Peter had been brought to see Jesus by his brother Andrew, and both brothers were invited to spend the day at the place where Jesus was lodging that week. Intrigue drew them to Bethsaida, but they did not yet know that in God’s providence, greater things were planned for them. Roughly contemporaries, Jesus and Peter had been raised less than twenty miles apart, but they had apparently never met. In those silent years of preparation, Jesus kept His identity a close secret. But on this day, His identity was a matter of public record. Peter came face-to-face with Jesus and became a disciple.
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to meet Jesus in person? Every Christian does. All kinds of questions run through your head:
What does He look like?
How tall is He?
What does His voice sound like?
Peter knew the answers to these questions. Meeting Jesus was a life-changing moment for him.
Paintings of Peter show him as an older man, full-figured and slightly balding. There exists to this day, in the catacombs in Rome, a graffito with the name PETRUS in bold red. Rome is where Peter was crucified at the hands of Emperor Nero in AD 64. But Peter first encountered Jesus more than thirty years earlier. As we meet him for the first time in John’s gospel (John 1:35–42), he was probably around thirty years old, roughly the same age as Jesus.
Peter and his brother Andrew, along with the two brothers James and John (elsewhere known as Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, a nickname given to them by Jesus because of their committed preaching; Mark 3:17), had an established fishing business in Bethsaida, Galilee (John 1:44). Bethsaida had been raised to the status of a city by the infamous Philip the Tetrarch, who later married the equally infamous Salome, the one who asked for the head of John the Baptist on a plate.
Peter was a fisherman. Scholars often doubt that Peter could write the complex Greek of the epistle known as 2 Peter. But Bethsaida was a thoroughly Hellenistic city. Peter would have been taught Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, as well as possibly some Latin, in the established synagogue education system. Even today, lack of a formal education doesn’t mean that someone is uneducated. I have known many who never went to college whose language skills and knowledge of Scripture were profound. My late mother left school at sixteen to care for her ailing father, but she could hold her own on literature and music. Just because Peter and some of the other disciples earned their living fishing the Sea of Galilee does not mean that they were poorly educated.
Peter’s Aramaic name was Simōn and denoted the idea of “obedient.” Transliterated into Greek, it became Symeon. Jesus called him “Peter” (initially at the time of his calling as a disciple [John 1:42] and later reaffirmed at Caesarea Philippi [Matt. 16:18]) because He either saw something in him or desired something from him. The name means “rock” or “stone.” Its Aramaic equivalent was Kephas (its English cognate is Cephas). “Andrew,” the name of Peter’s brother, is an entirely Greek name, indicating some degree of Hellenization (Greek cultural influence) on the part of their parents.
But something had happened that had taken Andrew and Peter down south to Bethany, on the eastern side of the river Jordan. An extraordinary preacher had emerged by the name of John the Baptist. Huge crowds were going into the countryside to hear him preach and receive the baptism of repentance he offered.
Priests and Levites were sent from Jerusalem to inquire about his identity (John 1:19). Some wondered whether he might be the long-awaited Messiah, the One prophesied in the Scriptures who would deliver the people of Israel from their sins. But he was not (v. 20). Neither was he Elijah. Since the prophet Elijah had not died but instead been taken into heaven alive, a belief emerged among Second Temple Jews that he might return one day. An empty seat was kept for him in Jewish homes at the celebration of Passover.
John was none of these. Instead, he identified himself as the one depicted by the prophet Isaiah as “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23, quoting Isa. 40:3). Furthermore, John the Baptist pointed to another, One who stood among them, “the strap of whose sandal [he was] not worthy to untie” (John 1:27). He was referring to Jesus, who had also come down from Galilee to hear His cousin preaching in the wilderness.
John the Baptist was the forerunner, the one who prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry. He preached a message of repentance, calling Israel to turn from its sins, and offered a baptism of repentance in the Jordan River. On this occasion, Jesus was there and asking for baptism. After John identified Him as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), something extraordinary happened: the Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove (John 1:32). “And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God,” John declared (John 1:34). And elsewhere, we read that a voice was heard from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11).
Why was it necessary for Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, to receive a baptism of repentance? Why should He undergo this water ordeal of judgment? The answer is substitution. He was identifying Himself with our sin. Even the Baptist balked, protesting, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Matt. 3:14). But it was for this reason that Jesus had come: to provide a way back from the wilderness to Eden. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
The long-awaited Messiah had come!
An Eyewitness of Jesus
Peter came to Bethsaida to see and hear John the Baptist. But he did not know that God had other plans for him, plans that would change his life completely.
It was the day after Jesus’ baptism. Andrew and an unnamed disciple, probably John (John 1:35, 40), overheard the Baptist refer to Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:36).