Simon, Son of Jonah, Do You Love Me?

We begin by addressing the significance of the threefold repetition of Jesus’ question to Peter, “Do you love me?” This repetition restores Peter from his previous threefold denial of Christ. We then turned to Jesus’ referral to Peter as, “Son of Jonah,” which Father Aaron explained as a deliberate comparison of Peter to Jonah the Prophet. Like Jonah, who resisted taking God’s message to his enemies, Peter also was resistant to Jesus’ command to reconcile with his Roman enemies and to accept the Gentiles. In both cases, Jonah and Peter were compelled by God to be obedient. We then closed our discussion of this passage from John by addressing the beloved disciples conclusion to his Gospel. Father stressed that John is not providing us with an invitation to speculate on those things which are not written in the Gospels. Rather, John is setting a seal on the four Gospels. As John writes in Chapter 20, “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”
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