Peter and Andrew were casting a net into the Sea of Galilee when Jesus told them that He would make them fishers of men. The two brothers knew how to catch fish for a living. Jesus was calling them to follow Him so that He could prepare them to bring people to Him.
Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Matthew 4:19, NKJV
I want to pay attention to the order of that invitation. Jesus called them to follow, and He promised to make them ready for the work. That order helps me understand evangelism, the work of telling people the gospel and inviting them to believe in Christ. Learning how to get a response from an audience cannot replace learning to follow the Lord whose message I am supposed to bring.
Follow Me, and I Will Make You
Matthew 4 describes Jesus walking beside the sea and calling Peter and Andrew while they were using their net. A little farther on, He saw two more brothers, James and John, in a boat with their father, Zebedee. They were mending their nets, preparing the equipment their livelihood depended on. Jesus called them too.
These men were leaving work that supplied their income. They were not simply agreeing that His teaching sounded interesting. Matthew tells us how Peter and Andrew responded when He called them.
They immediately left their nets and followed Him.
Matthew 4:20, NKJV
Mark 1:16–20 records their immediate response as well. They followed before they had become experienced teachers or understood everything Jesus would ask of them. They would learn by being with Him and receiving His instruction. A disciple is a follower who learns from his master, and their Master was now directing what their lives would become.
I understand that call to include more than learning a set of things to say. Following Jesus means coming under His authority. If I want to tell someone else to trust Him, I also need to be willing to let Him direct my own conduct and the work I do in His name.
The summons to these fishermen involved leaving their ordinary work for direct training with Jesus. It does not follow that every believer must resign from a job or neglect a family in order to obey Him. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Christians are told to work responsibly, and 1 Timothy 5 requires care for one’s household. John 21 even records some of these disciples fishing again after Jesus’ resurrection.
Christ has authority over those ordinary responsibilities too. I cannot treat my work or my plans as an area where His word has no claim on me. But providing for a family and carrying out a job faithfully can be part of obedience to Him. We need to hear what He requires instead of turning one particular commission into a rule He has not given to everyone.
Luke 5 describes a related encounter at the Lake of Gennesaret, another name for the Sea of Galilee. A crowd was pressing around Jesus to hear God’s word, and He saw two boats near the shore. The fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. Jesus entered the boat belonging to Simon, who is also called Peter, and asked him to put out a little from the land. From there He sat and taught the crowd.
When He finished speaking, Jesus told Simon to go into deeper water and lower the nets. Simon explained that they had worked through the night without catching anything. Nevertheless, because Jesus had told him to do it, he would let down the net.
The catch was so large that the net began breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help, and both boats filled until they began to sink. James and John were among Simon’s partners, and all of them were astonished. Peter fell at Jesus’ knees and confessed that he was a sinful man. He asked the Lord to depart from him.
And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men.”
Luke 5:10, NKJV
Jesus answered Peter’s fear before describing his future work. Peter had just confessed his sin, and the Lord told him not to be afraid. The man who would speak to others about God’s mercy was receiving mercy himself. I find that to be a helpful reminder when I begin to think that serving Christ requires me to pretend I have never needed His forgiveness.
The Greek verb translated “catch” here is zogreo, which means to catch or take alive. In this setting, Jesus was commissioning Peter to gather people to Himself through His message. The fishing language described the work Peter would do for the Lord. It did not give him authority to control people for his own purposes.
Jesus’ promise to make His followers fishers of men also identifies who would prepare them. The Greek verb poieo is an ordinary word meaning to make or do. Here Jesus was promising to make these men ready for the work He was calling them to do. They were responsible to follow Him, but they were not expected to produce that preparation independently of Him.
The Gospels let us see how much they still needed to learn. When they argued over who should be considered greatest, Jesus taught them that leadership among His followers required service. When a storm filled their boat with water, they became afraid and questioned whether He cared that they were perishing. He calmed the storm and confronted their lack of faith. Their time with Him included correction as well as instruction.
They also struggled with what He told them about His coming death. In Matthew 16:21–23, Jesus explained that He would suffer, be killed, and rise on the third day. Peter objected, and Jesus corrected him because he was thinking according to human concerns instead of God’s purposes. Later, when Jesus was arrested, His followers fled, and Peter denied knowing Him. Those failures were real, but they did not end the Lord’s work with them. After His resurrection, Jesus met Peter and entrusted him with caring for His sheep, His people. John 21 records that conversation. The man who had failed would continue serving under the Lord who restored him.
