It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Here Simon (later called Peter) and his partners, James and John, have caught enough fish to have the biggest fish fry Galilee had ever seen, and they don’t even get to stick around to enjoy it. As soon as their boats get to shore, Peter and the others drop everything to follow Jesus. They even drop those nets, aching and groaning with such a great catch of fish. They drop their nets, their work, in order to work for Christ’s kingdom.

What would you have done if you were in this story? Would you have left the catch of your life to follow after Jesus? I’m not even sure I would be willing to fish again in the first place. Jesus’ teaching must have made quite an impression on Simon. Simon and his crew spend all night fishing and didn’t catch a blessed thing. So they are exhausted, trying to clean the nets and head home for rest. And here comes Jesus, interrupting their work, and says, “Would you mind if I use your boat as a pulpit for a while?” Simon agreed. 

Then Jesus says, “Go out to the deep water and let down your nets.” Simon agrees half-heartedly. “We’ve worked all night. But if you say so, we’ll put out our nets again.” And what a catch it was. Enough to fill two boats and leave them both on the verge of sinking into the sea. 

It is a remarkable scene, and it is not lost on Simon. Instead of proclaiming his own possible wealth or even starting in on a thank-you note for Jesus’ fishing advice, he falls on his knees. Who knows when it dawned on him? But after hearing Jesus proclaiming the Word of God, and after following his instruction, Simon is amazed, dazzled, humbled—he knows he is in the presence of holiness. He falls on his knees and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  

What do Simon’s words have to do with the rest of the story? Where does Jesus convince Simon he is a sinful man? The text simply says that when Simon sees the catch of fish, he is amazed. And this is how he reacted. “Leave me, Lord; I am a sinner.” When Simon comes face to face with Jesus in all his strangeness, in his power and mystery, this is what Simon says. Simon realizes his own sinfulness when he comes face to face with Jesus’ holiness.

How different this is from the way Christians attempt to convince others of their own sinfulness! Whatever the plan—the ABCs of faith, the Roman road, the four spiritual laws or a Sunday morning sermon—step one is to convince people they are sinners. We try to expose the distance between us (them) and God. Step two is to see God’s grace in Jesus as the solution for our distance from God. 

Perhaps the most obvious example of this pattern is the so-called Hell Houses that open up every October. Beginning sometime in the last 30 years, Christians have taken the idea of a haunted house and put it to use for evangelistic purposes. Instead of being frightened by ghosts and goblins, visitors wind their way through live-action scenes of sins like adultery and the use of drugs and alcohol and the dreadful consequences of these sins. The ultimate consequence is of course hell, which is depicted in multimedia, multisensory horror. Near the end, you might get a scene of heaven. But the whole point of the hell house is to frighten you, to get you to consider the seriousness of sin and the prospect of hell so that you might accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. At the end of most of these Hell Houses, there are folks waiting to guide you, pray with you and lead you to make a profession of faith.   

Most churches don’t run Hell Houses. But these houses do help illustrate the most common pattern in Protestant Christianity for coming to faith. Get scared and then get saved. Be convicted, then make your confession. Perhaps that’s the way some of you came to faith. If it wasn’t a hell house, maybe it was a fire-and-brimstone sermon that got your heart beating and your feet walking the aisle. God works in a whole host of ways. I’m not going to say that God can’t work through this pattern or even through a hell house. If people meet Jesus Christ in this way, then praise God. But you cannot make this pattern the only valid one for coming to faith. Because for Simon it happened in a different way. First he saw Christ’s glory. Then he confessed his sinfulness. It seems another pattern is possible. 

But the pattern that remains dominant in Christianity is to see your sin, then see your salvation in Christ. For so many of us, the people with the best testimonies, the ones who kept you interested during Sunday night church, were people who were deep in sin, saw the consequences of there lives, but didn’t know where to turn. They couldn’t get themselves out of it. But they found Jesus, and Jesus changed their lives.

While I was in seminary, I had an interesting conversation while eating dinner with some friends. The conversation eventually turned to a kind of light-hearted confession, some folks telling about their wilder times, when they went to dances and stayed out past curfew. Then my friend Tom said, “I am so jealous.” We asked why, thinking he was wishing he had lived it up a bit more before the ministry. He said, “I’ve never really sinned like that; I’ve always been pretty good, so I don’t have a testimony.” I wanted to encourage him, so I said, “You know pride is a sin.” 

