Characteristics of a Committed Christian

John 21:15-25

Chapter 21 of John, this morning, and this morning is a farewell.  I'm not leaving but John is.  I'm like the poor, you always have me with you.  But this is our last study in John's gospel, Lord willing.  And so we come to chapter 21 verses 15 to 25.  It's very difficult to say farewell to John.  We will not say farewell, it is indelibly in our hearts and shall be crossed reference for years to come.  But as we come to chapter 21, particularly verses 15 to 25, rather than just read through the historical narrative, I want to do what I know the Spirit of God wants me to do, and that is to apply the principles of the historical narrative to the action of your own lives.  And I want to talk to you on the characteristics of a committed Christian.

Now as Christians, we frequently talk about commitment.  And, you know, having been in a church repeatedly, as most of you have, you have heard many preachers say you ought to be more dedicated, more committed, consecrated, re-consecrated, rededicated, whatever.  And it's a valid thing because what they're talking about is the idea that now that you're a believer and you've received Jesus Christ, you need to really commit your total life into His total control for the expression of His will and power through you.  It amounts to the elimination of yourself in order that Christ might live totally through you as He designs.   And preachers and teachers urge people constantly, week in and week out, day in and day out, to be committed to Jesus Christ, not just born again, not just saved, but obedient, yielded, Spirit-filled, walking in the will of God kind of Christians.  And it's valid, as I say.  It's important.

I'll never forget, however, an incident that illustrated to me that much of the appeal is contentless and that though people are told to be committed, they really don't know what it's all about many times.  I was in a camp and I was sitting in the back while a speaker was speaking and having completed the message which was full of inspiration and nothing else, and a lot of emotion and everybody was getting worked up and certain kids were crying and there wasn't really any content, no Word of God, but lots of stories that made you cry and things.  At the end, he said...the speaker said, "Now we want commitment.  Now everybody who wants to commit their life to Jesus Christ come up here and take a pinecone and throw it in the fire."  You know, you've been through that thing in a camp, which is okay, testimony time.  And so, kids came by and said, "I want to dedicate my life to the Lord," and zap, they threw their pinecone in the fire.  One kid came up, I'll never forget it.  And the speaker had made a heavy emphasis on dedicating your time to God.  And so he said, "I want to give my time to God," he ripped off his watch and threw it in the fire.

Now, you know, I appreciate his spirit and I appreciate what he was doing, but that's not what you do when you want to commit your time to God.  That's poor stewardship.  You have to go out and buy another watch.  And, you see, here is...this is kind of a graphic illustration to me, and what goes on very, very much and that is great emotional appeals to people to be real disciples and following Jesus without ever any instruction about what it's about.  Or how to follow Jesus Christ in the area of commitment.  And I don't want to be guilty of emotionalizing commitment without any content, so when I talk about commitment, I'll talk to you out of the twenty-first chapter of John verses 15 to 25 because in there you have the principles of commitment.  And I'll let the Spirit of God stir up your emotions.  I'll work on them a little bit.  But I'll let the Spirit of God be responsible for that in response to what you learn from the Word of God.  So, this morning as we look at these verses, particularly I want you to see the four characteristics of commitment that are in these verses and they are factual.

Now before we look at these four, I must review since this will be our parting time with John, and give you again a little repeated insight into what's going on in chapter 21.  John has been writing now 20 chapters.  And at the end of chapter 20 he really closed the main body of his message.  When he wrapped it up in chapter 20 with verse 31, he said that the reason I've written all of this is that you might believe that Jesus, that is the human Jesus, is in fact the Christ which is a New Testament word for the anointed which is the Old Testament word Messiah, Jesus is Messiah, He is the Son of God and that believing you might have life through His name.  All 20 chapters written to show that Jesus, a human being in human flesh, is Messiah, is God and that you believing in His name may come alive to eternal and abundant life.  That's the purpose of John's gospel and in its total purpose it kind of wraps up in chapter 20 verse 31 so that chapter 21 then becomes an appendix, in a literary sense, not in a medical sense.  In a medical sense, an appendix is worthless.  In a literary sense, it is very important because it ties together loose ends and John and the Holy Spirit don't leave loose ends.  And so what is not really fully dealt with in the 20 chapters is kind of summarized in terms of answering questions in chapter 21.  So John pulls together the loose ends, those things that he has not fully explained.  And he puts them in chapter 21.  He hung around just long enough to do that.

