Restored

If you ever doubt God’s willingness or ability to forgive and restore you when you’ve pathetically failed, just read your Bible a little more carefully.  Sure, God expects us to live upright and moral lives.  We are supposed to be people of integrity, reliability and love.  But the Bible is also brutally honest when it tells us that we do fail… that if we say we’ve not sinned we lie and the truth is not in us.  So when you’ve failed badly how certain are you of God’s forgiveness and restoration?

Perhaps you readily accept that God converts even the hardest sinners, forgives them and brings them into relationship with Himself.  Examples..?  Well, for starters there’s the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom.  And what does Jesus say?  “Today you’ll be with me in Paradise!”  Words spoken to a man being executed for his crimes against God and humanity… to a man who had not been baptised… who had never darkened the doors of a church.  And yet…. welcomed by Jesus.  It’s a wonderful example of restoration and of an ‘eleventh-hour’ conversion.  Or there’s that dramatic story of Saul of Tarsus who is off to Damascus to catch himself some Christians to drag off to jail.  But in a blinding flash of light Jesus appears to him on that Damascus road and Saul of Tarsus becomes Paul the apostle, missionary and church planter.

Okay, but those are stories of people who came out of unbelief and whose eyes God opened to the wonderful truth of the gospel.  They are conversion stories of people brought out of darkness into God’s wonderful light.  But what about someone who is already a follower of Jesus but who fails miserably?  Should we then despair of God’s pardon and restoration?

I’ve often wondered whether the story of the Apostle Peter’s denial of Jesus has been recorded in the Bible not only to show us that the suffering of the Saviour was more than just the physical suffering Jesus endured at the hands of the Roman soldiers.  It certainly does that very well.  Jesus, in His sufferings, also endured the pain of having his closest associate, claim three times that he didn’t know Jesus – and the third time Peter even backed up his claims with some oaths.  That had to hurt.  But the blessing in that story is Jesus restoring Peter.  You can read about it in the 21st chapter of John’s gospel.  Jesus three times asks Peter: Do you love me...?  And as Peter (now tentatively) affirms that he does, Jesus commissions Peter to feed His flock.

The willingness of Jesus to forgive and restore Peter is quite profound.  Jesus already set the scene for Peter’s restoration in the garden of the empty tomb on Easter morning.  The angels who spoke to the women who had come to put spices on Jesus’ body, said: Tell his disciples – and Peter – that He is going before you into Galilee.  Why did they single out Peter?  It’s the wonderful grace of Jesus to reassure a disciple who must have been feeling just so lousy for having denied his Saviour, Lord and Friend.  Wonderful, to know that the angels had singled him out!

But there’s an added little touch in John chapter 21, where Jesus restores Peter to his calling as a disciple.  There are only two places in the New Testament where the Greek word for a charcoal fire is used.  One is in the scenes of Jesus’ trial before the High Priest.  John 18 tells us that the soldiers had made a charcoal fire to warm themselves from the cold.  That charcoal fire became the setting for Peter’s denial of Jesus.  But then John tells us that when the disciples have gone fishing after Easter morning and at the instigation of Jesus make a large catch of fish they then go the beach to meet with Jesus and again there is a charcoal fire burning.  It’s as if Jesus is replicating (to a small extent) the scene of Peter’s denial of Jesus… in preparation for his restoration.  Of course there is a difference too.  This charcoal fire is not for warmth from the cold.  Jesus has prepared breakfast for them on that fire.  However it seems to me quite deliberate – that charcoal fire is a reminder to Peter of another charcoal fire.

Wonderful grace of Jesus...!  Don’t ever doubt that He will forgive and restore you.

John Westendorp
2MaxFM 1/2/2026

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