That is how prevalent the pattern is. Here is this seminary student, a Christian minister in training who thinks he is somehow less than a real Christian because the way he came to faith didn’t correspond to the way we usually think of it. 

But he’s in good company, because Simon Peter didn’t start following Jesus in that way. Jesus doesn’t have to convince Simon he is a sinner. When confronted by God in Christ, Simon says, “I am a sinful man.” This happens out of order from the dominant pattern. But notice that the two elements are present—seeing God’s great mercy and our great sin. These two elements are essential for following Jesus and walking in his way. It matters that they are present; but the order doesn’t matter so much.  

Maybe your start to faith looked more like Simon Peter’s more than the stereotype of conversion in evangelical Christianity. Maybe you weren’t overcome by guilt and a sense of separation from God. Maybe you’re like me. When someone tries to convince you of your sinfulness, you get defensive and want to compare yourself to others who are much worse. Maybe you are more like Peter—you feel like confessing your own sin when you are in the presence of mind-blowing mercy or unbelievable generosity. When you are confronted with the beautiful life of Mother Theresa, who spent her life serving in the slums of Calcutta, you feel like falling on your knees. Or when you hear stories about victims of unspeakable crimes finding the grace not only to forgive, but to reconcile with their perpetrators, you feel the weakness of your own character. Or maybe if someone has ever shown you mercy that you didn’t earn, you feel like crying out, “I don’t deserve this. I am a sinner.”

Whatever the order in which someone takes these steps, they are both necessary to faith and following Christ—realizing God’s mercy, realizing our sinfulness. They both must be present, even if they happen in a different order from person to person. God is freer to work than can we imagine, even if God works outside our preferred formulas or patterns. 

Whenever you said the words “I am a sinner,” the words of Simon in verse 8, they are the words of each one of us. But we can’t stay there. We don’t wallow in our sinfulness until it becomes a guilt complex. 

See, Jesus doesn’t leave Simon on his knees and say, “You’re right. You sure are a sinner.” Nor does Jesus say, “Stop it, Simon; you’re not that bad.” He accepts Simon’s words, doesn’t correct him, but quickly says, “Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching people.” In other words, Jesus gives Simon work to do for God, even if Simon feels unworthy of it. That too is an important step, the one we take in service to God and God’s kingdom.

In Simon’s story, we see the steps of faith, steps that are necessary but don’t necessarily have to come in a particular order. But these steps are also ones we take only one time. The steps of faith we are talking about are kind of like the first steps a baby takes. Well, actually, the first steps we all take. Every last one of us walking around today was at one time a little toddler, standing unsteadily on chubby little legs. And we took our first steps, steps our families celebrated as momentous occasions worth calling friends and relatives about. Those steps were important; they signaled our transition into a new stage of life. But those steps weren’t completely different from all the other ones we’ve taken after it. We use the same muscles and processes to take steps now. And those first steps were not enough. People celebrated the first steps, but they didn’t tell us not to walk anymore. We didn’t take our first steps and then give up.

Sometimes that’s the way it is with faith, though. We can so celebrate the first steps of faith that we forget that many more come afterward. 

Following Jesus means we keep taking the steps of faith as we journey along. This doesn’t mean our first steps weren’t special and important. A baby’s first steps are beautiful cause for celebration, and so are the first steps of faith. But these aren’t the only steps we take. Like Simon, we are amazed at God’s goodness. We realize our own sinfulness, our own unworthiness. We are given new work to do for God. These aren’t one time only but time and time again. Not according to a definite prescription or pattern. There’s no order we’ve got to stick to. But these steps should be part of our journey of faith.    

So where are your feet planted today? Are you lost in wonder and amazement at God’s goodness and abundance? Are you down on your knees in humility and repentance? Are you out there fishing people, working for God as you follow Jesus? Next question—are you stuck? 

If you’re stuck, maybe you need to take another step. If you’ve been lost in God’s goodness, maybe you need to take another step and take a look at your own sinfulness. If you’ve been on your knees feeling guilty, take another step, and hear Jesus say, “Don’t be afraid. There’s work for you to do.” And if you’ve been focused on working for God and are feeling tired, maybe you need to take another step, maybe a step back, and look at everything God is doing and has done. Maybe you need to stop fishing for a while and be amazed and filled with wonder. 

Whatever step you need to take next, listen for the voice that calls you, the voice of Jesus. If you’ve never taken a step of faith, Jesus calls to you. If you taken many steps of faith, Jesus calls you still, “Don’t be afraid. Follow me.”