(A commentary on John 21:15-25)

In the first part of this chapter, seven of the Lord's disciples had come home to Galilee. They had gone fishing, seen Jesus on the shore, followed his instructions to fish on the right side of the boat, dragged a net loaded with 153 fish to shore, and... as the second half of the chapter begins, they have just finished breaking their fast with Him. Now they are relaxing.

Jesus says to Peter,"Do you love me?" and Peter, perhaps a little startled at the question, thinking that the answer is obvious, answers "yes", and Jesus responds, "Feed my lambs". Twice more this sequence is repeated, but with some changes. Then, after this unusual conversation, the Lord tells them all a little parable about being young and later being old. Then the Lord tells Peter to follow him, and Peter, apparently jealous, asks what John is supposed to do. The Lord mildly rebukes Peter’s jealousy by saying, "If this man tarry until I come what is that to you?", but then He tells John also to follow him.

Finally, the gospel of John, and indeed the collection of all four gospels, closes with an explanation by John that he is the writer of this gospel.

So now, let’s look more closely at the conversation, the parable, and the outbreak of jealousy.

Only two of the seven disciples, Peter and John, are mentioned in this part of the story. Peter represents faith, or truth, but truth about spiritual things that we really believe are from God. John represents good, or love to the neighbor. The former resides in the understanding part of the mind and the latter in the will part of the mind.

In telling Peter to feed His sheep, the Lord is saying that to follow Him means to preach the truths that all the disciples now know about the Lord, His coming, and about how a life should be led, in order to be a follower of the Lord in a new church. In the conversation the Lord is direct and probing. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" I think Peter is being asked whether he loves the Lord, Jesus, more than he loves his fellow Galilean friends, though it’s ambiguous, it could mean "do you love me more than these other six do?’ When Peter answers the first time he says "Lord thou knowest that I love thee."

With this first of the three probing questions, the Lord answers "Feed my lambs," while after that the response is "Feed my sheep." Sheep and lambs both represent people who are in a love of doing good, but while sheep means those who love to do good for the sake of the neighbor, lambs mean those who do good for the sake of the Lord. The first is spiritual good, and the second is higher, and is called celestial good. But people who wish to do good at first don’t know what is good; they need to learn that from the Word and be taught. This is why Peter is told to "feed them", which is to say that truth must indicate how good is to be done. In order to do things that are good, the will's wanting to, and the understanding's knowing how to go about it, must be conjoined. For a successful Christian life, or on a larger scale, a Christian church, 'Peter' and 'John' must work in harmony.

Then comes the parable. "When you were young you got yourself ready and did what you wanted on your own. But when you become old, you have to reach out for help and another shall carry you where you don’t want to go."

This doesn’t seem to fit in here, but of course it does, and in two ways. The first way is given in the Biblical text; it is about the Lord’s death, that all the prophecies were leading Him to His crucifixion, as is mentioned. The second way is a lesson for all of us. When we are young, confident, and strong, we feel that we can do what we want and don’t need any help. Temptations to do evil we ourselves can deal with. But when we grow wiser we realize that all our strength comes from the lord, and if we continue to depend only on ourselves, the temptations from the hells will be too strong and we will be led into doing what the hells want for us, not what we want. We must learn at the start to follow the Lord and depend on Him. This he says at the end of the parable, where it seems not to fit until we understand the parable. "And when He had spoken this He saith unto (them), follow Me." That’s what we need to do also.

Peter is happy to do this preaching of the truth and maybe feels that he has been singled out, but he also realizes that John also loves the Lord and is loved in return. So he asks "And what is this man supposed to do?" It seems that the needed harmony is not yet present, and that Peter is jealous of the bond, and probably hopes to be assured that he is number one... but that doesn’t happen. Peter is simply told that it doesn’t matter; he needs to do the job he has been given.

I’m reminded of the story of Jacob and Esau, in Genesis 25, where Esau is the firstborn and will inherit the birthright and blessing from Isaac, as his due. Jacob by craft devised by his mother deceives Isaac and steals what is Esau’s. Then he runs off to Padan-Aram and stays there with his uncle and becomes rich. It is only on his return journey that he wrestles with the angel and has his name changed to Israel, that he again meets Esau. The change of name means that now that Jacob is rich with truth from the Word, now with the friendly meeting with Esau, also rich, that the two twins can in parable, be merged into one personage, called Israel, meaning the joining of good and truth in the mind.