And this is not an uncommon situation.  I think about my own self.  Many times on Sunday mornings, for a long time, having completed my message, I always remain up here and without exception, many times, I don't think there's a service that goes by, people will come up afterwards...the reason I stay here and not at the door is because I want to be available to the people who need an appendix to my message.  In other words, the people who have questions that have arisen out of the message that they did not understand are the ones that come and speak with me, rather than just everyone.  So I feel that I must be available to kind of sum up what I've said and defend the parts that maybe weren't too clear or left unsaid.  And that's exactly what John is doing so I have a biblical base for doing it.  In 21, he's pulling together the loose ends.

Now, quick review.  There are five questions that were kind of left a little bit vague at the end of chapter 20 that John answers in 21.  We can divide 21 into five little sections, each of which answers a question left unanswered in the gospel. 

The first question that was kind of hanging there for a while was, "Now that Jesus has risen, now that He is in His glorified body, now that He's going to ascend to the Father and the fact that He told Mary not to hang on to Him cause He had to leave and there was no more going to be that kind of relationship physically, does that mean that Jesus no longer will provide for the needs of His own in an intimate way?  Is Jesus saying, in fact, that now this relationship is severed and you're on your own totally.  The answer to that is in verses 1 to 14, and what's the answer?  No.  The answer is, "I will provide for you even after My resurrection," and He proves it by providing for them not only so many fish they could hardly get them in, but He also made breakfast for them, didn't He?  And what He was saying in a living parable was, "Gentlemen, it is not over, I will continue to provide for you beyond what you really need even."  And so the answer to question number one.

Question number two that was left at the end of chapter 20 was this, "What ever happened to Peter?"  If all we have is John's gospel, Peter just kind of washes out at the end.  First he denies Jesus Christ, then he flees at the cross.  The next thing you know, Jesus has risen from the grave and John believed, but Peter just stood around wondering what was going on.  And if Peter is to be the great leader of the apostolic group, if he's to be the great dynamo on the day of Pentecost, if he's to be God's man to move in the beginning of the church, it's kind of a hopeless situation if all we have is the end of chapter 20 because Peter just kind of fades into oblivion.  And so the question that's left in your mind is, "What about Peter?"  So verses 15 to 17 answer that and that's Jesus restoring Peter to the place of leadership among the Apostles.  Very important that He do that.

The third question that's unanswered at the end of chapter 20 is this, "What about the future of all the disciples?"  Now that Jesus is leaving, who takes care of us?  Who is going to determine our life and our death?  Is our destiny in somebody's hands?  The answer to that is in verses 18 and 19a where Jesus the destiny is in My hands, don't you worry about that, I'll guide your life and I'll guide your death.  That answers that question.

The fourth question that came up and it came up really because of this incident here at the Sea of Galilee was the question about whether the Apostle John would ever die or not because Jesus had made the statement, as we'll see a little later, to Peter.  He said, "What do you care if John lives till the Second Coming, it's none of your business?"  And so they picked up the thought that maybe John was never going to die but was going to be around till the Second Coming.  So the Holy Spirit wants to correct that error and that takes place in verses 19b to 23 and in that section He corrects that problem.

That leaves one other question.  The other question was raised in chapter 20 verse 30 and it was this, "How come we didn't record everything Jesus did?"  And John gives the answer in verses 24 and 25 by saying, "If we did that, the books of the world couldn't hold it."

So, in chapter 21 then we have those five key questions answered and the book becomes a total unit, it summarizes itself in chapter 1...21, leaves nothing out and it's complete.  But let me add this, and I hope you've learned this by now, as we approach chapter 21, we're not going to just look at it from the standpoint of those answered questions.  You'll be able to see those answers as they weave through.  But Scripture is a many faceted diamond, believe me, I know you do, we could spend a year on chapter 21.  There are many, many things that we could dwell on in this chapter, all of Scripture can be looked at at various different angles.  Somebody said to me this morning, "You know, Such-and-such a person taught on Ephesians on the first chapter, the same chapter that you taught on only he brought out things that you didn't bring out."  That's exactly right.  That's exactly the way it is with the Word of God.  If everybody that taught the same passage said the same thing, we'd only need one teacher.  The Word of God is like a diamond, it explodes in a spectrum of color and you can go at it from all angles.  And I may take a certain approach and I may highlight certain things, that doesn't mean there's nothing else there by any means.  That only means that I'm limited by my mental capacities and by your endurance.

