Simon Peter asked, “Lord, where are You going?”
And Jesus replied,
“But why can’t I come now, Lord?” he asked. “I’m ready to die for You.”
Jesus answered,
—John 13.36-38 NLT
Most folks interpret this passage as a slam by Jesus: “So, kid”—ignore the paintings and films; those who followed rabbis in the first century were usually in their teens, meaning the thirtysomething Jesus was probably old enough to be Simon’s dad—“you think you’ve got the guts to follow Me to your death? You’re gonna bail on Me the first chance you get. Just you wait.”
Knowing that Jesus encourages rather than discourages, that is clearly not an accurate portrayal of Jesus.
The very next verse, which tends to get ignored because it’s part of the next chapter, is,
Luke points out that one of the first things Jesus did after He was raised was appear to Simon, (Lk 24.34) and of course there’s that whole discussion they had on the Galilee beach about whether Simon really loved Him, (Jn 21.15-19) which likewise tends to get misinterpreted. I’ll come to that passage in time.
How’d the popular interpretation of this passage jump all the way from grace to condemnation? Simple: When the writers of the bible don’t clearly spell out for us what Jesus’s motivations and thinking was, we automatically fill in that blank with our own motivations and thinking. Of course our motives are self-centered and self-preserving: “Simon’s gonna betray Jesus? How dare Simon betray Jesus. I would never betray Jesus. If I were Jesus, I’d give him a piece of my mind, the little rat.” Instead of identifying with Simon, as is appropriate ’cause we’re Jesus’s disciples same as he, we identify with Jesus. Which is the goal of every Christian, but we should hardly presume we’ve reached that goal already. And yet we do.
So if we were Jesus, we’d use our foreknowledge to knock Simon over the head with it. “Think you’d die for me? You won’t last the night.” Ha-ha, how clever. How humiliating for Simon. And, which we never notice, how unlike Jesus. When Jesus does something that appears to us to belittle, insult, or harm another person, we need to be very cautious. Jesus acts like God, not like us. He only does what He sees His Father do. (Jn 5.19) So if He suddenly switches tactics and behaves (so it seems) like us, why is that? Have we misunderstood Him? Indeed we have.
One of the biggest temptations for us humans is to remake God in our image, instead of vice-versa—remaking ourselves into His. Part of the reason God said not to make images to worship is because those images tend to be so much like ourselves. We pick the traits that we admire most. Then we find some proof-texts that suggest that God has those very same traits; that Jesus is that way, and wants us to be that way. Men want to be like William Wallace from Braveheart, despite the vengeance; and since they can’t worship Ares or Thor anymore, they take Jesus, cast aside anything about Him that strikes them as effete or submissive, take the rest out of context, and worship the Mighty Warrior Jesus. They never ask if that’s who Jesus really is, or who God actually wants us to be. They don’t see any warning sign in the fact that this spin on Jesus really appeals to us. In fact, they interpret that appeal as a sign that they’ve hit upon the truth—not that they’ve manufactured a carnal Jesus to appease their carnal desires.
We do this all the time: We justify bad behaviors and bad interpretations of God by assuming that deep down we’re right. But we are not right. We are wrong. Yet rather than follow the Holy Spirit towards rightness, we ignore Him and fiddle with our mental image of Jesus till it’s one we can worship. “I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up,” one well-known pastor has famously said… ironically disregarding how Jesus’s self-sacrifice, and our salvation, was achieved by Jesus allowing people to beat Him up.
Simon’s problem was also misinterpretation: The reason he was willing to follow Jesus anywhere was because he was still under the erroneous belief that Jesus, as the Messiah, was going to take over Israel and conquer the Romans. (Which He did, but not at all the way Simon was thinking.) Simon expected he was going to be at Jesus’s side, fighting Romans all the way, stabbing and slashing and cutting off ears. He was expecting to go down fighting for Jesus. (Which he did, but again not at all the way Simon was thinking.) Simon had an entirely wrong image of Jesus in mind.
In comparison, Jesus had an exactly correct image of Simon. He knew Simon would never live up to his own fantasies, and thankfully he’d never have to. The reason He said so, was so that Simon would remember this later when he inevitably failed Jesus, and realize that Jesus loved him even so. Later, on the beach, he’d admit that he didn’t love Jesus half as much as he thought he had; whereas Jesus asked Simon if he unconditionally loved/agapás Him, Simon could only confess that he familiarly loved/filó Him. (Jn 21.15-16) Gone was his bravado, but not because Jesus had mocked him into it; it was because Jesus was patient with him, and loved Simon enough to settle for what lesser love Simon could offer. (Jn 21.17) We need to accept that Jesus is not what we’ve fashioned Him to be; He follows His own rules, not ours. Nor can we claim we will follow Him anywhere if we’re actually following an illusion. We need to seek Him as He actually is, and follow Him as we actually are. No more nor less.