Behold Your King: The Restoration of Peter

April 12, 2026 (Sunday Morning)

Bible Text: John 21:9-19 | Brad O'Dell

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Behold Your King: The Restoration of Peter | John 21:9-19
Brad O’Dell | April 12, 2026

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to John 21. We’re going to be in John 21 this morning, and this is really kind of like a follow-up message to our Easter messages in the Gospel of John, and that’s because John has an extra little chapter in his Gospel, a little epilogue, and epilogues are interesting things.

Epilogues are this last little chapter of a book, where the author essentially has written everything he wants to write and he writes a conclusion, and then he wraps it all up, and then he also has an epilogue, and he says, “By the way, here are some other things I want to say,” and those are funny. In fiction books, often epilogues are there to give some sense of, after the main drama of the story, where the lead characters are going to go from there, give a picture of what their life here on might look like. Oftentimes it just ties up some loose ends that the main drama didn’t quite tie up in itself or weren’t as central to it. In nonfiction books, oftentimes epilogues are the time for the author to say, “Now that we’ve covered our main material, here are some questions for further consideration, or here are some things that this book didn’t get to address, or here are some remaining questions that someone might want to do some study in or to apply to later.” It’s a way for them to look forward with their content and send it forward.

We see John doing something of that in John 21 here. He’s looking at some of the main characters of his Gospel. He’s looking at some of the loose ends that he’s going to tie up, and we get that captured here in an interesting little account. You’ll see at the end of John 20—this isn’t on the screen, but I’ll just read it—this is right after the resurrection appearances of Jesus, and it says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

That’s just an awesome conclusion to a book, right? “This is why I wrote this account.” And then he writes more, and he says, “By the way, some people went fishing later on…” That’s a really interesting transition. It’s this epilogue that we’re looking at today, when we say, Why does John have this? What was he trying to include? Like I said, there are some loose ends he’s going to tie up, but I think what he’s going to do is he’s going to give us a really beautiful picture of what has been accomplished in Jesus’ death and resurrection applied to one of his apostles, and I think what it does is we see this theme of restoration come out, and it’s an important message for us as well to take from the account of Peter.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to start reading in verse 9 to kind of pick up the narrative. The disciples have gone out, they’ve done some fishing, they didn’t catch anything; Jesus shows up, he says, “Fish this way,” and they do, and they catch a lot of fish. That’s where we’re picking it up.

“When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, ’Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.’ So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, ’Come and have breakfast.’ Now none of the disciples dared ask him, ’Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

“When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ’Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ’Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ’Feed my lambs.’ He said to him a second time, ’Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ’Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ’Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ’Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ’Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ’Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ’Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.’ (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, ’Follow me.’”

We get here what is classically called the restoration of Peter; and of course, if we’re going to say the restoration of Peter, we have to remember the restoration from what. Really, the context of this passage is, of course, the preceding passages, the resurrection appearances of Christ. But I think the more direct context is before the crucifixion of Christ, back when Jesus predicted to Peter that he would betray him and fall away.

I want to look at that, because I think we need to see where Peter’s come from and to see why this account is important.

1. Peter’s Need for Restoration

So looking at some of the background—on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane, before Jesus is about to be betrayed. I’ve combined just a couple of the Gospel accounts to get the full account here. Jesus says this to Peter:

“’Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.’”

“[But] Peter answered him, ’Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.’ Jesus said to him, ’Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.’ Peter said to him, ’Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!’ And all the disciples said the same.”

t’s a really interesting account, and I just want to point out a few things about Peter before these events happen.

You see, first of all, his foolishness, right? He essentially brushes off some very serious warnings of Jesus. I mean, this is Jesus! He’s seen everything Jesus has done. He knows who Jesus is, to a degree. And Jesus predicts to him, “This is what’s going to happen to you,” and Peter essentially brushes him off. He’s like, “Ah, not worried about that, Jesus; it’s not going to happen.” You see a bit of his foolishness.

You see his arrogance—he thinks he’s better than his companions. “Listen, these guys might fall away from you, but I will not.”

You see that he’s brazen and rude. He essentially looks Jesus in the face after Jesus tells him these things, and he questions Jesus’ integrity. He’s saying, “Listen, I know what you said, but that’s not going to happen, Jesus.”

