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Luke 5:8  When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord;  I am a sinful man!”

Amos 9:10 warns us of the danger of convincing ourselves that we will not ever have to face God’s Judgement on sin, and that we are not sinners who need a Saviour.

Luke shows us today that, whatever faults the disciple Peter might have had, he did not fall into the trap pointed out by Amos!  When Peter was confronted with clear evidence that Jesus was God himself, he did not close his eyes to the evidence as the Pharisees did (cf John 9:41 and Luke 5:31-32), but rather, saw immediately that he was a sinner in the presence of a holu God.

Thus Peter took the first necessary step in turning to Jesus in repentance-and-faith.  His painful cry, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”, would have been quite genuine; but he was yet to learn that the very reason his enigmatic Master had come to earth from his place in the Godhead in Heaven was to die on a shameful cross in the place of sinful man to save him!

Peter would later confidently proclaim to the disbelieving Jewish rulers in the Temple in Jerusalem: “Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12).

 “Sinners Jesus will receive: Sound this word of grace to all who the heav’nly pathway leave, all who linger, all who fall.  Sing it o’er and o’er again: Christ receiveth sinful men.  Make the message clear and plain: Christ receiveth sinful men”  (Erdmann Neumeister).

 – Bruce Christian