Do You Love Me? How the Risen Christ Restores the Broken

In This Sermon

• The Impossible Candidate: The sermon opens with Saul of Tarsus — the man most committed to destroying the church — struck blind on the road to Damascus and addressed by name by the risen Jesus. If anyone seemed beyond grace, it was Saul; the fact that God pursued him first dismantles every assumption that God’s grace has limits.

• The Restoration of Peter: Turning to John 21, the sermon walks through Jesus’s threefold question to Peter — “Do you love me?” — mirroring Peter’s three denials. This is not an interrogation; it is a deliberate act of healing. Jesus doesn’t rehabilitate Peter’s reputation; He restores his calling.

• Not Reform but Resurrection: A central Lutheran movement — Peter is not told to try harder, make amends, or earn back his place. He is simply given a mission: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Follow me.” Grace precedes obedience; restoration is the gift that makes service possible, not the reward for proving worthiness.

• The Worthy Lamb Is Worshipped: Drawing on Revelation 5:11-14, the sermon widens the lens — ten thousand times ten thousand angels and all creation cry out to the Lamb who was slain. The Easter resurrection is not a private event for a few disciples on a beach; it is the axis around which all of creation turns.

• Psalm 30 and the Pattern of Grace: “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” The sermon closes with the psalmist’s testimony as the pattern woven through Acts, John, and Revelation: God does not abandon those in the darkness of failure or grief. He comes to them — and when He does, He turns mourning into dancing.

Theological Citations:

1. John 21:15-17: “Do you love me? Feed my sheep.” — The primary restoration text; Jesus’s threefold question to Peter directly undoes the threefold denial and grounds Peter’s calling in love received, not merit earned.

2. Acts 9:1-20: The conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus — the sermon’s opening anchor text, demonstrating that the risen Christ pursues even the most hostile opponent of the Gospel.

3. Revelation 5:11-14: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” — The cosmic doxology that frames Easter as the center of all creation’s worship, not merely a historical event.

4. Psalm 30:5, 11-12: “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning… you turned my wailing into dancing.” — The Psalm reading provides the emotional arc of the entire sermon: God’s pattern of bringing life out of grief and failure.

5. Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” — Paul’s summary of the same grace operating in Acts 9 and John 21: God’s initiative always precedes human response.

6. 1 Corinthians 15:20: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” — The resurrection as first-fruits grounds the hope of Psalm 30 and the restoration of Peter in something objective and certain, not wishful thinking.

7. The Augsburg Confession, Article IV — On Justification: “Men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith.” — The confessional grounding for the sermon’s insistence that Peter’s restoration is entirely Christ’s doing, not Peter’s recovery of standing through subsequent faithfulness.

8. Luther’s Small Catechism — The Third Article of the Creed: “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel.” — The Spirit’s pursuit of Saul in Acts 9 and the risen Christ’s pursuit of Peter in John 21 are both expressions of this unilateral, gracious calling.