You see he’s self-righteous, he’s self-reliant. He thinks he’s got everything he needs to withstand what’s coming. So he doesn’t really pay it much heed.

We see how it turns out, this pride and arrogance. A handful of hours later—I’ll just read from Luke 22. This is right after he has denied Jesus three times, three different occasions, and this is how it reads.

“And immediately, while [Peter] was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ’Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.”

You see, that heart-piercing look of Jesus while he was being betrayed by Peter in his greatest moment of need would be seared on Peter’s conscience. And that’s what brings us to this moment in John 21.

The resurrection has happened. Peter’s seen the resurrected Lord a couple of times by now. Jesus, his friend, his Lord that he thought was dead, is now here, and he can talk with him, and they can eat together, and that is a wonder and an awe to Peter, and he’s got a sense that this changes everything. But you can also understand how that would just be a gut punch, would it not? Because, looking in the resurrection face of Jesus, those very eyes, Peter’s conscience would assault him, and it would whisper to him, every time he saw Jesus, “Betrayer. Deserter.”

You see, a failure like that is something that we might call a defining moment, and I mean that literally. It would define, maybe, who Peter is for the rest of his life, that he might live under the branding of an unfaithful coward. What Peter needed is, he needed a redefining moment if he was going to be effective in the kingdom of God at all. What he needed was restoration.

2. Our Need for Restoration

Before we move on and look at this account a little more directly, I also want to just talk about the fact that we are a people who need restoration. See, I think we can see ourselves in the experience of Peter. If we’ve walked long in the Christian life, we know what it is to fail spectacularly in our Christian walks. Like Peter, each one of us has denied Christ in some way. We’ve turned our hearts away from God and we’ve chosen other things besides him. We’ve done it intentionally, we’ve done it knowingly. We’ve shrunk back in fear when we could have identified with Christ a little more directly in some way. Perhaps even this week, following Easter Sunday, with the resurrection songs of joy still humming in the back of your head as you’re driving around through the week—perhaps even this week there was a time where you intentionally decided to indulge your pet sins instead of remaining in worship to the Lord. And you say to yourself, “How could I? On this week of all weeks, how could I?”

With Peter, we know what it is to be ashamed. We know what it is to have a bitterness of soul. We know what it is to feel some form of self-hatred, spiritual despair.

Maybe in a different way, like Peter, it’s our pride. We’ve trusted in our own strength instead of trusting in God. Many of us, maybe, have boasted, probably not outwardly, but maybe inwardly, that “I’m a little better than some of these people around me.” Maybe some of us have heard or felt the warning of the Spirit in some ways, when temptation’s coming, to be watchful, to take heed; and we’ve brushed it aside and we’ve just not turned to the Lord in dependence to seek his strength in that moment. Who knows how that situation went, but if we’re honest, we could say, “Yeah, Satan won that battle. He stole the glory that is due to God, and he did it by puffing up my own pride and causing me to ignore and neglect God when I should have turned to him and leaned on him.”

This is what it is, I think, to walk the Christian life and to experience sin and failure, to experience some of the weakness of our own hearts. And what we do is we come here on Sunday mornings and we sing these worship songs about what we believe in Christ, and we sing them truthfully and we sing them with conviction; but underneath the bubbling surface of the words we’re singing, I think oftentimes there’s a deeper, colder current running of shame and guilt, as we know, “Yeah, I could say it now, but I never seem to feel it later on.”

Guilt and shame—I think that’s a key thing that’s going on in Peter’s life and why this account is so needed, and I want to speak to those experiences, guilt and shame, those feelings, this morning a little directly.

I’ll give some definitions to it that I think will help us as we speak to it throughout the sermon. This is from Eric Johnson, a Christian psychologist who I found very helpful in analyzing these things. He says,

“Guilt is the feeling that one has violated an internal standard, whereas shame is a feeling of personal deficiency that results from a negative self-evaluation. Guilt is focused on one’s doing or not doing and is a consequence of an action that one deems immoral, whereas shame is focused on one’s being or identity and is based on beliefs that one has a flawed nature and is defective, maybe inherently defective or uniquely defective.”

