Three steps mark the Lord’s restoration of Peter: His prayer, His look and His word (Luke 22:31-34; Luke 22:61-62; John 21:15-19). Thus reinstated in His Master’s confidence and once more granted a commission in His service, Peter was ready, when the Holy Spirit came down from heaven, to act his own special part in the great enterprise of grace that we call Christianity. No man is competent to serve our Lord Jesus Christ who has not trodden Peter’s path. First, one must be born anew by the quickening agency of God’s blessed Spirit, having his sins forgiven in virtue of the Saviour’s atoning blood, and his self-confidence so shattered that henceforward no power may operate within him but that of the divine Spirit.
W. W. Fereday