Peter's Recovery - scene 5 (click here for next scene)

John chapter 21 where this story is told begins the story by always referring to Peter as “Simon Peter” consistently. Simon was his original name before he met Jesus. Peter was a name Jesus had given him soon after their first encounter and had some special meaning between them. So the name Simon Peter says something about how he was feeling and how he saw himself at this time. He felt like a strange mixture of his identity before he met Jesus and his new identity created by Jesus and developing during the time spent with Him.

But when Jesus began talking to Peter's heart pain, He addressed him only as Simon, son of John. This was his old identity and also reminded him that his old self was inherently rooted back to his earthly father and all the baggage that that involved. Jesus was asking if the old Simon loved Him with selfless, unconditional love. Peter knew the old Simon all too well. It was the old foul-mouthed, quick-tempered hot-headed cowardly Simon that had responded in fear and self-protection when he had under pressure denied his connection to Jesus. He discovered to his dismay that “Simon” was very much alive and well inside him and still very capable of all the foul cursing and ear-stinging swear word unique to sailors. He had been stunned to realize that even after 3 ½ years of developing his new identity called Peter in the company of Jesus that Simon the sailor, son of a sailor named John, had really not disappeared after all.

Three times Jesus addressed him only as Simon, son of John with no mention of the name Peter that He had given him. And after twice asking him if he loved Jesus with agape love and hearing that Simon could only love him with a friend and brother-type love, Jesus then asks if “Simon” can even do that much. Can the old Simon really be trusted to even love as a friend or as a brother? Is the old nature capable of loving God at all?

At this point it is the “Peter” identity that is deeply grieved. He now was led deep into his shame and pain, to the very core of who he was inside. His shame, he now realized, was not just a result of what he had done, but was rooted in who he was. He had to acknowledge and embrace his old identity and all its shamefulness, cowardice and selfishness in the presence of Jesus, the One who had created a new name and identity for him to experience. Peter was his the name describing what Jesus had placed deep within his heart as his true identity and that Jesus had been drawing out of him over the past years they had spent in close relationship. But now Peter recognized that he had not yet died to his natural, fleshly Simon identity and it had betrayed his own affections for Jesus.

After this final revelation of his untrustworthy old nature by Jesus' probing and painful questions, Peter bursts out with uncharacteristic weeping and throws himself totally on the mercy and complete knowingness of Jesus and asks Him to simply read his mind for Himself. He now knows that Jesus can understand the confusing and complicated, convoluted and contradictory emotions in his heart far better than Peter will ever be able to do. He still knows he cannot trust himself to love Jesus with the consistent, reliable, never-failing disinterested love that Jesus has always poured on him. But he also knows that something inside himself desperately wants to love Jesus and he now throws the answer for Jesus' question back to Jesus since He really is the only One who really knows the answer.

The truth about myself is beyond my ability to comprehend. So I must constantly trust Jesus' knowledge of me, agree with His revelations about me, and rest all my hope in His passionate love for me even in my shameful condition.

What is so fascinating is that from this point in the narrative onward he is only referred to as Peter, not Simon Peter or Simon, but only Peter. He now realized he can live from the new heart Jesus gave him as he continues to know and experience Jesus' complete acceptance of everything about him. He no longer has to hide in shame and disgrace. He has learned how to face Simon and let Simon be crucified with Christ as Paul described in Gal. 2:20. Now Peter, the heart identity Jesus created him to be, can begin to really grow and mature as he thrives in the unlimited love and power and grace of Jesus, his personal Saviour. He has experienced the conversion that Jesus foretold a few days previous in the upper room as they shared the Passover together.