I think, coming off the heels of Easter Sunday when we’re focusing on the resurrection, I want to speak to this idea of guilt and shame, because unmitigated guilt and shame has a very powerful ability to steal away our joy in Christ and our effectiveness in his kingdom. They can undermine the power of the new life that has been purchased for us in Christ.

If we remain under the weight of guilt, it keeps us under the burden of the law. If we remain stuck in the morass of shame, it leads us to hide from God and from others, and as we hide from God and others and we’re not truly known and we don’t truly engage rightly in relationship, it actually severely hampers our ability to love others well and to love God well, and maybe more importantly, to receive love from God and others, which is the very thing that would heal our souls.

Like Peter, we’re a people who need restoration. We need a release from this guilt and shame. We need a renewed sense of peace with God. We need to revitalize purpose as kingdom citizens. We’ve still got a part to play. The Lord still trusts in us. He can still use us. We still have a future. We need that restored to us.

3. Jesus Restores and Makes New

That’s going to bring me to my last point: Jesus restores us and makes us new. Let’s read the text again, just verses 15-17 here.

I just want to point out a few things here. There’s actually quite a bit that we can draw out of this passage, and I’m not going to cover what comes after, as interesting as it is. I just want to pull out a few things here and show how this affects Peter’s restoration before Jesus, and then how we can apply some of that to our own spiritual walks.

First—this is a confusing thing—when it says, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” there’s a question on what the “these” actually is. Is it more than the fish, more than my fishing gear, right? What are we talking about? I would just say what Jesus likely is indicating is “more than these other apostles around you.” And that makes sense, because it was not long before this that Peter had said, “Listen, though all these other apostles around you might not love you enough to hold fast, I love you enough to hold fast,” right? So Jesus is pressing on that and reminding Peter, “Remember what you said.” He is pressing home on that. I think that’s what he’s talking about with “these.”

You see here a different response than Peter gave originally. He doesn’t say, “Yes, Lord, I do love you more than these other apostles.” He says a strong affirmation that he loves the Lord, but it’s not referential to other people around him. It’s saying, “Lord, you know. You know my heart, and that’s the only claim I have.” His pride, his arrogance, his self-reliance has really fallen away at this point.

You start to see some of the reason why God might have sent Peter through the experience that he did, right? Jesus said to him beforehand, “Satan has come and he has asked to sift you and the other apostles like wheat,” and we’ve allowed him to, is the idea, “but I have prayed for you that after you have fallen, you would also restore your brothers.”

Why would God put Peter through something like that? Well, I think it’s because Peter had a lot in him that was good for the kingdom. He had a boldness, he had a clarity of mind, he had a decisiveness, he was a natural leader among the apostles; but with that came a lot of weaknesses of character, and the Lord needed to show him those. He needed to kill those if he was going to humble him and actually make him useful in the ministry. So he allowed him to go through this experience. You see Peter’s humility here.

The other thing here…it’s tough to know in what kind of scene this is transpiring. If we read on, it would indicate that maybe Jesus and Peter are walking along the shore by themselves while this is happening, but I actually think the stronger evidence is maybe that this is happening right there at the fire with the other apostles when Jesus asked these questions to him. As Peter’s pride was on display publicly in front of the other apostles, as his denial of Christ was a public event, so his restoration is going to be a public event, and that’s going to be important for Peter. It’s also going to be important for the other apostles who Peter would be a key leader with. They need to see Jesus restoring him back to ministry.

I want to focus on why Jesus goes through this three times. There’s a little bit of a difference of language: “Feed my lambs,” “Tend to my sheep,” “Feed my sheep.” I think there’s nothing that we can really pull out as nuggets of “interestingness” there. I think it’s saying essentially the same type of thing and just using some diversity of language for it. I think we’re supposed to see essentially the same type of question happening three times.

Why three times? Here are a few things that I think are happening.

First of all, three times Jesus drives home something of conviction to Peter. He drives home conviction over his sin, right? I kind of said it earlier: Jesus does press where it hurts. You can think about Peter through this. He doesn’t know Jesus is going to do it three times, so Jesus asks him the first time, “Do you love me more than these?” and he kind of gets why Jesus is asking, like, “Oh, yeah, I remember when I was a little too bold and brash and like, yes, Jesus, I love you, but I’m not going to answer with the same pride, of course, that I had before.”