I do not take that as an excuse to be careless. I take it as a reason to keep learning from Christ instead of assuming I must already be fearless or have an answer to every question before I can speak about Him. The disciples’ readiness came through following the One who taught and corrected them.
What It Means to Fish for People
The fishing comparison describes a mission to people, but those people are never trophies for a ministry. They bear God’s image, and Christ died for them. If I treat someone’s response as a way to make myself look successful, I have lost sight of why I am speaking to him. The purpose is for him to know the Savior.
We also need to consider the setting whenever Scripture uses fishing as an image. Some Old Testament passages use it to describe people being captured in judgment. In Habakkuk 1, for example, the prophet compares the conquering Chaldeans to fishermen gathering nations into a net. The passage describes a violent power taking people captive.
Matthew 4 gives us a different setting. Jesus is announcing the kingdom and calling people to repent. His invitation to the fishermen belongs to that ministry. They would carry the message through which sinners could be rescued and brought to Him. They were not being commissioned to hunt people down and punish them.
That purpose also governs how we speak. It would be dishonest to promise someone benefits Jesus has not promised, or to conceal the cost of following Him so that the person will say yes. I can explain the truth and invite someone to believe it. I cannot make him spiritually alive by applying enough emotional pressure to obtain the words I want to hear.
Jesus uses a net in another illustration in Matthew 13, but there He is explaining a final separation. His parable describes a dragnet, a large net drawn through the water that gathers different kinds of fish. Once it is brought ashore, the catch is sorted.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Matthew 13:47-50, NKJV
The net contains fish of different kinds, and Jesus says the separation pictures what the angels will do at the end of the age. I understand the mixed catch to illustrate the visible response to the gospel in this age. People can gather around a ministry or participate in religious activity without all having been born again, receiving new life from God through faith in Christ. The size of a crowd cannot tell us that everyone in it belongs to Christ.
That does not remove the church’s responsibility to test teaching or address conduct when Scripture requires it. It does remind me that those responsibilities are different from determining a person’s final destiny. God knows the heart. His messengers must remain under His direction instead of imagining that they possess His knowledge of every person they meet.
The parable’s warning also makes us consider where final rejection of Christ leads. Revelation 20 describes the judgment of the unbelieving dead after Christ’s thousand-year reign. They are raised bodily and stand before God. The apostle John sees a great white throne in that vision, which is why this is called the Great White Throne judgment. Those who are condemned are cast into the Lake of Fire, which the passage calls the second death.
I understand the second death to be the irreversible destruction of the human body and soul. Jesus warns in Matthew 10:28 that God can destroy both body and soul in hell. This is a final loss of life under God’s judgment, with no eventual restoration to Him. I do not believe that human beings possess an inherently immortal soul.
I also distinguish that final destruction from the condition of the dead while they await resurrection. In Luke 16, Jesus describes a rich man who had died and was conscious in Hades, the realm of the dead, while his brothers were still living. I understand the dead to remain conscious before resurrection. Final destruction therefore should not be confused with soul sleep, the teaching that people are unconscious between death and resurrection.
Revelation 20:10 specifically describes endless torment for the devil, the beast, and the false prophet, the enemies whose rebellion that book records. I do not extend that particular statement about those three to every lost human being. The same chapter calls the final judgment of the lost the second death.
Because Jesus warned about judgment, I cannot faithfully tell people about Him while hiding that warning. But its urgency does not give me permission to coerce someone. The person before me needs the Savior just as I do. I should continue to care about his good even if he rejects what I have said.
The Gospel Is the Net
What, then, are Christ’s witnesses to bring to people? The message is His gospel, the good news of what He has done to save sinners. I think of that message as the net because we bring people to Christ by proclaiming it. The apostle Paul reminded the believers in Corinth that he had delivered a message he himself had received.
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,
1 Corinthians 15:3-4, NKJV
Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man. He lived without sin and voluntarily gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked people tortured and crucified Him, and He willingly shed His blood and died to redeem us. He accomplished the saving work through His blood and death before His burial and bodily resurrection on the third day.
