Second Peter begins with the words, “Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ.”  Seems simple enough.  But there is just a touch of something to this at which I marvel.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!                                                                                                                   2 Corinthians 5:17

Early on in Peter’s time with the incarnate God in the flesh, Jesus renamed Simon the son of John, Simon Bar-jonah, he renamed him Peter.  Christ told this man that he was no longer who he used to be, he was someone new.  He was someone new and whole and redeemed because of his relationship with this Man who had the power to change not just a name, but a life.

And yet years later, this apostle still identifies himself with the old name Simon. He takes on the new name as well, but can’t seem to shed the old name completely.

Peter was a great man.  Christ chose him, with all of his failures and emotional outbursts, with his denial and his bossy, demonic demands.  Christ chose him to walk with Him on this earth, He chose him to be forgiven of his most painful sins, He chose him to build His church upon, He chose him to be a part of His inner circle of dearest friends, He chose him to unspeakable greatness and distinction. And yet this great man never seemed to completely shed the old and fully embrace the new.

There may be something very healthy in this.  He may be holding on to this little touch of his old self in order to serve as a reminder of where he came from, adding it to the new name to remind him of how he became something new.  It may be an indication of humility.  While Christ has made me something new, there is a fallen someone in me of old.

Or maybe it’s something more even.  Perhaps Peter, the older he got and the closer he walked with the Holy Spirit that his Friend sent to help him, realized every day just how far he was from the new man he was called to be.  Perhaps he was every day saddened anew with how much of the old man there still was in there.

There is a parenting analogy that I’ve heard.  As siblings grow, younger kids want the privileges of older kids, they want to know the same things and be granted the same responsibilities.  Here’s how the analogy goes.  You line up different size suitcases filled with varying weights.  You’ve got small bags in the front with light weights and terribly large and heavy bags in the back.  Have each kid attempt to pick up various bags.  Smaller kids are only meant and able to carry lighter loads. As they grow, they are able to carry more.  So it is with responsibilities and information and obligations.

As you progress in your spiritual walk, as you prosper in maturity in the Lord, don’t go straight for the back bags.  Celebrate the accomplishments you find in tackling the lighter ones too.  Start with that which God reveals to you and asks of you and teaches you today.  You, not anyone else.

Even great men like Simon Peter, Son of John never got to what he felt like was the heaviest bag.  Even after a lifetime of devoting everything to Him, giving up everything for Him, he still saw himself as only partly that which his God and Friend had declared him to be.  In your failures, know that others, great men and women of growth and distinction and faith and fervor, they all failed too.  They all fell short of fully claiming all that God declared them capable of.

While we are made new, while we are called to cast off the old and embrace and nurture and grow the new life that we find in this incredible Friend and Saviour who came to grant us this freedom, we all still have those parts of the old that linger on, that we hold on to like an old blanket.  If Peter never felt on earth as though he could drop the distinctions of his past and move forward without reservation into the newness granted him in Christ, I think I may be expecting too much of myself to think that I can.

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on.                                                                                Philippians 3:13-14

Be content with your accomplishments today, set new heights before you tomorrow.