But then Jesus asks him again, and you can see Peter being confused again. Like, “Yes, Jesus, you know that I love you.”

Then Jesus asked him a third time, and that’s when Peter knew. It says right there that Peter was grieved because he said it to him the third time. Peter remembers. “It was three times that I denied Jesus openly with curses,” and it’s three times that Jesus presses this home.

You know, in order for Peter to be restored, it seems that he has to see clearly what he’s being restored from. I think it’s important that Jesus doesn’t just move on or sweep it under a rug, like, “Hey, Peter, what’s in the past is the past. I don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to think about it.” No, in order to deal with this sin and bring healing to it, he has to bring it out to the light so he can deal with it clearly. So I think that’s one reason he does it three times.

Another reason I think he does this three times—I think there’s a grace in the iteration of three times. What happens here is Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to affirm his love for him three times, just as three times he denied his love for Jesus before. I think that was very important for Peter, right? It’s what he wished he would’ve done that night. It’s what he wished he would have shown that night, that “this is my guy. I’m all about him. I love him and I will die for him.” But of course he didn’t. But here he gets to see the resurrected Lord, he gets to see him, he gets to look him in the face and say, “Jesus, I know you see my heart truthfully, and I can look you in the face honestly and say, you know I love you.” And he sees that Jesus receives that and responds.

I also think three times there is encouragement that comes to Peter. What do we see Jesus doing three times? “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.” Three times Jesus is doing this for Peter: he’s entrusting to him what is most dear to Jesus himself—his sheep, his lambs, his children, his church. It’s the very thing Jesus came to this earth to live and die for, that he might purchase a people for himself, who are called by his name and might be filled with his Spirit so that they would go out and bring the good news of the gospel to a multitude of other people from every tribe, language, and tongue. This is what he came for! It’s what’s most precious to him. It’s those that the Father has given to him that he would never let go. And he turns to Peter and says, “I’m entrusting them to you, to your care, Peter.”

You see what could have been lost for Peter is now restored. First, Peter’s relationship with Jesus is restored. After this, he knows that Jesus has a continued love for him and he knows that Jesus knows that he truly does love him. He’s had the chance to tell him. Secondly, Peter’s purpose and calling are restored—to teach, care for, and lead Jesus’ people. That could have all been lost, but Jesus restores it to him in confidence. And then Peter’s identity is restored. He’s not just a guy who’s guilty; he’s not just a guy who’s going to be known by his shame; instead, his guilt and his shame are removed.

His guilt is taken away by the cross of Jesus. I think he’s coming to terms with this. He’s starting to learn what this means. We have to remember that they don’t have the whole New Testament; that’s still to be written. They’re still trying to grapple with what the resurrection truly does mean for them, what the cross really does mean for them, and it’s in the application of this restoration that Peter’s coming to terms with, “This is what this means, that my guilt has been paid for. I see that at the cross and I see it in Jesus’ explicit forgiveness to me.”

But also, Peter’s shame is overcome. It’s overcome by the loving gaze of Jesus and Jesus’ vote of confidence in him. He can walk away from this knowing, “I’m not inadequate, I’m not defective, I’m a beloved child of God, I’m God’s chosen man for his purposes. My Lord told me so.” And he could put his confidence in that.

So I want to apply this to us and see where this hits home in our lives, see how the restoration that was purchased for us in the cross of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, how this plays out in our lives—it will look different than it did for Peter, of course, but I do think there are some things we can take away from it.

(1) I’ll just maybe say this first: Restoration always involves the hard step of confession and repentance. It always involves the hard step of confession and repentance. We must be willing to look truthfully at our sins and failures, call them what they are, know them for what they truly are, and own it before the Lord. We don’t hide our sins, we don’t minimize them, we don’t just skip over them and just act like, “We’re good; I’ll forget about it, God will forget about it.” No, if we’re going to be restored, we confess our sins, we mourn them truly, and then we trust in God’s sovereign mercy to meet even those sins. We trust that God has truly covered that sin in the persecution of Jesus on the cross.

