Discipleship—Identity: John 21.15-19

This week we’re continuing to think about discipleship, the business of following Jesus together. Along the way we’re considering the core convictions about GOSPEL … GOD’S WORD … OUR IDENTITY … and MULTIPLICATION that must grow for us to progress in our discipleship relationships.

Today’s thought on IDENTITY is a big one! To make a follower of JESUS you must first BE a follower of JESUS.

Simon Peter, the most colorful of all Jesus’ disciples, illustrates this truth in the Gospel of John. In seven passages that work like windows to the discipleship process, Peter moves from knowledge about Jesus (1.35-42), to commitment to Jesus (2.11; 6.66-69), to seeing his life shaped by Jesus (13.6-8, 14; 18.25-27; 20.1-10; 21.15-17).

Along the way, Peter will enter into Jesus’ mission, fail miserably to follow Jesus, but then be restored FIRST to Jesus Himself, THEN to Jesus’ mission. John 21.15-17 is the critical passage. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter three times. “Feed my sheep … tend my lambs … follow me,” Jesus commands Peter in reaffirming and recommissioning him.

All this leaves us asking the very question Jesus asked Peter: DO I LOVE JESUS? It’s in loving Jesus first for His own sake that I’m made ready to take someone else along in following Jesus.

Get this thought right, and it’s a lights-out, mic-drop moment for each of us as we take seriously Jesus’ mission of bringing others along in our own Woodland culture of discipleship-relationships. Get it wrong, and we’ve taken our eyes from Jesus and endangered others meant to follow Him.

Here’s a few questions to share with others as we think about our IDENTITY as followers of Jesus:

  1. As we survey the career of the Apostle Peter in the passages above, where do we see Peter finally understand that he must first love Jesus before serving Jesus in Jesus’ mission?
  2. What might be the dangers of trying to take someone else along in a discipleship relationship without first loving and following Jesus yourself?
  3. Why is JESUS worth following anyway? Why not just remain respectably detached and make a good “religious” show of following Jesus for others to see?

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