The Lord told His disciples that He was going somewhere, and that the disciples could not come with Him. Instead of coming with Him, He commanded them to love one another—the new commandment. But Peter wanted to accompany the Lord, which was apparently far more appealing than loving the other disciples. So look around this room as you discern the Lord’s body here. Wouldn’t it be easier to ascend into the heavenly places and be with the Lord than to be down here with all the petty wrangles and quarrels that tend to break out among us? Yes, it would be, which is why the Lord told us that we are to stay here and address the question of loving one another. His immediate concern is not to get us up into heaven, but rather to get heaven down into us.
And heaven has gotten into us when the demeanor of heaven is there, and this means loving one another. Cast your thoughts around the room again. Can you think of others here whom you believe to be afflicted with envy, cowardice, compromise, inability to see it your way, lack of wisdom, pride, worldliness, and so on? You may well be right in the details; you are certainly right if it is taken as a generalization. We are sinners. But what are we commanded to do with these sinners that surround us on every hand? We are to love them as we chew and swallow the bread, and drink the blood-red wine.
If we shirk from this immediate duty, as Peter did, in the name of a higher and more heavenly calling—claiming that we will follow Christ to the point of death if necessary—we set ourselves to follow Peter in what he actually did, and not what he claimed he would do.
So here is the Lord’s Table—you are to love everyone seated at it.