"15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep."
John 21:15-17
The love of which Jesus speaks is a love that makes demands, a love that has to give. And the great pattern here is John 3:16. divine love is love that gives, love that leads to a cross. And to love Jesus in the way He wants us to means not merely that we should have tender and affectionate feelings towards Him, it is to love His cross, and be prepared to take it up. The real test of a man's love to Christ is not his avowals of faithfulness or protestations of devotion, but his conformity to Christ's death in his own personal experience, his dying to sin. Crucifixion, not testimony, is the criterion. This is what Peter had to learn; and this is where Peter had failed. And that is what we also have to learn, for that is where we so often fail, if we do not love Jesus enough to share His death, we do not love Him at all as He wants us to love Him. This alone is spiritual love, and it is something that God alone can give us by His Spirit. It is the love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And just as no man can call Jesus Lord save by the Holy Spirit, so also no man can love Christ except that love be shed abroad in His heart by that Spirit. Peter's love up to this time was real, genuine, sincere and spontaneous, but it was of the flesh - not in the bad sense, but simply in the sense of the old nature, and Paul's words, 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit' are as applicable here as elsewhere. The natural man shrinks from the cross, and this was Peter's whole trouble, as it is so often with us. There is so often something of the natural man, of the old nature, ready to creep into our relationship with Christ. Spurgeon once said, 'There is a zeal - and, we may add, a love - which is rather the warmth of nature than the holy fire of grace'. The reason why Peter was so grieved was that he remembered the death he had refused to die. And is not this how Jesus deals with us in our failures?