With Jesus soon to depart in a physical sense, someone else is going to have to take the role of the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep entrusted to him by the Father (John 10:11, 14-16). The role will fall to Simon Peter but first his qualifications must be probed and tested. By an earlier charcoal fire (John 18:18) he had denied Jesus three times. Hence the triple interrogation in which his love is gently probed: ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ (John 21:15-19). Only if Simon loves Jesus ‘more than these others’ will he be suitable to take up the pastoral role which Jesus has exercised to the point of death. The interrogation goes on until Simon is moved at the depths of his being. There is no explicit censure of his denial, no demand for apology – just a sense conveyed that the triple protestation of love will more than adequately compensate for the past failure and show that Peter is ready and equipped to feed and tend the sheep, as Jesus had done. In fact, as Jesus goes on to foretell, Peter too will end his pastoral office by laying down his life in imitation of his Lord.