Peter’s Encounter with Grace. (Part 2)

The record of Peter from church tradition is that whenever he took an early morning meeting and the rooster crowed, he would stop preaching. When he started again there was a gentleness and tenderness in his teary eyes and everyone in the congregation would be touched.

We can only consider the life of Peter rightly when we see our story. Christ was on trial then; His cause is now. We can deny Christ the same way Peter did by our attitude to truth, holiness, rightness, and even our attitude to each other. Like an acorn, one act can become a mighty oak.

Consider for a moment the reason for Peter’s mysterious fall. Yes, surely, he would have died for Jesus just as he declared. He was always at the head of any list (as e.g. in Matthew 16.) But sin does not happen in a moment any more than bankruptcy is the work of a moment. A person would have been heading down that path a while, preparing for it by prodigal expenditures. I know that a teenager does not get kicked out of school in a day, it’s a process. When a young man goes to jail it doesn’t happen overnight, it is the trend of a life. It may have begun by mucking up in school, then petty thefts. A moral fall is not the sin of a moment, it may have begun with pornographic literature or badly rated movies or literature.

Every time we see Peter, he is assertive, self-confident, loud and boastful.  A person who is boastful does not know themselves. As we have noted before, character is not produced in a crisis it is revealed. A crisis determines destiny, it does not determine character. Peter was heading towards this moment and Jesus warned him it was coming. People fall morally the same way they fall physically, on the side to which they are leaning.

Peter’s fall did not begin with a sin but a weakness. That is why we can be trapped so easily. Few of us have the courage to be great sinners. We don’t want to go to jail and have our name on the evening news. The strength of a rope is not at its strongest point but at its weakest. The strength of a ship is not where it is strongest, but where it is weakest. One hole will sink it. One sin will take down a person. Unless some mysterious power upholds us, we will repeatedly slip. The spiritual life is a perilous affair unless we are in Christ in our hearts and conscience, which makes us spiritually awake.

Peter ignored the warnings. He was told to watch and pray that night. He was told he would deny his Lord. Jesus had said, “satan wants you, to sift you like wheat.” He wants every one of us and he will come at us through our weaknesses not our strengths. Here is a word of encouragement: We will never be lost by our weaknesses if we look to Christ. Remember those words of Martin Luther, “when I look to myself, I wonder how I could ever be saved, but when I look to Jesus I wonder how I could ever be lost.” Even many falls will not cause me to be lost provided I turn again as Peter did. That night Judas had premeditated his sin, but that is not so with Peter, he had premeditated his victory!

So, in the end it is not our weaknesses that need destroy us if our faith is in Christ because one look saved him. The Lord’s back is not turned from us. He “looked upon Peter.” It was a life-giving look. Their eyes met across a crowded courtyard. Peter did not have his back turned either, he responded. This is the mistake of so many who fall, they keep their back turned. Repentance means, turn around and look to Christ. Even the slipperiness of life need not discourage us provided we look to the master. We will never, never perish while we are trusting his merits.

Peter was ignorant of his own moral depravity. He did not see the extent of human sin. This is terrible ignorance! The two main things we need to know are the heart of God and our own heart, they are almost opposites. A great knowledge of the heart of humanity and the heart of God is true knowledge. The heart of God is love. The heart of humanity is selfishness and sin. To be aware of that is to be halfway to heaven.

Peter’s ignorance was ignoring the warnings, his failure to watch and pray, his failure to remember. If we were to summarize his fall we would say: falsehood, cowardice, profanity, and persistence – he didn’t just do it once but three times. Compare this to his close connection to Christ, and the special privileges so recent!  It was only an hour or two since the greatest sermon ever heard. He had just had his feet washed and Jesus had said “You are clean.” Yet Jesus knew he would do this. God sees our weaknesses and loves us regardless.

Peter never meant to deny his Lord, and neither do we. He was sincere in his protests, and so are we. Yet, none of us know what we would do given the right circumstances. This man went voluntarily into the way of temptation. He stayed in the company of the ungodly and did not provide for satan’s subtlety. These are the trials that take us by surprise. This is when destiny is made unless we are looking to Christ as Peter was.

Tomorrow, I will share the grand and wonderful conclusion to this part of his story.