Peter Fed the Sheep

A charge given three times on a beach would mean little if nothing came of it. Did Peter actually feed the sheep the way he was told? He did, and we do not have to guess how. Peter left two letters in the New Testament, the first written to believers scattered across many regions, and in them we can see exactly what he fed the flock. They are not letters of vague comfort; again and again they say: know the word rightly, and obey it.

Be Holy

Early in his first letter Peter tells the believers what kind of children they are to be.

1 Peter 1:14-16 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the epithymiai(lusts, desires, strong cravings) of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy."

Peter does not make up a new standard of holiness. He gives his reason with the words “since it is written,” reaching back into the Torah for the command “Be holy, for I am holy,” and the first place those words stand in the Torah is this:

Leviticus 11:44-45 For I am the LORD your God; and you shall sanctify yourselves, and you shall be holy, for I am holy; and you shall not defile your souls (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) with any swarming thing that creeps upon the earth. For I am the LORD who brings you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; and you shall be holy, for I am holy.

These verses stand near the close of Leviticus 11, the chapter in which God sets out which living creatures are food for His people and which are not. Book 3 of this series opened that chapter at length. Here it is enough to see what Peter did with it. When the man told to feed the sheep wanted to teach them holiness, he did not invent a new standard; he fed them with the Torah, and from the very passage that brings the food laws to their close.

In the same chapter he joins obedience and love.

1 Peter 1:22-23 Having purified your psychai(souls) by your obedience to the aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth) through the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) for a sincere philadelphia(brotherly-love), love one another earnestly from a pure kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain), since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable — through the logos λόγος log'-os(word) of God, which lives and abides forever.

Obedience to the truth comes first, and a sincere brotherly love grows out of it. They were born again “through the logos(word) of God, which lives and abides forever,” and the word that gave them life is the word that feeds them.

Shepherd the Flock

As the first letter draws to its close, Peter passes the charge he received on the shore to the elders.

1 Peter 5:1-4 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Messiah, as well as a koinonos(fellow-participant) in the doxa δόξα dox'-ah(glory) that is about to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion but willingly; not for shameful gain but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of doxa(glory).

The verb for shepherd is poimaino, the word the Lord used in His second charge on the shore: “Shepherd My sheep.” The charge has come full circle. Peter calls himself “a witness of the sufferings of Messiah,” and he points the elders to the day “when the Chief Shepherd appears.” What he had been told, he now told others, and the charge did not end with him: every elder who shepherds the flock of God stands under the same Chief Shepherd and carries the same charge.

Remember, and Do Not Twist

The second letter feeds the sheep in another way: with right interpretation of Scripture and with remembering the commandments.

2 Peter 1:19-21 And we have the prophetic logos(word) made more certain, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your kardiai(hearts, soul-domains). Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture) comes from one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will) of man, but holy men of God spoke, being carried along by the hagio(holy) pneuma(spirit).

Peter calls the prophetic word “a lamp shining in a dark place,” and what must be known “first of all” is that no prophecy comes from one’s own interpretation. Since no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, and holy men of God spoke as the Spirit carried them along, no reader is free to make it mean what he likes.

Later in the same letter he says why he wrote both letters.

2 Peter 3:1-2 This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved; in both of them I am stirring up your sincere dianoia διάνοια dee-an'-oy-ah(thought) by way of reminder, that you should remember the rhemata(spoken-words) spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.

His whole aim in writing, by way of reminder, was that the flock would remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior given through the apostles.

He also warned them what it means to turn away from what they had been given.

2 Peter 2:21 For it would have been better for them never to have epiginosko ἐπιγινώσκω ep-ig-in-oce'-ko(knowing-without-misjudgment) the way of dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness) than having epiginosko(knowing-without-misjudgment) it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

To know the way of righteousness and then to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them is worse, Peter says, than never to have known it.

And his last warning, at the close of his last letter, is against the very opposite of keeping the commandments:

2 Peter 3:15-17 And count the patience of our Lord as Salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the sophia σοφία sof-ee'-ah(wisdom) given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters — there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other graphai(written-scriptures). You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of the athesmoi(lawless) ones and lose your own stability.

Peter says two things here. First, the ignorant and unstable twist the hard things in Paul’s letters “to their own destruction, as they do the other graphai(written-scriptures).” The verb is strebloo στρεβλόω streb-lo'-o, to twist, to wrench out of shape. Peter does not say Paul’s letters are wrong. He calls Paul “our beloved brother” and puts his letters among the Scriptures. He says that people twist them, and that the twisting leads to destruction.

Second, he warns against “the error of the athesmoi(lawless) ones.” Athesmos is one who sets aside what has been laid down, the law and its bounds. Peter’s final warning to the flock is against twisting the Scriptures and against being carried off by those who live without the law. He anchored the sheep in the commandments and guarded them against a lawless twisting of the text. A shepherd who said that at the end of his life had not forgotten what he was told to feed the sheep.

He Glorified God by His Death

The second letter also shows that Peter knew his death was near.

2 Peter 1:13-15 I think it right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my tent will come soon, as our Lord Yeshua Messiah made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.

He does not say where the Lord made this clear to him, but the Gospel of John records a word spoken to him on the shore: “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,” and John adds, “Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God” (John 21:18-19).

The New Testament does not narrate Peter’s death; the Lord foretold it on the shore, and in Peter’s own letter we see him ready for it, spending his last strength so that the sheep would remember after he was gone. Outside the New Testament, early Christian writers record his death: Clement of Rome, near the end of the first century, names Peter among the pillars of the church who were persecuted and contended even to death, and Tertullian, early in the third century, says that he was crucified at Rome under Nero. Scripture itself says what matters most: by that death he would glorify God.

So the third question on the shore, “do you phileo φιλέω fil-eh'-o(love) Me?”, received its full answer. The man who had promised at the supper, “I will lay down my psyche ψυχή psoo-khay'(soul) for You,” and who had broken that promise before the rooster crowed, kept it in the end. He fed the lambs and the sheep with the word, he taught them holiness from the Torah, he told them to remember the commandment, he warned them against twisting the Scriptures and against the error of the lawless, and then he laid down his life. He was a friend in the sense his Lord had given the word: he did what he was commanded, and he laid down his soul.

Peter’s generation was not the first to see that kind of friendship. Centuries earlier, in the court of a king who wanted the whole world to bow, four young men from Judah kept God’s commandments together as friends, even to the edge of death.