When the resurrected Christ in His glory and the manifestation of His holiness appears, all creatures will fall at His feet because He is other. He is holy.
Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord! (Luke 5:8)
Peter’s reaction to this miraculous catch of fish is very interesting. He was a businessman, an entrepreneur. He might have said: “Jesus, fifty percent of my business is Yours. You do not have to go out on the boat with us every night. You do not have to labor on the docks and repair the nets. All You need to do is to come down here once a month and do the trick You just did, filling my nets.” But that’s not what Peter did. When he saw the nets filled to overflowing, he turned to Jesus and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Essentially, he reacted in the same way as when he and the other disciples witnessed Jesus calming the sea–he became exceedingly afraid. He had seen something he could not explain in human terms. He knew he was in the presence of deity. He might very well have asked the same question the disciples asked: “Who can this be?”
We meet all kinds of people, and as we meet them, we unconsciously sort them. We do this every time we walk down a street, instantly pigeonholing every person we see. Is that person smiling? He seems safe. Is there a look of fury in that person’s eyes? We give him a little extra space because we know what unbridled anger can be like in human beings. We separate everyone into categories: safe, dangerous, nice, cantankerous, whatever. But we do not have a category for someone who can speak to the waves and cause them to obey Him. Such a One is in a class by Himself. This One is so alien, so other, that there is no compartment for Him.
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