John 21:18-19
“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This is said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, “Follow me.”
A critical thing to remember at all times in our Christian walk is that the heart is deceptive (Jeremiah 17:9) and can’t be counted on as a gauge of Christian living. Indeed, there are going to be great moments of rapture and euphoria in your Christian days; Christ will come and meet with your heart and the Spirit will lift you up. Your emotions will soar among the clouds. This will happen in your life. Perhaps it will be an answered prayer or some other spiritual triumph. For Peter it was this moment, heartbreaking and exhilarating at once. He meets the Lord on the beach where He has made breakfast after a long night of fruitless labor. Have you seen a man coming in from an overnight shift? He doesn’t run home in joy, nor swim ashore as Peter did. Such is the impact of the presence of Jesus Christ in the life of the believer.
And such is the Kingdom of Heaven…it’s the presence of Christ, the fellowship with Him at long last, which is that one and great thing the redeemed heart yearns for more than gold or anything else under the sun. Joy comes to the renewed heart from the true and deep relationship with the God who has saved us. In sin, when we used to run from God and push Him from our thoughts so that we could live a life of make-believe, we only desired His blessings but not Him personally. Now we know Him and see the world, and our place in it, aright; we know He is sovereign and good and we love Him.
Who is this that we love, though? It’s the sovereign God of the universe, my friend. Jesus Christ is no mere earthly friend and Christianity isn’t the sentimental, morally therapeutic deism it’s often presented as in America churches. God’s goal and will toward us is righteousness through faith and that faith is often brought to maturity through trials. You were saved from your sin in one fell swoop by the actions of Christ on your behalf but your life now is the mark of that transaction. This act of redemption will play itself out moment by moment, day by day, through both victory and trial. You are called to a battle station, Christian, because this is still a sinful world and we must never forget that. The Christian is in a battleship, not a cruise ship. We will have pleasure and joy, of course, but the measure of these things is Christ and our trust in Him, not how much ease and comfort we experience.
What mega-church pastor would tell Peter what Jesus does here? After the glorious morning of delight and renewal, Peter’s heart must have been burning within him. He’s on the peak of that mountain of spiritual experience, isn’t he? Well, Jesus smacks him right off by telling him how he’s going to die. Jesus doesn’t hide the truth, He doesn’t pander to our emotions and expectations; He doesn’t negotiate His sovereignty. That mountain peak is faithfulness, not ease. Don’t trust your emotions because they’ll be driven by your circumstances and if you do that then the Devil will have a picnic with your wildly swinging moods. Jesus is sovereign! He tells Peter a glorious truth – that he’ll die to glorify Him. Then, He says, “follow me.”
We see in this episode the gist and character of Christian life. It’s restoration through faith in Christ, which brings us blessed fellowship with Him. But He won’t leave us the way we were. Inexorably, He will lead us into greater and greater righteousness and this will very often involve some struggle, some trial that He’s ordained. The purpose and goal of it all will be your sanctification, which is to learn that in all things we are to trust and glorify God. Notice that Jesus tells Peter the manner of his death but He doesn’t say it as if it’s a terrible thing. On the contrary, because it’s part of the plan of God, to the glory of God, Jesus presents the fact as a glorious one.
What are we to make of this? First, we do well to remember that God is in control of our every moment. He doesn’t ever lose track of us and have to go to Plan B. Second, we aren’t to be as petulant children in the great family of the Lord, wailing bitterly when we don’t get our way. If you’ve ever had a strong-willed child then you’ve had the great fortune to see the weak Christian who is all sunshine and rainbows when the circumstances of life are in their favor, but watch them scowl and cry as soon as one of their desires is dashed. Christian maturity is found in so trusting the Word of God, through which we learn the character of God, that we have joy in our hearts always. This isn’t “blind” or stupid faith. It’s the recognition of truth and that wonderful truth is that God is good and that we are His in Christ. With this knowledge, founded and rooted in the Word, fanned into flame by reverent and thankful prayer, we face the world and our particular circumstances unafraid.
Finally, we know what it’s like to fear the Lord. Until this point in life, we have feared the world. We have anxiety and worry because we secretly fear that some fact will come, some circumstance, accident, or trial, and overtake us, destroy us, even kill us. But, guess what? Without Christ, that absolutely will happen. The unbeliever is literally whistling through the graveyard of a world under the judgment of sin. No man will escape the wrath of God unless he is in Christ. Men will say, vapidly, even arrogantly, “It’ll all work out in the end”. They will say in the face of some tragedy that, “well, it could’ve been worse.” The truth is that absent the grace of God, it won’t work out and it will get worse. A lot worse.
But the Christian is like Peter on the beach. He has learned to so love and trust Christ that even this news is accepted in faith. What a difference from just days ago when Peter literally tried to fight to stop Jesus from going to the cross! And what changed him? It was trial and hardship. This is the lesson. In Christ, these valleys will strengthen our faith and bring us to more and more reliance on Him and less upon ourselves. Through trials, seen through the will of the Lord, known through the Word of the Lord, we will grow steady and glorify Christ in all things without grumbling and complaining.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:1-5
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