(2) Secondly, restoration only happens through faith in Jesus. This is really important. A lot of us want restoration, we want newness of life, we want joy and peace, and so we say, “Well, I have to dial in my sleep more. I know I have to do that. I’ve have to maybe fix some of my lifestyle habits. I have to have a conversation with my spouse, and we have to figure out some things. Maybe I have to find some hobbies in my life that bring me joy. I have to find some people that are fun to be around, and that’ll uplift me.”

All those things are good and fine in their own right, but true restoration of soul, true peace of soul only comes through faith in Jesus. It is his atoning blood that pays for our sins. It is his righteousness and identity that is granted to us. It is his role as our advocate before the Father that we lean and trust in, and what we need to do is we always need to remember it’s Jesus that I need to believe in. It’s Jesus in whom I need to trust in his power to save and make me new. It’s Jesus who I turn to, and I commit myself in love to him as my king and as my Lord. That’s the stuff that has to happen if we’re going to have true restoration.

(3) Third, restoration calls us to mission. This is important. We see it in Peter and the commission Jesus gives him to tend to and feed his flock, but Peter’s commission is also our commission as the people of Jesus as well. You see, restoration has a further goal than just our own personal peace and joy so we can be happy and content in ourselves. No, we are called to a ministry to one another, and we’re called to own that ministry as an outworking of the restoring grace that Jesus is working out in our lives as well.

If we were to say, “Hey, what does tending and feeding the flock of Jesus or the people of Jesus mean? What kinds of actions would come to our minds when we’re expecting that sort of thing to happen?” we would produce something like the “one another” commands in Scripture, right? We’d get a list something like that. I think it means to love, comfort, and care for them. It means to pray for, encourage, and build them up. It means to instruct and teach and admonish and exhort them. It means to serve and be hospitable to them. Those are all the “one another” commands of Scripture; these are the things that we’re supposed to be doing to and for one another. Just as we’re supposed to be receiving these ministries from our brothers and sisters in Christ, so we should be ones who are actively serving our brothers and sisters in Christ in these ways. We are all called to shepherd one another as the flock of Jesus, under the headship of Jesus and under his care, by his Spirit. This is a ministry we’re all called to.

Practically, what might that look like? I think it means this. Practically, it means when you are a part of the Christian spaces, the worship spaces that you regularly are a part of, you need to go there not just as a recipient, but as one who is on mission. That means when you come here on a Sunday morning, yes you come to receive, yes you come to recall, yes you come to learn and to feed; but you’re also coming on mission to pour into others.

That means if you see a new face and you’ve not met them, then you go out and you meet them and you ask them questions. You get to know them. If there’s someone who’s new to the church, you say, “How can I help you get connected? How can I help connect you to the ministries you need to be connected to? If it’s counseling I’m discerning you need, let me connect you with some of our counselors. If it’s a community of believers you need, I’m going to invite you to my small group or I’m going to get lunch with you and we’re going to start to form a friendship. Or I’m going to connect you to someone who can get you into a group.” If it’s that you need some more information on the church, you don’t just say, “Okay, good luck.” No, you walk them over to the welcome desk. You introduce them, you get them the information, you follow up with them. That’s what it means to be hospitable to one another, to care for one another.

When we’re talking to one another after service, it’s not just light, small talk. That’s all good and nice and sometimes we’re busy, but it’s also taking a second, looking someone in the eye and saying, “How are you doing? What’s really going on in your life? Share with me.” Ask some other follow up questions. Let people know that you’re there and you’re giving them the time. Pray for someone in the moment and the parts that they might need to be prayed for. Ask God to be working his ministering graces through you. Own the mission of serving and upbuilding and shepherding the flock of God among you, and pray that God would be doing the same for you as well. You’re on mission as the people of God. This is what restoration looks like.

If you’re going to a small group, same thing. You don’t just go because it’s fun, you’ve got some friends there and it’s a good rhythm, your kids have some other kids to play with. Those are all good; I hope those are happening. But also pray that you would be on mission. Pray that God would give you something to serve these people, to speak into their lives, to minister to them; that God would give you something, by his Spirit, to build them up into the image of Christ and encourage them a little bit more as you meet together in community and seek to walk together in faithfulness to the Lord together. You’re on mission. You’re the Lord’s person. You’re his man; you’re his woman. He’s given you his graces to pour into others; ask that he would work that through you.

