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Jesus Choosing Simon Peter
Written by Warren |Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments
This morning I read Luke 5:1-3. This is the scene before Jesus officially calls Simon Peter to follow Him. What’s interesting here is in verse 1 (Luke 5:1), Jesus was already meeting with some people. In fact, it was the people who came to Him to listen to His teaching and not Jesus coming to them. And Simon Peter wasn’t among the crowds. In fact he was busy washing his nets minding his own business (Luke 5:2) while others crowded around Jesus to hear His preachings. But inspite of Simon Peter’s reaction on the presence of Christ while He was met with the crowd, he didn’t bother to join the crowd and hear Jesus’ preachings. He wasn’t interested at all. But still, Jesus showed mercy on Simon Peter.
Why did Jesus not call some of the crowds that were listening to Him? They showed interest so why not pick some of them to be His disciples? Why choose someone who obviously shows no interest in Jesus nor His teachings? Practically speaking, Jesus would take this as an opportunity to gather for Himself a decent number of disciples. Perhaps Peter had some hidden talents that would flourish only by the time he was called to be disciple. But we see even after the calling of Simon Peter, he was continually being rebuked by Christ. In fact, among the twelve, Peter got the most rebukes. He even got rebukes from the apostle Paul.
The only reason why Jesus chose Simon Peter was because God chose Him out of His mercy and not because Simon Peter has some special talent. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see people reacting negatively on Jesus’ choice on Simon Peter. They would probably say “Look, Jesus choosing this disciple, he always get rebukes, he denied Christ 3 times, he even left Jesus to His crucifixion. He doesn’t deserve to be His disciples.” But so do we. None of us deserves to be His anyway. He chose us out of His mercy and will. And not because He thinks we will be an asset to Him someday. As humans, we will always fall short. And all we do is say “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8; NIV). So he is and so are we.
As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. – Romans 9:13-16 (ESV)