And so, as we look at chapter 21 verses 15 to 25, we're going to pick out an area of emphasis and that area is the characteristics of committed Christians.  And we're going to see them here.  Now remember that in verses 1 to 14 we saw kind of a basic pattern for the Christian life because we saw Jesus in a living illustration show the difference between self-effort and spiritual effort, didn't we?  Last week we saw that the disciples tried to do it on their own and they met with failure and they lost the intimacy of Jesus' fellowship.  Jesus moved in, they did it His way, they were obedient, they had success and they experienced fellowship.  There are only two ways to live the Christian life, that's all, two ways.  Number one, you live it all by yourself in disobedience, you end up a failure and you lose the intimacy of the presence of Jesus.  The other way is to live it in His power, obedient to Him, you have great success and you enjoy the fullness of His presence.  That spiritual truth is illustrated in verses 1 to 14, in Jesus' provision of the fish.

So, we've seen the basic to the Christian life is living it in the Lord's power, not your own.  Now we're going to move a step further into the Christian life and see the four characteristics of a really committed Christian.  Here they come. 

Number one, his work is compelled by love.  A real committed Christian operates on the basis of his love for the Lord.  Two, his way is controlled by God.  He has learned how to give his life totally to God and trust Him for it.  His will is content with following.  He's happy to do what Jesus leads him to do.  Fourth, his words are concerning Jesus.  His work is compelled by love.  His way is controlled by God.  His will is content with following.  And his words are concerned with Jesus.  I pray, God, that these words of Jesus may dwell in you richly because they are great profound truths.

First of all, the first characteristic of a committed Christian, his work is compelled by love.  Love is the great thing that really moves people who are in the service of Jesus Christ.  Love is t he driving force.  Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, "The love of Christ does...what?...constrains me."  It drives me into service.  John said, "We go out and we preach...3 John...for the sake of the name because we love His name."  Paul said in Romans 1 that we go to preach obedience to the nations for the sake of His name because we are overwhelmed with love for the glory of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  That's the greatest, the highest, the pinnacle of all motives, isn't it?  And you can always tell somebody who really loves Jesus, who really does...you know how?  They're busy serving Him. 

Now this principle is very important, that the work of a committed Christian is compelled by love.  Not legalism, not "have to," the Christian who really loves Christ sometimes needs to be harnessed from running too fast.  Now you recall, as we look at verses 15 to 17, this passage deals with restoring Peter, but it's all about love because that's the issue.  And we learn the principle of our service compelled by love from this little encounter with Peter that is so loaded with spiritual truth that it's a shame not to spend more time, but let me just pick out of it what I want to set in motion for this message.

Now you'll remember Peter was always kind of vociferous.  He was always kind of stating his great, not pride really, but his...he was kind of proud in the fact of his own boldness.  He was stating his great courage.  He would always say, "Well everybody else may fail You and the disciples may fall by the wayside, but I will never betray You, I will never fail You," and he said in John 13, Jesus says to him, "Peter you can't go where I'm going, just relax, you can't go.  Now afterward you'll go but not now."  Peter said, "Lord, I don't care what anybody does, I don't care what happens, I'll go with you and I'll die for you."  And, of course, you know what happened, that's all talk and no action.  Not only did he not die for Him, he didn't even live for Him.  He came down to the crux hour, the hour when he was confronted with his testimony in Jesus Christ and he blew it three different occasions, he denied Jesus.  And if we put the synoptic gospels together with John, the other gospels, and put all four of them, it just may well be that six different times he stayed that he denied Jesus...six specific denials on three separate occasions.  So this was a big thing with him, he was really letting everybody know that he had nothing to do with Jesus.  And so, Peter who was so great in stating his courage because so small in being able to maintain.

Now since that time, Peter had just kind of fluttered around.  And if Peter was going to be, now watch this, if Peter was going to be the leaders of the Apostles and a great instrument in God founding His church, he had to be restored.  Do you see?  And he had to be restored not only personally between he and the Lord, but in the eyes of everybody else.  That's very important.  So the Lord knows his commission must be a public commission.  Now we believe that before you ever get to 21:15 Jesus has already had a personal encounter with Peter.  You don't find it in the gospels, but you find it in 1 Corinthians 15:5 which says Jesus appeared to Cephas, or Peter.  So Jesus had already appeared to Peter on a one-on-one basis.  Now we don't know what happened on that basis, but this time Jesus wants to commission Peter publicly so that all the other disciples can see that Peter has been restored, has been given the responsibility, has stated his love, has been approved of Jesus Christ and therefore they'll follow him as he leads them.  The Lord needs Peter. 