We’re not just participants, we’re not just attenders, we’re all ministers. We’re all stewards of the people of Jesus. We’re all shepherds under the great Shepherd.

(4) Then, I want to speak specifically to this, to end. For those of you who maybe particularly labor under those persistent feelings of guilt and shame, and they’re persistent enough that regularly you say, “They tend to steal away my joy, my vitality in my Christian walk…” I think some of us here carry these more heavily than others, and I want to just speak to that a little bit. I want to say from this account, there truly can be restoration to freedom and joy and life in your Christian walk.

What I want to do is give you a tool to use, and it’s a tool that has some official terms, and I’ll explain those, but what I’m talking about is faith here. I’m saying how to utilize faith in your Christian walk to overcome crippling feelings of guilt and shame. The tool is this: learn to differentiate between objective guilt and shame and subjective guilt and shame. (I’ll explain that in a second.) Objective guilt and shame; subjective guilt and shame.

What are things that are objective? If something is objective, it means these are things that accord with what is actually true. Subjective is our perception of what is true. Our perception of what is true can be consistent with what is objectively true, or it can be inconsistent with what is objective true. That’s from our subjective experience.

Here’s the truth: Objectively, Christ has done away with our shame our guilt in his death and resurrection. That is objectively true. In Christ’s death and resurrection, he has done away with our shame and our guilt. See, guilt is based on—from our earlier definition from Eric Johnson—our actions that we’ve done or not done. It’s based on our feeling that we have failed the standard that’s been given to us.

Of course, we’re all guilty of sins in various ways, and we will continue to be guilty of more sins down the road; but, if you are in Christ, objectively, you no longer stand before God as guilty. Before God, you no longer stand as guilty, because your sin has been fully paid for and God sees you with the righteousness that is Christ. God sees you in Christ’s righteousness. That is objectively true for how God sees you and what he says about you, if you are trusting in Christ for your salvation.

Subjectively, that might not be how you feel at all. Of course, from your experiences, all kinds of things…you could say, “Yeah, I’m guilty of these and these and these sins.” But objectively, this is how God sees you. That’s what we’re trying to put our faith in.

Secondly, shame. Shame is associated with our being or our identity, and it’s a deeper one. It hits at the core of who we are, our very self-perception. It says to us that we’re deficient, we’re flawed, we’re hopeless. Now of course, sin has distorted the image of God in all of us. We all have brokenness in our lives that fleshes out in various ways; we’re not undermining that. But objectively, because of the resurrection, if you are in Christ then you are a new creation. The old man has passed away, the new has come. Our identity is no longer inherently flawed or deficient, but our identity is the identity of Christ. It is sanctified; that is, it is holy. In the words of Paul, we are already glorified in Christ, in Paul’s mind, such is our identity in Christ. That’s objectively true according to what God says about us, because of our new identity in Christ.

I get it, right? Subjectively, we’re going to see all of our flaws, and we’re going to struggle, when we’re faced with those flaws, to find the freedom and the joy of the new life that we have in Christ. However, we have to learn the process of fighting these subjective feelings of shame that would cripple us, by focusing on the objective realities of who are in Christ, by faith confessing and repenting and believing in these things again.

Here’s how this works out: Eventually, as you fight your subjective feelings with those objective realities that God says about you in faith, subjectively from your own experience you will truly begin to actually see yourself as a new creation in Christ.

It looks a little bit like this: as we do this in faith more and more, guilt and shame just lose their hold. They still come up here and there; we still have to confess and repent. But they aren’t our identity, and they don’t unduly cripple us. We’re able to move on and let Christ take care of it, and the objective realities of peace with God and restoration will become more realized in our lives.

You see, the gospel gives us a new story. It gives us a new story—that might have been who I was then, but it’s not who I am now. That’s a story that all of us have. “That might have been who I was, but it’s not who I am now, because of what God has done in my life.” So, though I might feel the same way, though some of my actions might even support that that’s still in me, that’s not who I am. I can move on and I can live as a different person.