Father and Son acted in unity in that work. I do not understand the cross as the Father punishing, cursing, abandoning, striking, bruising, or pouring His wrath on Jesus. The Son offered Himself in obedience as the perfect sacrifice. The salvation we proclaim rests on who He is and on what He willingly accomplished for us.
Telling someone to improve his behavior does not explain why Jesus died or how that person can be reconciled to God. A warm church welcome cannot supply that explanation either. We need to tell people who Jesus is and what He has done, then invite them to turn to Him in repentance and faith. An emotional experience is no substitute for knowing the Savior in whom we are asking them to believe.
Christ died for the whole world, as 1 John 2:2 teaches, so God’s invitation is genuine for every person. I reject limited atonement, the claim that His sacrifice was made only for a selected group. People can resist God’s grace and finally reject Him. But everyone who repents and believes in Jesus receives forgiveness and is born again.
That new birth is God’s work in the believer. He makes the person a new creation, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in him and seals him for the day of redemption. Salvation is received by grace through faith. Good works, religious rituals, or membership in a particular family cannot purchase it.
Those who are genuinely saved are eternally secure because God keeps His children. That assurance does not turn lawlessness into an acceptable way to live. We should see evidence of the new creation in a believer’s conduct, with obedience following salvation rather than earning it or keeping him saved.
This is also why I cannot equate an immediate response with proof of new birth. Someone may make a profession of faith, saying that he believes, without having truly received Christ. We should welcome a person’s response and help him understand the gospel, while remembering that only God can give the life of which we are speaking.
Paul describes those entrusted with this message as ambassadors for Christ. An ambassador represents the one who sent him. He does not have permission to replace that person’s message with one he thinks his audience would prefer.
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
2 Corinthians 5:20, NKJV
Reconciliation means that the separation caused by sin is dealt with so that a person can be brought into a right relationship with God. God has provided that reconciliation through His Son, and His messengers plead with people to receive it. We are inviting them to turn to the Savior who can forgive them and give them life.
Practical care should accompany that invitation. If someone is hungry or suffering, I should care about the need in front of me. But meeting that need does not by itself explain Christ’s death for sins or His resurrection. Love for the person gives me reason to help, and it also gives me reason to tell him what God has done for him.
Romans 10 explains why the message must be spoken. Paul begins with his concern that Israel be saved. He describes people trying to establish their own righteousness rather than receiving righteousness through faith, and he says that whoever calls on the Lord will be saved. Then he asks how someone could call on a Lord he has never heard about.
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?
Romans 10:14, NKJV
The preacher in that question is someone announcing the message. He does not have to be standing behind a pulpit for another person to hear the gospel from him. A believer can explain it to a neighbor or discuss a relative’s questions over a meal. There may be an opportunity to speak to a coworker during a break.
Our conduct affects those conversations. If I speak about truth while behaving dishonestly, people have reason to distrust me. A consistent life helps them see that I take my own words seriously. Even so, watching my behavior cannot tell them that Christ died for their sins and rose bodily from the grave. They need to hear the message as well as see what following Him does in my life.
Witnesses Under Christ’s Authority
The men Jesus called by the sea would continue to need Him after they had learned what to say. On the night before His death, He explained that dependence by comparing Himself to a vine and His disciples to its branches. A branch receives its life from the vine to which it belongs.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
John 15:4, NKJV
To abide is to remain. I understand abiding in Christ to mean continuing in dependence on Him, receiving His word and obeying it. The branch cannot produce fruit as though it were the source of its own life. In the same way, experience in ministry cannot make me capable of doing Christ’s work independently of Him.
I need His word and prayer as I serve, including His correction of my motives. If what I most want is a response that makes me look successful, I have begun using the work for myself. Dependence on Christ should keep my attention on the person who needs Him. It should also give me courage when speaking truth brings opposition, because I am carrying His message under His authority.
After His resurrection, Jesus sent His followers to make disciples among all nations. Matthew 28 records the eleven disciples meeting Him in Galilee. Before giving them the commission, He told them why He had the right to send them.
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
Matthew 28:18-19, NKJV
The mission rests on the authority of the risen Lord. Christians do not go to their neighbors because they are better people who have decided to improve everyone else. We go because Jesus commands us to carry the message through which we ourselves have received life.
