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| Different Accounts of the Call of Peter, and of the Imprisonment of the Baptist. The Meaning of “Capernaum.” PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
6. Different Accounts of the Call of Peter, and of the
Imprisonment of the Baptist. The Meaning of
“Capernaum.”
These examples may be serviceable to illustrate
statements not only about the Saviour, but about the disciples too, for
here also there is some discrepancy of statement. For there is a
difference in thought perhaps between Simon who is found by his own
brother Andrew, and who is addressed “Thou shalt be called
Cephas,”5009 and him who is seen
by Jesus when walking by the sea of Galilee,5010
along with his brother, and addressed conjointly with that brother,
“Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
There was some fitness in the fact that the writer who goes more to the
root of the matter and tells of the Word becoming flesh, and hence does
not record the human generation of the Word who was in the beginning
with God, should not tell us of Simon’s being found at the
seashore and called away from there, but of his being found by his
brother who had been staying with Jesus at the tenth hour, and of his
receiving the name Cephas in connection with his being thus found
out. If he was seen by Jesus when walking by the sea of Galilee,
it would scarcely be on a later occasion that he was addressed,
“Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My
church.” With John again the Pharisees know Jesus to be
baptizing with His disciples,5011 adding this to His
other great activities; but the Jesus of the three does not baptize at
all. John the Baptist, too, with the Evangelist of the same name,
goes on a long time without being cast into prison. With Matthew,
on the contrary, he is put in prison almost at the time of the
temptation of Jesus, and this is the occasion of Jesus retiring to
Galilee, to avoid being put in prison. But in John there is
nothing at all about John’s being put in prison. Who is so
wise and so able as to learn all the things that are recorded about
Jesus in the four Evangelists, and both to understand each incident by
itself, and have a connected view of all His sojournings and words and
acts at each place? As for the passage presently before us, it
gives in the order of events that on the sixth day the Saviour, after
the business of the marriage at Cana of Galilee, went down with His
mother and His brothers and His disciples to Capernaum, which means
“field of consolation.” For after the feasting and
the wine it was fitting that the Saviour should come to the field of
consolation with His mother and His disciples, to console those whom He
was training for disciples and the soul which had conceived Him by the
Holy Ghost, with the fruits which were to stand in that full
field.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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