Article February 2, 1952 Issue

"LOVEST THOU ME?"

HARRY L. RHODES

The tendency of mankind has ever been to cling to a sense of human personality, in spite of the second commandment of the Mosaic Decalogue. On many occasions our great Master, Christ Jesus, endeavored to lift the thought of his disciples above the human sense of personality to his divine nature, or Christ. His whole life purpose was to lift human thought to the truth of being.

On one occasion Jesus met with his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. The disciples had been on a fishing expedition, and after they had come to shore Jesus invited them to dine with him. Turning to Simon Peter, Jesus asked (John 21:15), "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" Peter's reply was, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee." Jesus' intention had been to reveal to this impetuous disciple, whose intense fondness for the Master was displayed when he wanted to fight the soldiers who had come to take Jesus, the true meaning of love—not human love or affection for the physical Jesus, but spiritual love and confidence in the Master as representing the Christ, or divine nature of man.

The dissimilarity of Jesus' and Peter's concepts of love accounts for the choice of words, as shown in the Greek text (John 21:15-17). In the fifteenth and sixteenth verses the word lovest, as used by Jesus, is in the Greek áyarãs which means "deeply love," and is "used of divine love," according to the Scofield Reference Bible.

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