His commission includes baptizing believers in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism publicly identifies the believer with Christ; it does not purchase salvation. The following verse also directs the disciples to teach people to observe everything He has commanded. Their care must therefore continue beyond a person’s first response. Someone learning to follow Jesus needs to be taught what He said and helped to understand how to obey Him.
In Acts 1:8, before Jesus ascended to heaven, He promised the disciples power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. They would be His witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem and carrying His testimony to the ends of the earth. The work He gave them was to be carried out with the help He supplied.
The Spirit empowers believers to speak and works through the truth they proclaim. Preparation and careful answers are useful, but persuasion cannot produce spiritual life by itself. We need the Spirit’s work in the hearer, and we need His help as we speak. That dependence allows us to prepare diligently without imagining that someone’s salvation rests on the force of our presentation.
Faithful Work While God Gives Life
Dependence on God does not remove the work He has given us. The fishermen washed and mended their nets, went out in their boats, and labored even on nights when they caught nothing. In our own work, we need to learn the gospel well enough to explain it. We can pray for opportunities while also paying attention to the people already around us.
When someone asks a question, I need to listen to what he is actually asking. Rushing through a presentation may allow me to finish everything I intended to say without answering what is troubling him. Taking time to understand his question can help me explain the truth in a way he can follow.
I can also admit when I do not know an answer. Pretending to understand a passage will not help the person who asked about it. Nor should I pretend I understand someone’s grief merely because I want to move the conversation toward a conclusion. We can take time to examine Scripture, return to the question, and offer practical care while the conversation continues. Listening does not require surrendering the truth we have been entrusted to speak.
Paul gave Timothy, his fellow worker in the gospel, instructions about responding to opposition in 2 Timothy 2:24–26. The Lord’s servant was to be gentle and able to teach, correcting with humility and patience rather than becoming quarrelsome. He was to look to God to grant repentance so that the person could come to know the truth.
If I humiliate someone and win an argument, I have not necessarily helped him understand Christ. I may simply have made myself feel superior. The passage calls me to explain what is true without treating the person who opposes it as someone I have a right to despise. His recovery is the aim of the correction.
Jesus showed that concern when He looked at the crowds in Matthew 9:35–38. They were weary and scattered, and He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He told His disciples to pray for workers to be sent into the harvest. His awareness of people’s condition moved Him to care for them.
Knowing that judgment is real should deepen that concern in me. I can be plain about sin without taking pleasure in sounding severe. The person who needs to hear the warning is someone God loves and someone Christ died for. The way I speak should reflect that.
Sometimes a clear explanation receives no visible response. A person may be willing to talk only after a long period of prayer and continued friendship. Even when the conversation ends without an answer, I cannot know everything the person will continue thinking about afterward.
Paul used a farming comparison in 1 Corinthians 3 to describe work done by different servants. He had planted, and Apollos, another teacher who served the church, had watered, but God gave the growth. Both men had real work to do, and neither was the source of the life that resulted. That helps me leave room for the work someone else may do after my own conversation ends.
A lack of immediate results does not prove that the effort was wasted, and it does not give me a reason to apply more pressure next time. I am responsible to explain the gospel faithfully and invite the person to repent and believe. I can continue caring for him while trusting the Lord with what I cannot produce. The One who prepares His witnesses is also the One who gives new life.
My Final Thoughts
Jesus called the fishermen to follow Him, and He made their preparation for service part of that relationship. As He prepared them to bring His message to others, they also received His mercy and correction themselves. Their later failures did not make Him unable to use them. They continued under the authority of the Lord who restored and sent them.
I need that same dependence to govern both my message and the way I bring it to someone. Christ died for the whole world, so I can invite people to Him without withholding the offer from anyone. I can also be honest about sin and judgment without trying to force a response. The new birth is God’s work, and my responsibility is to make His gospel known faithfully.
If you feel inadequate to do that, the disciples give us reason to keep learning rather than give up. You do not need a different personality before you can explain what the Savior has done. As we learn His gospel, we can become better prepared to answer the people who ask us about Him. Taking time to listen helps us understand what they need explained. I can trust Him to use faithful words without needing to see the whole result before the conversation ends.