John
John 21:18 NASB
“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself
and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your
hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to
{go.}” The words “stretch out your hands” is
an idiom that was used for someone who was crucified. He will be a captive, he
will be bound, and his volition will no longer matter.
John 21:19 NASB “Now this He said, signifying by what
kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to
him, ‘Follow Me!’” John is writing some 25 years after Peter’s
martyrdom in Rome, so he is looking back on that.
After these events we see
that Peter becomes a major leader of the disciples in Acts chapter one where he
gets them involved in the fallacious choice of Matthias as an apostle. The gift
of apostleship is given by the Holy Spirit, not by the casting of lots. So
Peter blows it there and then he has his tremendous preaching and leading 5000
to Christ in Acts 2, 4000 later on in Acts 3, and he is a major player up to about
Acts chapter nine. Then with the conversion of Paul in Acts 9 we see that Peter
begins to take more of a back seat in the narrative of Acts until chapter twelve
where Peter drops out and the focus from that point on is on the apostle Paul
and his ministry to the Gentiles. From 33 AD when Christ was crucified until 40 AD Peter is
associated with the apostles in Jerusalem. He is involved in the leadership of the church in Jerusalem and in Judea and that area, and is involved in missionary activity
in and around Judea. He is the one God uses to break down the barrier to
the Gentiles when he takes the gospel to the household of Cornelius. But we
also learn from Galatians chapter two that he was involved with the church at Antioch succumbed to the pressure of the legalists in Galatia, and he had to be corrected face-to-face by the apostle
Paul so that he would not lead the church into legalism. He remains a pillar of
the church in Jerusalem for fourteen years after Paul’s conversion, so from
approximately 33-39 we know where Peter was and from 40-49 there is a sort of
hole and we know that must be the time when he took the gospel to the Jewish community
in Babylon. Then he returns back to Jerusalem where he has his confrontation with Paul and the problems
at Antioch. After that things become a little vague and we have
to rely more on tradition than on any hard biblical evidence. We know from 2
Peter that Peter was involved with the churches in Asia Minor. We know that he was there until about 56-58 AD, we are not
sure when he left; but then there is also a very strong tradition in Gaul
and in Britain that Peter took the gospel there. There is a strong
tradition that between about 58-65 AD Peter was involved in taking the gospel into what is
modern France and modern England. Then, and only then, did he go to Rome. We don’t know if he went to Rome under his own volition or under arrest because it was
only a couple of years before he was martyred. But this is the earliest time
that Peter could have been in Rome from what we know. Eusebius says that Peter went to Rome in 44 but 44 doesn’t fit with everything else we know
about Peter. If he was in Rome in
44 then he couldn’t have been in Babylon, and there is no other time frame in Peter’s life
when he could have been at the churches in Babylon, according to 1 Peter. So the only time Peter could
have gone to Rome was about 65 AD and that means the church in Rome was no founded by the apostle Peter. It was already
there and it was established by the time Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans.
It was after that that Peter finally came to Rome. Nero had him arrested and he was placed in one of
the most horrible environments in the ancient world, the Mamertine
dungeon. It was the scene of the worst torture chamber in the ancient world. According
to tradition Peter was chained to a stone column where he was unable to sit or
to lie down, and he survived for nine months before he was finally removed and
taken out and crucified by Nero upside down in 67 AD. This is what
Jesus is referring to in John 21:18.
“…And when He had spoken
this, He said to him, ‘Follow Me!’” This is Jesus’ standard
challenge to His students, His disciples. The word “disciple” comes from the
Greek word mathetes [maqhthj] which means a student, a learner. What Jesus did
with the twelve disciples was unique. It was related to their function as the
pillars and the foundation of the church in the church age. It was related to
the fact that He had a unique ministry and He was training them to be the
leaders of the new church. He was not establishing a methodological example
because we never see that later. Paul had Timothy and Silas, etc., but these
were his assistants, much like a pastor of a large church or perhaps like a
missionary out on the field might have two or three men who are assisting him.
