I’ve just celebrated my seventieth birthday. To use an American football metaphor, that means I’m deep in the fourth quarter. And I’ll admit it’s tempting to allow my focus on the importance of the current play to become distracted by speculation regarding the uncertainties of the endgame. But when I do, I become self-focused, risk--averse, less available to the promptings of the Spirit, and ineffective in my service to Jesus. In John 21:18-19, having just led Peter through a process of repentance for his denials and into the restoration of his calling, we see how Jesus sought to help him avoid those pitfalls.

The Lord began his comments with a phrase translated as, “Most assuredly, I say to you,” an expression John used twenty-five times in his gospel to capture Christ’s intention to signal the importance of what he was about to say. So, although the words that followed held significant implications for Peter, it’s clear Jesus meant that all of us should pay close attention to them.

The Lord used prophetic language – long on insight but short on details – to describe the self-determination that characterized Peter’s early life and to set that in contrast with what would be true at its end. But the specifics regarding that future were so vague that before completing his record of the full quote, John added commentary to make sure we wouldn’t miss the fact that Jesus was predicting how Peter would die.

Christian tradition holds that Peter was crucified during Emperor Nero’s reign and asked to be executed upside down because he felt unworthy of dying in the same manner as his Messiah. Although this traditional account aligns with what Jesus predicted, it’s historically unverifiable. So, we can’t know if it accurately reflects what happened or is merely a version of the events that was shaped after the fact to conform to the Lord’s prophecy.

But what we can know for certain from John’s explanation is that what Jesus said about the circumstances of Peter’s passing, however hard it may have been for him to hear, was less a prediction about the manner of his death and more about how it would glorify God. And that says more about the life Peter was being called to live than about how it would end. Unless a person’s LIFE honors God, their death won’t. And that provides us with context for the Lord’s next two-word sentence.

Jesus said to Peter, “Follow me.” And there would have been no mystery about what he meant. Peter had heard him use that simple phrase several times over the course of their relationship. He would have understood that he was being invited to walk in the footsteps of his Master, to literally be his 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺. And when enticed by either the devil or his own thoughts to fixate with worry or fear on how or when that path would reach its conclusion, he would have remembered the time recorded in Mark 8:34 when Jesus said, “Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

I think it’s clear that what Jesus wanted Peter to understand was that in the space between the beginning and end of his life he was being invited to pursue a way of being that should characterize every Jesus-follower, an invitation to live our lives in a way that reflects our Savior’s. Fully aware of the cross before him, he refused to be distracted by that. He inhabited every waking moment clothed in his calling with a clear-eyed perspective on eternity and the importance of honoring God in the here-and-now in a way that flows seamlessly into the forever-after.

And I want to live like that. So, I’m asking Jesus to help me, regardless of how much time I have left, to ignore the clock, keep my head in the game, play my heart out, and leave it all on the field.