John 21:1-3 Peter announces that he is going fishing, and six other
of the disciples go with him. What's going on here? The resurrected Christ has
just appeared to them, at least twice. We might speculate: they were bored;
they lacked direction; their pattern of life was disrupted so they returned to
what they knew; they were worried about providing for their families. But the
fish weren't biting, even though they fished all night. Of course, Jesus had
promised that they would fish for men (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17), which they
weren't doing. Perhaps this was a unique period in human history, between
Jesus' resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so the
disciples' actions can't be understood by standards of any other time frame.
John 21:4-11 John presents us with a complex scene, seemingly simple
on the surface. Once again Jesus hides His identity from His disciples. He
speaks from authority and knowledge. When they do as He commands, they have a
catch so great they cannot bring it in, even though they had fished all night
and caught nothing. John, referring to himself in the third person, figures out
that when things like this happen, Jesus is involved. Even though his eyes
cannot recognize the form of Jesus after the flesh, yet John's spirit is
beginning to be sensitive to the ways of the Kingdom of God. So he tells Peter
that the man standing on the shore is Jesus. Peter believes him, but his
response is odd; he throws himself into the sea, evidently swimming to shore.
The other disciples drag the net full of fish to the shore. Jesus had already
started a charcoal fire with bread and fish upon it. Jesus tells them to get
some of the fish they had just caught and add them to the meal, which Peter
does. Amazingly, even though the catch was so large (153 fish) that they could
not haul it into the boat, the net was not torn.
It is certainly possible to make this
a metaphor for the disciples' true calling. Jesus had told them that they would
be fishers of men (Matthew 4:19), but they hadn't started doing that yet.
Pentecost had not yet happened. But in discouraging circumstances, when they
recognized the word of God and obeyed, even though they did not yet recognize
Jesus' presence, they were abundantly successful in fishing.
Why did Simon Peter put on his outer
garment and throw himself into the sea when John told him that Jesus was the
one calling him from the shore? John mentions that Peter was stripped,
literally naked (gumnos), for work, so he put on his outer
garment. He cast himself (ebalen) into the sea, with the implication of
being uncertain or uncaring about the result. Perhaps Peter felt spiritually or
psychologically naked before The Lord because of his threefold denial, and the
outer garment might give him some covering, like the fig leaves that Adam and
Eve put on when they realized they were naked. (Genesis 3:7) Of course, that
provides no real covering for the true problem of spiritual nakedness before
God. And then the hurling of himself into the sea may be symbolic of completely
abandoning himself to the winds of fate or the care of God - whichever is going
to determine the outcome in this case.
Is there some significance to the
number of fish? Factoring this number to primes gives 3 x 3 x 17, to which
there seems no particular significance. Peter's labor to bring the catch of
fish to the shore indicates that at least he still knew how to fish and bring
in the catch.
John 12:12-14 Jesus served breakfast. By this time, all of them had
figured out who He was. This was only the second time that He had eaten in
their presence since the last supper. (Luke 24:43), and only the third time
they had seen Him since His resurrection.
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