat casting nets into the water, he found Peter had returned to his old life, his old way of living before Peter had encountered Jesus.
To help Peter realize this, look how Jesus refers to him. Each time he asks Peter if he loves him, he calls him Simon son of John. That’s the pre-Jesus name for Peter. Peter had gone back to living like he did pre-Jesus, and Jesus was calling him out on it.
I don’t know about you, but I see a lot to identify with here. Like Peter, many of us find ourselves at some point living like we did before we met Jesus. Jesus took special care on that morning to let Peter know that just because he’d walked away from Jesus, just because he’d denied Jesus, just because he’d gone back to his old way of living, did not mean that reconciliation was off the table.
Jesus came to where Peter was, called out to him again, and Peter responded. Jesus reminded Peter that he was well aware of what Peter had done, and he still loved him. In those responses to Peter that we didn’t cover, Jesus told Peter about important work that he had in store for Peter. In fact, less than two months later, Peter would preach a sermon that would see over 3,000 people become followers of Jesus.
Moses was a murderer. David was a murderer and an adulterer. Peter turned away from Jesus and denied him. All three men owned up to their sins, turned back toward God, and went on to be used by God to accomplish great things. Read Psalm 51 to see how David responded when confronted about his sins of adultery and murder. The truth is, God doesn’t care what you’ve done. God knows it and loves you anyway. Read the story in Luke 15 to see God’s attitude toward those who have sinned and walked away from him. I am so grateful that no matter what we’ve done, God always stands there ready and eager to welcome us as his children. In doing so, he doesn’t just put us on his team and leave us on the bench, but he uses us to be active participants to do his work in the world.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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