It is possible to love Christ sentimentally and not to love him loyally. It is possible to think you have got love, it is possible to have the love of appreciation for what he does, for saving our children, for healing us of a serious illness, but that is not quite the same as loving him. How do you know if you really love the Lord, more than sentimentally, more than out of appreciation? You love him because you see who he is and you see his wonder and his glory and his attributes and his great love and you appreciate these things. You see him in the Scripture, and you sense his greatness in your devotions and you will be loyal to him and you will serve him for all you are worth.
Do you go to church once a week? Maybe you do that because there are very difficult circumstances that compel you. But if you could come more than once a week and you don’t, you can’t say, ‘I love Christ’. You may be able to say, ‘Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul; thank you, Lord, for answering my prayers,’ but you can’t really say you love him. It’s evening time and it’s time for your devotions and other things easily distract you. ‘Oh, but I’m enjoying what I’m reading or watching or doing,’ and so your personal devotions get cut down from half an hour, say, or from 20 minutes to three or four minutes. Can you really say you love the Lord?
‘Feed my lambs.’ Preach the gospel to my little lambs, whom I'm calling and bringing into the fold. Tell them how to be saved. There are many ministers who love the gospel and they only preach it now and then. Teach the rising generation, the little lambs. Open Sunday Schools, enlarge them. Engage as many children from the neighbourhood of the church as you possibly can. Remember in your preaching, never be so sophisticated and advanced that you've left out the lambs, the young in Christ, the ones who need milk rather than meat. Feeding the lambs is a lowly task. You are never to be on show, looking splendid. We are all priests; we are a kingdom of priests. You are nobody special and super. You are a shepherd, a pastor, a feeder of sheep.
Now when you are expounding this passage, the first thing you notice is that in the Greek the Lord uses one word for love and Peter uses a different word for love. The word which the Lord uses, ‘lovest thou me’, refers comprehensively to love, love with the mind, with the heart, with the will. Love which is not only an affection but it is sacrificial and active. It is a total embracing word. The word Peter used in his response is a little bit weaker and it is often said that it refers more to the affections. So it is as though the Lord said, ‘Do you love me?’ and Peter’s reply is, ‘You know I have great affection for you’, which is a little weaker, which has left out the sacrifice and the commitment. The King James Version and many modern versions, think that actually the two words are so close together they have ignored the difference. Were they right to do that? On balance, they probably were. I think that the difference is quite small. And yes, Peter used a lesser word, but I think he used it, if he did mean to use a lesser word, he used it because he was ashamed to use the stronger word. He is already under conviction for having denied the Lord. He is ashamed to use that strong, all embracing word. He uses a more modest word. ‘Thou knowest that I love thee.’