Do You Love Me?

The One who laid down His psyche for the sheep rose from the dead. On a shore in Galilee He turned to the man who had promised to lay down his own life for Him, and had failed. Three times He asked Peter whether he loved Him. Few conversations in the New Testament are preached more often, and few are more often misread.

If you have heard one sermon on agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay and phileo, it was very likely a sermon on this passage. It usually runs like this. In the first two questions, the preacher says, Yeshua uses agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o and asks for the highest, divine love. Twice Peter, still ashamed after his denial, can only answer with phileo, which the preacher calls a lesser, human affection. So on the third question Yeshua comes down to Peter’s level and asks, “Do you phileo φιλέω fil-eh'-o(love) Me?” He lowers the bar to meet a broken man.

It is a tender sermon, and the people who preach it want to comfort believers who feel they have failed. But it stands on a ladder that Scripture does not set up. In Chapter 6 we saw that Scripture uses phileo for the Father’s own love of the Son (John 5:20) and of those who believe (John 16:27); phileo is not a lower rung beneath agape. So the passage has to be read again, with the definitions Yeshua Himself had already given to the same disciples on the night before He suffered.

The Three Questions

John 21:15-19 So when they had finished breakfast, Yeshua said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you agapao(love) Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I phileo(love) You." He said to him, "Tend My lambs." He said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you agapao(love) Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I phileo(love) You." He said to him, "Shepherd My sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you phileo(love) Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you phileo(love) Me?" and he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I phileo(love) You." Yeshua said to him, "Tend My sheep." Truly, truly I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go." Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God; and when He had spoken this, He said to him, "Follow Me!"

The first two questions use agapao and the third uses phileo, while Peter answers all three with phileo, and after each answer comes a charge: “Tend My lambs,” “Shepherd My sheep,” “Tend My sheep.” Each charge is the work that answers the love Peter has just confessed. But the questions themselves must first be heard rightly, and they cannot be heard on their own, because John has already tied them to another conversation.

Bound to the Night of the Supper

On the night before He suffered, at the supper, Yeshua told His disciples that He was going away, and Peter made a promise.

John 13:36-38 Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, where are You going?" Yeshua answered, "Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later." Peter said to Him, "Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my psyche ψυχή psoo-khay'(soul) for You." Yeshua answered, "Will you lay down your psyche(soul) for Me? Truly, truly I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times.

In Greek Peter’s promise reads ten psychen mou hyper sou theso: my soul, for You, I will lay down. Later the same night Yeshua said this.

John 15:13 Greater agape(love) has no one than this, that one lay down his psyche(soul) for his philos φίλος fee'-los(friends).

“That one lay down his psyche(soul) for his philos(friends)”: the same verb, tithemi, to lay down; the same noun, psyche, soul or life; the same little word hyper, for. Without knowing it, Peter had promised the greatest agape there is, the love Yeshua would name only hours later.

Yeshua answered his promise with a prophecy: “a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times.” Three denials were foretold, and three denials came, in the courtyard of the high priest, where Peter stood warming himself at a charcoal fire (John 18:18). That night he kept his own psyche and did not lay it down. On the shore, beside another charcoal fire (John 21:9), come three questions. John records the number in both scenes, and it binds them together: a man who had broken his word three times is asked three times to speak again.

There is a second thread. At the supper Peter asked where his Lord was going, and the answer was, “you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.” At the end of the conversation on the shore the last words are, “Follow Me!” What was promised in chapter 13 is given in chapter 21.

What the First Two Questions Ask

Yeshua had already said what it means to agapao Him.

John 14:15 If you agapao(love) Me, keep My commandments.

And He had shown it in His own life.

John 15:10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My agape(love); just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His agape(love).

To agapao Him is to keep His commandments, and His commandments are His Father’s commandments, which He Himself kept, abiding in the Father’s agape. So when He asks, “do you agapao(love) Me?”, He is not asking whether Peter has a warm feeling for Him in that moment. He is asking whether Peter will keep His commandments, the commandments of His Father, as He kept them.

Peter answered, “Yes, Lord; You know that I phileo(love) You.” Nothing in the text treats this answer as a refusal or a confession of weakness. The Lord does not correct it. He gives Peter a charge after it, each time.

What the Third Question Asks

The third question asks, “do you phileo(love) Me?” Many preachers call it a lowered question. But Yeshua had defined His philoi, His friends, on the same night that He named the greatest love.

John 15:14 You are My philos(friends) if you do what I command you.

A friend, in Yeshua’s own definition, is someone who does what He commands, and the greatest agape is to lay down one’s soul for such friends. So when He asks, “do you phileo(love) Me?”, He is asking whether Peter is that friend: as My friend who does what I command, will you go as far as laying down your soul?

Yeshua is not lowering the bar on the third question. He is raising it as high as it goes, and the text itself shows it, because the very next thing He says after Peter’s third answer is about Peter’s death. When he is old, “someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go.” John explains at once what this means: “Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.” The man who had said, “I will lay down my psyche(soul) for You,” and had failed that night, would lay it down after all. Then come the last words, “Follow Me!”

John also records how Peter received the third question: “Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, ‘Do you phileo(love) Me?’” John names the cause of his grief: He said to him the third time, “Do you phileo(love) Me?” And he was the man who had denied his Lord three times. This time his answer begins with more than the first two did: “Lord, You know all things; You know that I phileo(love) You.” He rests his answer on what his Lord knows.

Love and the Road Ahead

The conversation on the shore, then, is not a story of lowered expectations. It is a commissioning, a restoring of Peter to the call to obey even unto death. Each time he confesses his love, he is given work to do, and at the end he is shown where the road leads and told to walk it. Peter was not given a softer definition of love because he had failed. He was given the same one, “If you agapao(love) Me, keep My commandments,” and with it a charge and a promise that he would finish what he had once promised at the supper.

Three times the Lord answered Peter’s love with a charge about sheep: tend My lambs, shepherd My sheep, tend My sheep. Every flock needs food, and Scripture itself says what those sheep were to be fed, beginning with the youngest of the lambs.