Peter and his brother Andrew were fishermen when Jesus began His earthly ministry. They were ordinary men, not formally educated. They had been born and grew up in the Jewish faith and knew there would some day come a Messiah from the line of David, who would bring them salvation and rule on David’s throne forever.
Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing in Judea for some months and had gained a following among the Jews who were eagerly anticipating that Messiah. They even thought John might be the one, but he said no, there would be another, far superior to himself, and that they should prepare themselves to receive Him. When Jesus made His official appearance, John introduced Him:
“ And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.” John 1:36-37
One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter). John 1:40-42
“Cephas” means rock in the Aramaic language native to these men, “Peter” also means rock in Greek, which was the common language of the Roman empire. Jesus knew things about Peter that Peter did not know about himself. Not long after that first meeting, Jesus made the call official:
While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Matthew 4:18-22
While studying through the Gospel of Luke several months back, we learned a lot about Jesus’ relationship with the men He called to be His disciples. They had distinctive personalities, just as all humans do. They had strength and endurance, which were necessary to withstand the rigorous schedule Jesus kept through his three year mission to reach and save the Jews. They were befuddled at times, because they had limited human understanding of the Lord’s work and His purpose. He taught them and trained them and bestowed upon them special abilities for the work of evangelism, which they enjoyed exercising, but did not comprehend. It was Jesus’ authority in them, not theirs, that enabled these works.
Peter, the most outspoken and volatile of them all, was always ready to serve, eager to jump right into whatever project the Lord had for them at the time. Their Lord and they met fierce opposition from the Jewish leadership from day one and it never let up. They believed in Him enough to remain loyal to Him in the face of ridicule and hatred from the Pharisees, who were in charge of the Jewish religion. They knew He had a magnificent mission, and that they were part of it, but up to the very death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, they didn’t grasp what that mission was. Here’s what they knew:
John 6:68-69 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Matthew 16:15 “And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
By the time we arrived at the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in the gospels, we knew his disciples pretty well. We and they were familiar with the love and grace and power of our Lord, and we realized the human limitations of his disciples, even though they had been given a huge responsibility. Then in the book of Acts we saw them blossom into the Holy Spirit empowered preachers that Jesus intended them to be. We watched while they evangelized the Jews in diverse Gentile languages and began to function as the Church. All this was going on with Jesus’ disciples-turned-apostles while Saul of Tarsus was just beginning to notice that a movement of Holy Spirit emboldened Galileans was becoming a threat to the Jewish religious system.
This is the contrast between Jesus’ original apostles and the “one born out of due time,” the apostle Paul (I Corinthians 15:8). They were ordinary men who had followed and studied the Lord Jesus for three years, learning from Him and witnessing His work day-by-day. They watched Him die. They saw Him in resurrection. Paul was a fiery Pharisee, determined to destroy this new “religion” that posed a threat to all he held dear.
The Church was built upon the rock of faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. The Galilean disciples became faithful pastors and missionaries to both Jews and Gentiles. Paul was recruited for his mission after the birth of the Church, but Jesus brought him up to speed within a few years and he also became a dynamic missionary/evangelist/pastor/teacher, with the same zeal for Jesus Christ that Peter and the others had.
These men—Paul and Peter and other Church leaders spent the rest of their lives preaching the gospel and living the Christian Life and teaching their flocks to do so. They wrote wonderful epistles to their churches, which became the New Testament. Paul wrote the greatest number of epistles. Peter, James and John wrote several of them, and we don’t know for certain who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, but it may be the most informative one of all, regarding the fulfillment of Old Testament law and prophecy in Jesus Christ.
A short while after Paul wrote 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Peter wrote his epistles. My hope is to study along chronologically with these pastors as the Church developed and grew through that first century. Next in sequence: I Peter.
