Luke 5:1-11

Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around Him and listening to the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret; 2 and He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake; but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. 3 And He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. And He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. 4 When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”  5 Simon answered and said, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; 7 so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.”  11 When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.

This is Luke’s account of what happened when Jesus called Peter and Andrew to discipleship. This account is much more detailed than Matthew’s and Mark’s account (and John missed it altogether). I suppose that Luke took more detailed notes on what happened. Here is a tabulation of the things that were missing from the other gospels.

• Jesus got into Peter’s boat and began teaching the people gathered from the boat.
• When Jesus finished speaking He asked Peter to go out in deeper water and let down the fish nets to catch fish.
• Peter protested, but nevertheless obeyed Jesus.
• The result was that they caught so many fish that the nets began to break.
• Peter was so amazed and ashamed of his disbelief that he asked Jesus to go away from him.
• Jesus told Peter not to fear, that he would from then on not be fishing for fish, but for men.

In this account we get quite a bit of information on Peter. In verse 4, we see that Peter wasn’t afraid to confront Jesus on his opinion of going out deeper to fish. But he was humble enough to yield to what Jesus wanted, disregarding his own expert-fishing opinion. Again, in verse 8, we see the deep humility of Peter as he acknowledges his lack of faith. Hence, we see Peter’s strong personality as well as his deep humility.