And so Jesus meeting the disciples at the Sea of Galilee, as we saw in the first 14 verses, sits down to have breakfast with them.   And it's interesting because during breakfast, I don't know what was going in Peter's mind but just because of the circumstances, we would imagine that Peter was very sad, that Peter was sitting there with a heart full of grief.  He had blown it every way you could blow it.  He denied Jesus.  He fled when Jesus died.  He wondered about the death and resurrection.  He wasn't even too sure about that.  And now Jesus said go to Galilee in a mountain and wait for Me, and instead of being in Galilee in a mountain, where is he?  He's down at the Sea.  Instead of waiting for Jesus, he's gone back to his former occupation, he's going to make a living again.  He's rejected the initial call of Jesus.  He's blown it every way you could blow it.  And then Jesus meets him on the Sea and provides more fish than he can handle and says, "Come on in, Peter, I've cooked breakfast for all of you."  And you can imagine he's just..."oh...oh," you know, he's overwhelmed with the grace of God to the point where he can't stand himself.  Do you ever get like that?  And so he sits there and I imagine his head was hanging and tears were perhaps in his eyes and he was lost in the horror of his own inability to believe his Savior, whom he loved. 

But Jesus isn't done with Peter.  He's after Peter because He knows that Peter is to be the leader of the apostolic band and so Jesus confronts Peter right at the breakfast table at the Sea of Galilee.  Verse 15, "So when they had breakfasted," it's the Greek word for breakfast, "when they had breakfasted, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, 'Simon, son of,'" it's Ioana in the Greek, or John, "'Lovest thou Me more than these?'" Right out of that breakfast group, the disciples around there, seven of them, Jesus zaps Peter.  Breakfast is over, Simon Peter's there.  Jesus says to him, "Simon," and that alone must have hurt because his name wasn't Simon anymore, what was it?  It was Peter.  And who changed his name to Peter?  Jesus did.  When...when...when Peter came into an encounter with Jesus, he was a new man, Jesus gave him a new name, but now he was acting like the old man.  And so Jesus pinpointed the problem right there when He called him "Simon" and not Peter.  And Jesus was saying, "Peter, we're not together anymore, are we?"  So He says, "Simon," and I can imagine that was the initial entrance of the scalpel into Peter, the surgery was begun.

"Simon, son of John," and then He says this, "Lovest thou Me more than these?"  Lovest thou Me more than these, what do You mean?  Well, you remember that Peter had sword his allegiance, he had sworn that he loved Jesus and Jesus confronts him with this love.  Now the reason Jesus confronts him with love, hang on to this, is that He wants Peter to lead the apostles.  He wants Peter to be the shepherd of the flock.  And in order for Peter to be an effective shepherd, the overwhelming drive in Peter must be his love for Jesus Christ, right?  That's the only thing that makes you effective.  If a person doesn't love Jesus Christ, they have no reason to serve Him.  And so He wants to establish that Peter loves Him because that's the compelling thing that will drive Peter to serve Him.  So He says, "Peter, do you love Me more than these?"  And when He said "more than these," remember I told you last week that I believe that what He was doing was sweeping His hand over all the boats and the nets and the fish and the whole regalia that went with it and saying, "Peter, do you love Me more than you love this profession?  Peter, you've gone back to fishing again."  And Peter loved fishing.  And Jesus says, "Peter, do you love Me more than you love the fish and the nets and the boats and the sea here and you're daily routine and your profession and your career which you're successful in doing?  Do you love Me enough, Peter, to say goodbye to every bit of it?  Do you love Me enough to just write it off?  All your successes, all your chosen career, all your direction, just write it off, do you love Me enough, more than all of that to do just what I tell you to do?  You claim to have great love, Peter, is it for real?"

Now I want to show you something here that's fantastic in the Greek and you don't get it from the English, but I want you to see it.  He uses the word "love" here in verse 15, agape, or agapao, the verb, and that means the highest, greatest kind of love, the most noble divine kind of love.  He says, "Peter, do you really, really super love Me?"  See.  I mean, this is the purest, most glorious, fullest kind of love, "Peter, do you really, really super love Me?"  Well, that's the key to commitment, but let's face it, Peter knew he couldn't say yes to that because his life wouldn't match it, would it?  Jesus says, "Do you really, really love Me?"  And Peter is not about to say, "Lord, You know I agapao You.  I really, really super love You."  The Lord would say, "Now wait a minute, Peter, it's obvious from your life that you don't agapao Me in the fullest sense."