But never once do you have the term mathetes
applied to Silas or timothy. In fact, we don’t find a repetition of the term mathetes or the verb to make disciples
anywhere after the Gospels. What we find is an emphasis on the pastor-teacher
and the pastor makes students of the word in large groups. The model we see
from Acts on is one man with a communication gift communicating to numbers of
people.
So Jesus says to Peter, “Follow
Me.” That means to follow His example, follow the teaching of the Word and, Are
you willing to submit to my authority and make doctrine the number one priority
in your life? Peter shows right away that he still has a problem with
distraction in verses 20, 21, a problem we all have at times in the Christian
life. NASB “Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus
loved following {them;} the one who also had leaned
back on His bosom at the supper and said, ‘Lord, who is the one who betrays
You?’ [21] So Peter seeing him said to Jesus, ‘Lord, and what
about this man?’” Peter is already distracted by prophecy,
by his future. He is probably going to die a martyrs
death and he doesn’t want to be there all by himself, so “What about my buddy
John?” Peter and John are very close, so he is immediately distracted. This is
the biggest problem that we have in the Christian life—how easily we are
distracted from making doctrine our priority. We live in an age today when
there are so many entertainment options, so many job options, so many things
that we can do that are good and valid. But the test for us is the test of
priorities. Are we willing to make doctrine the number one priority in our
life? It doesn’t happen by just showing up once on Sunday. That is not going to
do it.
John 21:22 NASB “Jesus said to him, ‘If I want him to remain until I come, what {is that} to you?
You follow Me!’” In other words, Peter is
to worry about His plan for his life and not to worry about His plan for
anybody else’s life. He is to worry about his own spiritual growth and not
anybody else’s: “You follow Me!” – present
active imperative of akoloutheo [a)kolouqew] which means, You make your relationship to me your
highest priority.
John 21:23 NASB
“Therefore this saying went out among the brethren that that disciple would not
die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but {only,} ‘If I want
him to remain until I come, what {is that} to you?’” The rumour
got started from this that John wasn’t going to die but Peter would die. Then
John identifies himself again as the author of the Gospel. [24] “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things
and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.” The word “testifying”
is the Greek word martureo [marturew] which means to bear witness, to testify in a legal
sense. This is the disciple who is bearing witness. John is bearing witness in
a legal sense to what is going on. [25] “And there are also many other things which
Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world
itself would not contain the books that would be written.” He is
saying that many other things happened but he picked these incidents for a
purpose: John 20:30, 31 NASB “Therefore many other signs Jesus also
performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”
As we have gone through
the Gospel of John we have seen that he has been making a case. The case is
that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. His case is that salvation is by
faith alone in Christ alone. In accomplishing this not only does he bring these
signs together, because they show that Jesus fulfils Old Testament prophecy of
the Messiah—the Messiah will heal, be greater than nature, He will be God—but he
is going to arrange all of these together like a court case. He is proving a
point by looking at the signs. Then throughout this Gospel he brings out his
witnesses, numerous witnesses. The first witness is John the Baptist, John 1:8,
15, 34; Jesus before Nicodemus, John 3:11—empirical data alone is not going to
do it; the woman at the well, John 4:39; God the Father and the Holy Spirit
bear witness, John 5:31, 32; His works, John 5:36, 37; 8:18; 10:25; the
Scriptures, John 5:39. And as a result of that witness we are called as
believers to be future witnesses for Jesus Christ under the power of God the
Holy Spirit, John 15:26. We bear witness of the apostolic witness because we
have it recorded in the canon of Scripture, so when we communicate the truth to
people we are making a case that Christ is Messiah. That is what witnessing is
all about; it is legal testimony that Christ is the Son of God who died on the
cross for our sins. Then we were given a new commandment related to the church
age: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I
have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that
you are My disciples, if you have love for one
another.”
John 14:15-17 NASB “If
you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
I will ask the Father, and He will give you
another Helper, that He may be with you forever; {that is} the
Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or
know Him, {but} you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”