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§50 Jesus, Peter, and the Beloved Disciple (John 21:15–25)

There is unfinished business with Peter. The scattered disciples have been brought into unity, but Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus (13:36–38; 18:15–18, 25–27) is a special case that must now be dealt with. The three denials must be canceled by three affirmations. In addressing Peter each time as Simon son of John (vv. 15, 16, 17), Jesus speaks to him as if he were no longer (or not yet!) a disciple, for he goes back to the name Peter had when he and Jesus first met (cf. 1:42).

The framework for the set of questions is the principle, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (14:15). Jesus had said: “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.… I too will love him and show myself to him” (14:21; cf. 14:23). The form of the first question to Peter, Do you truly love me more than these? (v. 15), presupposes that all seven disciples love Jesus—as evidenced by the fact that Jesus has just revealed himself to them (v. 14). The purpose of the question is not to set Peter in competition with the other disciples (cf. Mark 14:29) but simply to single him out from the rest and examine his love in particular. The question marks a transition from the appearance narrative to the last half of the chapter, a transition that Peter’s impetuous actions in verses 7 and 11 might have led the reader to expect.

The thrice-repeated pattern of question, answer, and commandment can be shown as follows:

Jesus’ Question	Peter’s Answer	Jesus’ Command
1. Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?	1. Yes, Lord … you know that I love you.	1. Feed my lambs.
2. Simon son of John, do you truly love me?	2. Yes, Lord … you know that I love you.	2. Take care of my sheep.
3. Simon son of John, do you love me?	3. Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.	3. Feed my sheep.

There is a fondness for synonyms in this exchange—two different Greek words for love, two words for feed/take care of, and different words for lambs and sheep—yet the narrator’s interest is in the repetition of the same thought, not in subtle differences in meaning of particular words. Peter is saddened (v. 17) by the persistent repeating of a question he has already answered, but the purpose of the repetition is to match his earlier triple denial and to elicit from him a firm commitment to continue the Shepherd’s work during the time of the Shepherd’s absence. If he truly loves Jesus, he must obey Jesus’ commandments, and for him the single command is Feed my sheep (cf. 10:7–16). Peter is here given a pastoral responsibility among Jesus’ followers, to help see to it that what the unbroken net represents will come true in fact—that is, that none who belong to Jesus will be lost.

A good shepherd, Jesus had said, “lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11, 15), and it is not surprising that the mention of Peter’s pastoral responsibility leads into a reflection on his eventual death (vv 18–19; cf. 13:36, “you will follow later”). Peter himself had adopted the terminology of the shepherd discourse in 13:37 (“I will lay down my life for you”), yet without any specific awareness of responsibilities to his fellow disciples. Now Jesus returns to the subject of Peter’s death in its proper context and against the appropriate background of his ministry as faithful shepherd to Jesus’ flock. Jesus speaks solemnly to Peter, using the same formula (“I tell you the truth”; Gr.: amēn amēn) with which he had earlier predicted Peter’s denial (13:38; see note on 1:51). The saying that the formula introduces is based on a kind of proverb about youth and old age, but to Peter it must have seemed more like a riddle. Two conditions of humanity are being contrasted (v. 18):

When you were younger you dressed yourself	when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you
and went where you wanted	and lead you where you do not want to go

The contrast seems perfect except for the expression you will stretch out your hands, which has no precise equivalent in the “youth” column. It appears to be an old man’s gesture of helplessness or resignation preliminary to receiving assistance from others—at the cost, inevitably, of personal freedom. But the narrator, conscious of being inspired by the Spirit, has taken it as a sign of death, possibly by crucifixion. Jesus said this to indicate, he says, the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God (v. 19; the word indicate in Greek is sēmainōn, lit., “give a sign”). But in contrast to 12:33, where the same terminology is used of Jesus’ crucifixion (Jesus “said this to show [Gr.: sēmainōn] the kind of death he was going to die”), Peter’s death does not consist in being “lifted up” (cf. 12:32). Jesus’ crucifixion is unique because it accomplishes and proclaims God’s once-and-for-all victory over death. Peter’s crucifixion (if that is the mode of death indicated) is simply the result of a disciple being faithful to his master, yet like the death of anyone loyal to Jesus, it will glorify God (v. 19). In words drawn from other passages in the Gospel, it could be said that Peter would “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood” (6:53) or that, as Jesus’ servant, he would follow Jesus “where I am my servant also will be” (12:26; cf. 13:38). But Jesus says simply, Follow me! (v. 19b), and leaves Peter to infer what the reader of the Gospel already knows, that he will follow Jesus to a possibly violent death. Once again a good shepherd will die taking care of his sheep (10:11, 15; cf. 15:20; 16:2–4).