So Peter didn't answer that way.  Watch what Peter said, look at verse 15.  He says, "Peter, do you really, really love Me in the fullest sense?"  Peter says unto Him, "Yes, Lord," and I imagine it came out kind of meek.  "Yes, Lord."  Notice he appeals to the Lord's omniscience, "You know that I...what?...that I love Thee."  But wait a minute, that's not the same word Jesus used.  That's the word phileo in the Greek which means, "I have a great affection for You."  It's a few degrees down from the other kind.  The Lord says, "Peter, do you really, really love Me."  Peter says, "Lord, You know I like You a lot."  You see, the thing is he can't admit anymore because his works wouldn't back it up, would they?  I mean, he's not about to say, "Lord, look at my heart, You know that I really, really super love You, if that's really, really a super love, wow, it's in pretty bad shape."  So Peter doesn't acknowledge that, he couldn't do that.  He's a broken man, he's humbled now, the courageous pronouncements are over and his mouth is silent.  A deep humility bows his broken and contrite heart and tears in his eyes very likely he says, "Jesus," he says, "You know in my heart I have a deep affection for You.  I can't claim to love You like that.  I can't claim the fullest kind of love.  My life doesn't back it up."

But you'll notice that he believed that he did love Jesus because he said, "Look at my heart, You know I have affection for You."  Now he couldn't say, "Look at my works," could he?  He couldn't say, "Lord, Lord, look at my life, doesn't it show that I love You?"  So he says, "Lord, You know in my heart I love You."  He has to appeal to His omniscience to indicate his love because it's not obvious.  You know, I used to think that was terrible.  When I was a little kid my parents would always say to me, "Johnny, just remember everything you think, God sees."  Whooo, you know, that's a scary thought.  When I was a little kid I had weird thoughts, "Oh no," you know.  I'm going to wear a hat so God couldn't see, you know.  You have this fear that everything God sees, and I thought, oh, that's a bad thing, that's a terrible thing.  And then I began to realize later on in my life that it's a wonderful thing because you know something?  I'm not sure God would know I loved Him if He couldn't see my heart because a lot of times my deeds don't manifest it.  There are times in my life when I have to say, "Lord, sometimes I'm not too glad You can read my insides, and then, Lord, I want You to know that sometimes I'm glad You can because You know I like You a lot.  I don't have the highest kind of love for You like I ought to have, but, Lord, You know I have affection for You.  You know I love You."  That's what Peter does.  And so he's broken and he says, "Jesus, You know I have affection for You, You know that, it's obvious."

Then He says at the end of verse 15, and I love this because this is how we know Jesus accepted that.  "Jesus said unto him, 'Feed My lambs,'" pasture My lambs.  You see what Jesus did here?  He called him.  He says, "Peter, I'll take you on that ground," He didn't say, "Oh, Peter, I'm sorry, if all you've got is phileo love, forget it.  Let's see, who will be next?  Thomas, you try."  No.  No.  He says, "Peter, if you're humble enough to acknowledge that your love isn't what it ought to be, that's exactly where I want you to be.  Take over the job.  Pasture My lambs."

You want to know something?  The Lord never expects us to love Him in the fullest sense of divine love before the service begins.  He only expects us to acknowledge that we don't love Him enough.  That's where we begin.  Did you get that?  If you're willing down in your heart to get on your knees before God and say, "Lord, I want to tell You right now I don't love You enough," at that point...if God will break you at that point, then God will build you again to use you.  But you've got to come to the place in your life where you recognize you don't love Jesus Christ like you ought to love Him.  And Peter was there.  And God said, "On that basis, do the job."  And so He says, "Pasture My little lambs, deal with My babies."  And all of the disciples at that point were immature lambs.  And the word "feed" here is a durative present which means it's a keep on word, keep on shepherding My sheep.  You know, shepherding the sheep is a constant feeding and a constant nourishing of the flock and Peter was called to do that and that's what every pastor/teacher has ever been called to do.  We have the strange idea somewhere that there's a dichotomy between being a pastor and being a teacher and we say So-and-so is a good teacher but not a good pastor, or So-and-so's a good pastor, but not a good teacher.  There's no such thing.  There's only a hyphenated word in the New Testament, teaching-shepherd.  Any shepherd who doesn't feed his flock isn't a shepherd at all, they'll all wither up.  And sometimes we get the idea that for a ministry, a pastoring ministry, is running around all the time visiting everybody and having coffee.  That's not a pastoring ministry.  A pastoring ministry is feeding the flock whether you're feeding them on a public basis or a personal basis, that's pastoring.  The other is running around having coffee.

And so, the Lord says, "Peter, I'll accept you on that basis, now you pastor My little lambs."  And that means you protect them, that means you feed them.  That's what it's all about.  So the Lord accepts him. 

You say, "Well it should have been done there."  No, how many times had Peter denied Jesus?  On three occasions, so Peter's going to get three shots to restore himself.  Verse 16, "He saith to him again the second time, 'Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?'" Again He uses agapao.  "He saith unto Him, 'Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love The