Our Work

Our Work

Read: John 21:15-17

“Feed my sheep.”

John 21:17

“If we do not show love to one another, the world has a right to question whether Christianity is true.”

—Francis Schaeffer

IN WORD Just as the question in this verse—“Do you love me?”—reminds us of the great commandment to love God with everything that is in us, the imperative of the verse—“Feed my sheep”—reminds us that there is a second great commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. According to Jesus, those two commandments summarize the Law and the Prophets. So His dialogue with Peter before the other disciples here is an appropriate closure to His ministry in the Gospel of John. It, too, is a summary of the Law and the Prophets, a summary of every believer’s call to ministry—to love Jesus and to feed His sheep.

The correlation between the question and the imperative is clear. To have a heart for God is also to have a heart for that which concerns Him. And God has made it known throughout Scripture that He is passionately concerned for His people. The Great Shepherd tends to His sheep. He watches them, He feeds them, He protects them, He makes them lie down in green pastures and leads them beside still waters. He cares more deeply than we can know.

IN DEED Do we also have the heart of a shepherd? Are we passionate about the welfare of others? Do we tend to one another with the same concern with which the Great Shepherd tends to us?

Too often we envision our love for God as a separate endeavor from our love for others. But the two are intertwined. The first, if genuine, inevitably leads to the second. John spells this out in his first letter. To love God is to love our brother. If we are to have any genuine relationship with God at all, we must feed His sheep.