As we try to live into that new story that God has given us in Christ, something happens. Our imaginings happen. (I’m using Johnson’s categories again here.) Our imaginings change; that is, our self-perception, our self-projection of ourselves into the various spaces that we inhabit in life; and our relationship with people in our family and our relationship with others; in some of our trials and difficulties and some of the places where we tend to falter and fail more, we can start to imagine being a person who actually does what is Christlike, what is holy, what is righteous, what is good, what is loving and others-centered instead of self-centered. We can start to imagine that.

As we imagine that more and more, what happens is some new actions and relational patterns will start to emerge. We’ll start acting more and more like who we are imagining ourselves to be in faith and who God says we are, and slowly this will change our habits. Slowly it will change our patterns. Slowly it can change our relational dynamics.

And as these things happen, something will happen. The cumulative evidence of having lots of occasions where you actually do respond like Christ, you actually do live like Christ, you actually do love like Christ—that’s going to start impacting your mind and heart, and the same iterations of patterns that convinced you that you were deficient and broken and guilty and you’ll never be able to get out from under it, the same accumulation of Christlike habits and Christlike manifestations in your life will make it such that you actually will start to, in your neural frameworks, in your self-perception, in your self-understanding, say, “This truly is who I am.” As you see that playing out more and more in your life, then the joy of the resurrection of Christ will land home in your life. The freedom to walk before the Lord and to pursue what he has called you to will be stronger and more manifest, and people will start to look at you and just say, “I see the work of the Lord in you more and more.” You say, “In me, really?” and they say, “Yes,” and it’s because the Lord is truly working in what he said he would work in by his Spirit. He is shaping you more and more into the image of Christ.

It happens by taking our eyes off of what we experience, in our lives, of all of our failures, putting those on Christ, and saying, “This is what God says. I’m going to live into the reality of who God says I am and who he is making me to be.” That is where the joy and the freedom of the Christian life comes from, and we do walk in the resurrection life that is ours in Christ.

So brothers and sisters, through the gospel—this is all I wanted to say to you this morning—Jesus gives us restoration and he gives us new life. However you came in today—I don’t know how you walked in here today—but you can walk out of here in the hope and joy of new life as you trust in these things, put your faith in Jesus for these things.

Do this: confess your sins again. What does God say? He says he is gracious and merciful and full of forgiveness. Repent of your sins again. Turn away from those and seek to turn and follow hard after God. What does God say? He says, “I’m faithful and I’m just to cleanse you from all that unrighteousness.” Put your faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection, and put it in his promise of new life, because what does God say? He says he’s united you to Jesus and he has given you his Holy Spirit to seal your salvation and to sanctify you into the image of Christ. That’s what he’s done in your life. Whatever your story is walking in, it is a different story walking out today, because there is true restoration in the name and the power of Jesus. Let's believe that as we continue to worship this morning. Please pray with me.

Lord, we thank you for your word, we thank you for its encouragement. Lord, you speak truths to us that we could never imagine ourselves. We come in knowing that we’re not worthy, and you say to us, “You’re my chosen son and daughter. You’re my chosen minister. I have a purpose and a plan for you.” We come in knowing that we falter and fail, and you say, “I see you as holy and righteous in the image of my Son.” We come in feeling like God could never love us because we’ve loved you so poorly and you say to us, “I love you with the very love I have for my Son.” Our hearts are blown away by that. Lord, we want to live as who we are in Christ. We want to believe that in faith. We want that to overwhelm all the habits and patterns and evidences of our life that would say we’re something other. We want to live as who we truly are in you and see that manifest more and more.

Give us encouragement for the slow progress of sanctification, where it’s slow. Give us eyes to see all the evidences of your grace in our lives, that we would give you all the glory for it and rejoice in those things. Lord, we pray that Redeemer Church would be a place that is known for a people of humility. We don’t trust in ourselves, we’re not proud in ourselves; we’re all about what Jesus has done and what he is doing through us. I pray that we’d be a people who are full of life and joy, that though we don’t deserve it we’ve been given resurrection life like Jesus, and that changes everything, and we’re passionate about bringing that message to others. Would you fill us with that joy and life a little bit even here this morning, for your glory and our joy in worshiping you? It’s in the name of Jesus we ask all of these things. Amen.