To this question Peter replied,  “Yes, Lord , you know that I love you”  (John 21:15).  Our Danish rendering is more accurate.  It goes more like this, “Lord, you know I have affection for you!” as the verb “ to love” has two Greek words, one is a very strong one, - “agapao” meaning a pure, unselfish love – and the other one is “phileo” suggesting tender affection.  So Peter was actually saying, “Lord, I want to be your most devoted friend!”

Why didn´t Peter use the Lord´s word (“agapao”)? Well, as I see it, he didn´t feel he could rise to that kind of love.  He didn´t want to say too much, when talking spiritually.  And yet there was no question whom he sided with despite his feeling of insufficiency.

At least that´s the way I see it in full keeping with my own feeling of insufficiency and failures.  Peter´s insufficient love went however higher “than these”  whatever these “these” may have been.

A woman saw me at the hospital when I had my second heart attack.  With a shrill voice she almost shouted, “I love Jesus!”  I felt how shallow it all was and just wished she would leave me. Indeed, there´s a lot of “Jesus talk”  that  makes us think of Paul´s warning about “another (a false) Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4).

At Christmas time I happened to listen to the children singing on the platform of a small Baptist church in Clovis, CA, - oh, they honored the Lord by giving Him first priority in the popular song “Happy birthday to you”.  They sang “Happy birth Lord Jesus…”  That went right to my heart and to the Lord´s heart too, I´m sure.  Their dear voices were not shrill but Christ honoring.

I still meet hungry souls who are drawn to the Lord Jesus, maybe without knowing it.  (At least that´s how it started with me when I was a lad).  They are afraid of saying too much.  But “more than these” things or other human beings, their hearts long for reality.  They will find it in Christ only. 

Life will not be life without Him.  And they will eventually say not only “Lord, I want to be your friend” but  the more  they  get to know  the more they dare say with the apostle John, “We love because He first loved us!”  (1 John 4:19).

And the Lord will entrust hungry “lambs” souls to them  (however  insufficient they feel) with whom they may share that “agape” love in Christ that has fully satisfied their own souls.

Dec. 7, 2011 – jn