Esau means something similar to John, they both represent goodness or true charity. Jacob means something similar to Peter, they both represent truth learned from the Word. Any seeming enmity between them as to which is more important can make them both useless, and in a person who is becoming angelic (as everyone should be aiming for), there is no enmity. Truth enables good, and good inspires truth in order to get something done. Although we can think and speak of them separately, they are (perfectly in the Lord and less so in angels) conjoined into a oneness so as to be seen as married. The marriage of the Lord's Divine good and Divine truth is the origin of all creation. Yes, all creation.

This marriage of good and truth, and the need for both to work in our lives, in balance and harmony, is a core New Christian concept.

In the Gospels, there is just one more story that takes place after this one. In it, the rest of the disciples join the seven mentioned here to hear the Lord’s last commands.

5649. 'And they said, Over the matter of the silver put back in our pouches [at the beginning] are we brought to [this place]' means that because truth in the exterior natural appears to be something freely given, they were being made subservient. This is clear from the meaning of 'the silver put back' as truth freely given, dealt with in 5530, 5624; from the meaning of 'the pouch' as the opening to the exterior natural, dealt with in 5497; and from the meaning of 'brought to' as being linked and made subservient to, dealt with immediately above in 5648.

[2] The implications of all this are as follows: Because it had been perceived that the facts present in the exterior man which held truths within them had been freely given and were therefore being led on to become joined to the internal, which would make them subservient to it, it was consequently perceived that, as stated just above, they would be deprived of their freedom and so of all the delight that life holds within itself. But man has no conception of such a thing, that is to say, of its being perceived that facts holding truths within them can be given freely and that this happens in the natural, in either the exterior part or the interior part of it. The reason he has no conception of this is that he does not enjoy any kind of perception like that, for he does not have the vaguest idea about what is given to him freely, let alone about what is stored away in the exterior natural and what in the interior natural. The common reason why he does not have any perception of this is that his heart is set on worldly and earthly things, not on celestial and spiritual ones, and therefore he has no belief in any influence coming from the Lord by way of heaven and so no belief whatever in the gift of any such things to him. Yet in actual fact all the truth which he arrives at by the use of reason based on factual knowledge and which he imagines he arrives at by his own power of understanding is something that is given to him. And man has even less ability to perceive whether that truth is stored away in the exterior natural or in the interior natural, because he is ignorant of the fact that the natural has two parts, namely an exterior part which leans towards the external senses and an interior part which leans away from these and turns towards the rational.

[3] Since man has no knowledge of any of these matters he cannot have any perception at all regarding such ideas; for acquaintance with a reality must come first if there is to be any perception about it. But angelic communities are properly acquainted with and have a right perception of those matters. They are acquainted with and perceive not only what is given them freely but also in what place this exists, as the following experience makes clear: When any spirit who is moved by good, and therefore has the ability to do so, enters some angelic community, he enters at the same time into all the knowledge and intelligence belonging to this community, which he had not possessed before. At such a time he is not aware of anything different from this - that he was already in possession of such knowledge and understanding, and through his own deliberation. But when he stops to reflect he realizes that it is something freely given him by the Lord through that angelic community. He also knows, from the angelic community where he is, whether that truth exists in the exterior natural or in the interior natural; for there are angelic communities situated in the exterior natural, and there are those situated in the interior natural. But their natural is not like man's natural; rather it is a natural that is spiritual - one that has been made spiritual by having become joined and made subservient to the spiritual.

[4] From all this one may see that the matters mentioned here in the internal sense describe what actually happens in the next life. That is to say, those there are quite aware of what is freely given them and also of where it is stored away, even though man at the present day knows nothing at all about such matters. In ancient times however those who belonged to the Church did know about them; their factual knowledge told them about such matters, and so did their religious teachings. They were people of a more internal frame of mind; but since those times people have become progressively more externally minded, so much so that at the present day they live in the body, thus in what is the most external. A sign of this is seen in the fact that people do not even know what the spiritual is or what the internal is; and they do not believe even in the existence of such realities. Indeed people have moved so far away from things on a more internal level to what is most external within the body that they do not even believe in the reality of a life after death, or in the existence of heaven or hell. Indeed because of their departure from things of a more internal level into what is most external they have become so stupid. So far as spiritual realities are concerned, as to believe that man's life is similar to that of beasts, so that in death man is no different from them. And what is so surprising, the learned believe these kinds of things more than the simple; and anyone whose belief is different from theirs is thought by them to be a simpleton.