Scripture: "Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me? He said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest aft things; Thou kntnvest that I love Thee. Jesus saith unto Him, Feed My sheep."—JOHN xxi. 17.
It was to Mary who loved much that Christ first revealed Himself. Then in Peter's first vision of the Lord, in His making Himself known in the upper room at Emmaus, in His appearance to the ten, and in the revelation of Himself to Thomas, it was ever to the intense devotion of the prepared heart that Christ manifested Himself. And now in His manifestation of Him¬self to Peter it is again love that is the keynote.
We can easily understand why Christ asked the question thrice, Lovest thou Me? It was to remind Peter of the terrible self-confidence in which he had said: "Though I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee"; of the need of quiet, deep heart-searching ere he could be sure that his love was real and true; of the need of deep penitence in the consciousness of how little he could trust himself; and then of love being the one thing need¬ful for the full restoration to his place in the heart of Jesus, the first and highest condition for feeding His sheep and caring for His lambs.
God is love. Christ is the Son of His love. Having loved His own, He loved them to the uttermost, and said: "As the Father loved Me, so love I you." He asked that they should prove their love to Him by keeping His commandments and loving each other with the love with which He loved them. In heaven and on earth, in the Father and in the Son, and in us, and in all our work for Him and our care for souls, the greatest thing is love.
To everyone who longs to have Jesus manifest Himself— "I am with you alway"—the chief, the essential requisite is love. Peter teaches us that such love is not in the power of man to offer. But such love came to him through the power of Christ's death to sin, and that power of His resurrection life, of which Peter became partaker. As he puts it in his first Epistle: "Whom having not seen, we love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Thank God, if Peter the self-confident could be so changed, shall not we believe that Christ will work in us the wondrous change too, and manifest Himself to a loving heart in all the fullness of His precious word: "Lo, I am with you alway." It is to love that Christ will manifest Himself, as the only fitness for feeding His sheep and tending His lambs.
