Main news for 8 August 2026

King James Version (en)

John, Chapter 21, verses 21-22

¹⁸ foretelleth him of his death, ²² rebuketh his curiosity touching John

²¹Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?

²²Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.

NOTES

On hearing about his coming death as a martyr, Peter immediately asks Christ about John the Evangelist. As a future shepherd concerned for the fate of those entrusted to him, the foremost apostle is anxious about the young disciple's future. Yet in these words one can see not only...

Every evangelist without exception bears witness to the manifestations of the Kingdom that accompanied Jesus' earthly ministry. But only in John do we find a testimony to it connected with the person of the risen Saviour. And perhaps the most remarkable thing about this testimony is precisely the fact that it is astonishingly similar, like two drops of water, to what the Gospels relate when describing the Messiah's earthly journey. Here again we have an account of a miraculous catch of fish, like the one that accompanied Peter's first encounter with Jesus (vv. 1–6). Of course, Jesus also acts in this way to make it easier for the apostles to recognize Him, and they apparently do understand at once Who is standing on the shore (v. 7). But this is probably not the only point. The laws of the Kingdom are still the same, and its effect on the world remains unchanged, just as the apostles had seen it even before their Teacher's resurrection.

And yet something changed after the Resurrection. It is no accident that Peter rushes towards Jesus (vv. 7–8) and that He asks him the same question three times: “Do you love Me?” (vv. 15–17). Peter had always been the first in the apostolic community. He was the first to call Jesus the Messiah; he swore that he would die for his Teacher, and he was also the one who denied Him three times after His arrest, in the courtyard of the high priest's house. Of course, this denial can hardly be regarded as deliberate, and it cannot in any way be compared with Judas' long-premeditated and carefully planned betrayal. Here one can speak rather of a kind of spiritual breakdown which, unfortunately, can happen to anyone in our fallen world. In our fallen world, but not in the Kingdom, where there is no place for such breakdowns.

And now, in entrusting His Church to Peter, it is no accident that Jesus requires him three times to confirm his love for Him. Relationships form the foundation of the Kingdom: relationships with God, with Jesus, and between people. The Lord requires Peter to confirm the relationship that already exists, and having received that confirmation, He testifies to the apostle that the day will come when Peter will have to confirm his love for Him not only by his life, but also by his death (vv. 18–19).

Here we probably see one of the most important laws of the Kingdom, where there are no irreparable mistakes, but where every mistake is corrected by the very person who made it. Testimony is important not only for those around the witness; it is no less important for the witness himself, who becomes part of the Kingdom through bearing witness. That is why every voluntary or involuntary refusal to bear witness becomes an obstacle to life in the Kingdom, an obstacle that must be overcome. Not only for the sake of the fullness of the Kingdom, but also for the sake of the fullness of the spiritual life of the person whom it hinders.

One of the favorite themes of Christian preachers is the story of Peter's threefold denial and the question the risen Jesus repeated three times: "Do you love Me?" Commentators often pay attention to the shades of meaning in the word "love," which in the Greek text is conveyed by two different words, sometimes drawing far-reaching conclusions from the nuances of Greek usage. Yet such nuances could hardly have played so large a role in Jesus' dialogue with Peter: after all, they were certainly not speaking Greek, but most probably Aramaic; and in Aramaic, unlike Greek, such nuances are absent.

But the threefold question and the threefold answer do have their meaning in Jewish tradition: testimony or an oath repeated three times is considered definitively established. Apparently, this custom is connected with features of the national temperament: who knows what may slip off the tongue in the heat of the moment! But if a person repeats something three times, if he answers the same question the same way three times, then the answer is no longer given in the heat of the moment; the one answering really thinks as he says, and his answer can be considered firm and final.

Of course, when answering Jesus, Peter could not fail to understand why the Teacher asked him the same question three times. He, of course, could not fail to remember his threefold denial of Jesus, even if at that moment it had not been fully conscious. And both of them understood perfectly well that this denial had nevertheless not been fully conscious, but involuntary, that it happened in a situation Peter himself did not fully understand, and that it was threefold only outwardly: for all three times Peter, in essence, did not even think about the meaning of the question, but simply brushed off the questioners so they would not keep him from following what was happening to his Teacher. And Jesus evidently wants from him a threefold, almost formal oath of love for Himself. And Peter becomes bitter and pained, like a person who understands that after what happened the Teacher can no longer trust him as before.

And Jesus immediately explains His questions: Peter has ahead of him a new, important, and responsible ministry, which will end in the same way as the earthly ministry of his Teacher ended. The question was not asked for no reason: Peter himself needed the answer. A man whose apostolic ministry began with involuntary apostasy and ended with the martyr's death of a faithful witness.

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