The Lord Knows ALL Things
He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?” And he said to Him, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep. (John 21:17 NKJV)
The Lord’s Commands
The Lord has told us to love our enemies, to love our wives, to love our neighbors and more importantly to love God. Normally this love is the devotional sacrificial love that God has for us as stated in John 3:16. God SO LOVED the world that He gave!
In our passage above, the Lord was asking Peter if he really loved Him in this sacrificial way. Peter had said that if all men were stumbled because of the Lord, he would not be stumbled and he further explains this by saying he would not deny HIm. See Matthew 26:33, 35. But he was stumbled and He did deny the Lord. So Peter tells the Lord that he is his friend, but he can’t honestly say that He loved the Lord. Two words for “love” are being used in this exchange. The Lord asked about Peter’s devotional love, but Peter answers with the word for friend. But while that is important, what has gotten my attention is the statement Peter makes when he says, Lord you know ALL things! Twice Peter had said, Lord thou knowest. But the third time he says, “Lord Thou knowest ALL things, You know that I am truly your friend.”
Peter’s Confession should Concern us All
It is easy today for people to say that they love others. People who take the position of being Christians say it quite frequently and then they act in ways that seem quite contrary to the love that they profess, whether it be the sacrificial love of 1 Corinthians 13 or the love of a friend as professed by Peter.
I admit that I have a hard time telling people I love them. It is one thing to express love, it is another thing to mean it and then to act like we mean it. Do I really have devotional sacrificial love for those who have intentionally harmed me over the years? I realize this gets into the whole concept of what it means to forgive. . .a closely related scriptural command. But the Lord made it clear that when we love our neighbors, we are to love those that it would be easy to hate. The story of the Good Samaritan shows us that those that we despise just might be the ones who love us while the ones that we love and respect just might be unwilling to help us when we need help.
The sermon on the mount sets a fairly high standard when it comes to loving our neighbors. It requires us to share if we have two of something and our neighbor has nothing. We are to be honest in business. We are to forgo savings accounts down here and lay up treasure in heaven. But to say that we love someone when we really don’t even want to be around them is probably hypocritical. But there is a lot of that going around.
Do People Really Love those that they say they Love?
I may be cynical but when someone says, “I am telling you this because I love you,” I feel that that expression of love is hollow and hypocritical. That may be just because of the way I was raised but if instead of people telling others that they love them, maybe they should act like it.
I know I have failed with regard to this “love thing”. But I do care about the fact that all around us and all over the world people are going into eternity unsaved. Much of the problem is man’s inhumanity to man. It involves war and often it involves contrived famine. But I pray daily that the inhumanity to others that we see in the world will actually draw people to the Lord in saving faith. I can honestly say that I love others in that way and that is why I continue to preach the old-fashioned Gospel that involves the realities of sin and death and heaven and hell. I preach that salvation depends on what the Lord did for us and not on what we are doing for the Lord. And if we really love others we will make sure that people know that the Lord loves them.
The Lord knows ALL THINGS, does he really KNOW that we love Him and those He has brought into this world? Maybe we should do a little soul searching even today.
Bruce Collins
Meditation for the week of March 22, 2026
If you would like further conversation about the issues in these meditations, contact me at collinsbd@yahoo.com and I will try to accommodate you with a virtual Bible Study.