God the Father

The most famous fisherman there has ever been was a Jew called Simon bar-Jonas, that is, Simon son of Jonas.  We know him by the nickname which Jesus gave him – Peter, the Rock.  Being a Jew he was taught in his childhood the great truth which the Jews alone knew, that there is one God, the Living God, who is so holy that even “…the heavens are not clean in his sight…” (NRSV, Job 15:15).

As Peter grew up he learnt that God required him to be holy too.  “…be holy, for I am holy”, or, as God said to Abraham, the founder of the Jewish people, “…walk before me, and be blameless” (NRSV, Leviticus 11:44; Genesis 17:1). So Peter learnt God’s Ten Commandments which told him what he ought to do, but, like everyone else, he found that he could not keep them.