The final interplay between Peter and the beloved disciple (vv. 20–22) sets the stage for the Gospel’s conclusion. The presence of the beloved disciple dramatizes the fact that there is more than one model for true discipleship, for he too was following Jesus (v. 20). Whether Peter heard the riddle of verse 18 as an outright prediction of death or not, he could hardly have missed the implication that something unpleasant was in store for him, and he wanted to know if the beloved disciple was to share the same fate (v. 21). Because this exchange is preliminary to the most significant information to be given about this disciple—that is, that he is the Gospel’s author (v. 24)—he is identified (v. 20b) once again in terms of the scene in which he was first introduced (or introduced himself) to the Gospel’s readers, 13:23–25. The thrust of Jesus’ blunt answer to Peter is that the beloved disciple’s fate is none of Peter’s business: If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? (v. 22). Discipleship implies a specific level of commitment but not a specific outcome to one’s life. Everyone who would be a disciple must yield total obedience to the call and command of God, but the call and command is not the same for every person. For Peter, following meant an “imitation of Jesus” as shepherd, ending in a death that would be analogous (though not identical) to his. For the beloved disciple it meant something quite different. Jesus does not tell Peter what that something is, but he implies that the beloved disciple will remain (Gr.: menein) alive rather than die, at least that he will outlive Peter. It is in any case not Peter’s concern. Jesus brings the brief exchange to an end by reiterating the command that triggered it: You must follow me (lit., “As for you, follow me!”).

The narrative ends by looking back on the last words of the risen Jesus from the Gospel’s later time perspective. Over the years the report had gone out among Christians (on the basis of Jesus’ final statement to Peter) that this disciple would not die (v. 23). A clarification is given: Jesus did not promise that the beloved disciple would not die (i.e., that he would live until Jesus’ Second Coming) but merely said that if this should happen, it was Jesus’ choice (and implicitly the Father’s), not Peter’s. The clarification could have become necessary either because the beloved disciple had died by the time these words were written, or because there was a distinct possibility that he might die. If Jesus’ statement in verse 22 were taken as a firm promise, and if the beloved disciple then died, the certainty of the Second Coming itself would be called into question. Although Jesus’ Second Coming has not been a major theme in this Gospel (cf. only 14:3), the hope of it must not be made to depend on the survival of a single individual. Though Jesus had promised that “if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (8:51; cf. 11:26), he knew that physical death, at least, would be a continuing reality in the world and that none of his followers could be presumed to be exempt from it. His enduring promise was not that any particular person could be certain of living until his return, but that “he who believes in me will live, even though he dies” (11:25) and “I will raise him up at the last day” (6:44, 54).

It is not altogether evident who is making the clarification expressed in verse 23. Is it the beloved disciple himself, or someone else? Another voice makes itself heard in verse 24: This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. The beloved disciple is here identified, not only as the source of the material to be found in the Gospel of John as a whole, but as the one who actually wrote it. The claim is that he is the Gospel’s author, and therefore, one would assume, its narrator as well. Yet he is not the narrator in verse 24 itself. Someone else is vouching for his authority: we know that his testimony is true. It is likely that the same person or group that appended verse 24 is responsible for verse 23 as well, and perhaps for all the references to the beloved disciple throughout the last part of the Gospel. Since each of these is integral to the narrative in which it is found, a distinction should be observed in some places between the author, who first put the Gospel into writing, and the narrator (s) who edited what was written in such a way as to do justice to the author’s own participation in the story while at the same time respecting his anonymity. Though the Gospel in its essentials was first compiled by “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” its final form is probably the work of those who identify themselves as we in verse 24. Their actual identity can only be conjectured; their link with the beloved disciple is apparently close, and the most plausible theory is that they are the leaders of the church to which he belonged and which he perhaps founded, writing either shortly before or shortly after his death.

One of them adds a final word on behalf of the group in verse 25, a postscript modeled to some extent on 20:30. Its apparent purpose is to defend the Gospel against charges of incompleteness, or criticisms that this or that favorite or familiar story about Jesus (perhaps especially from the synoptic traditions) has been omitted. The I suppose with which the scribe brings the Gospel to an end allows him to stand out momentarily from the we of verse 24, and even indulge himself in a bit of literary imagination: Jesus’ deeds could fill enough books to fill the whole world, and more!