Peter's Conversion
I. THE ROOT OF FAILURE.
''And the Lord said,
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as
wheat: hut I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not ; and when thou art
converted, strengthen thy brethren.
"And he said unto Him, Lord, I am ready
to go with thee, both unto prison, and to death. "And He said, I tell thee,
Peter, the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt thrice deny that
thou knowest Me" (Luke xxii. 31-34).
"And the Lord turned, and looked on
Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said unto him,
Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice. And Peter went out and wept
bitterly "(Luke xxii. 61-62).
'' But go your way, tell His disciples and
Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee : there shall ye see Him, as He
said unto you (Mark xvi. 7).
The Lord is risen, indeed, and hath appeared
unto Simon. (Luke xxiv. 34).
''Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved
said unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the
Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked,) and did cast
himself into the sea As soon, then, as they were come to land, they saw a fire
of cools there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.
Jesns saith unto them,
Come and dine So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon, Simon, son of
Jonas. lovest thou Me more than these?'' (John xxi. 7-15).
I HAVE put
together these passages from the Gospels, that we may have before us, at one
view, all the steps in that "conversion,'' or restoration of Peter's soul, of
which they speak to us. Conversion, in Scripture, is soul to God, but is the
term used for any turning from sin also, into which even as converted (in the
ordinary sense now) the soul may have got. Peter long before this had been
converted (that is, in the sense of being born again,) as is plain by the
Lord's words in Matt. xvi. He had had Christ revealed to him by the Father, and
had believed that revelation - was a child of God by faith in Christ Jesus. The
conversion the Lord speaks of is his restoration of soul after the denial of
his Lord and Master.
The outward sin, which too commonly we judge to be
all, is ever and only the out-cropping of a state of soul which was there
before, and is the root of it. No force whatever of temptation would suffice to
upset or draw away a soul which was finding its strength in God Himself. "God
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able," is
ever true here. So that a man is actually "tempted "- that is, temptation
succeeds with him - when he "is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." That
which exposes him to the evil is in himself, and not in his surroundings. A
soul that in the thorough consciousness of impotence rests in God for help is
impregnable to assault. "When I am weak, then am I strong." Self-confidence,
therefore, in some form, is the secret of all failure - the root of all actual
commission of sin.
That this was so in Peter is evident. It ought to be
evident also that his is a pattern case. His restoration is the divine
application in the last supplementary chapter of John's Gospel, of the
feet-washing of the 13th, where Peter, too, is the resister, and is told that
by-and-by he shall understand the meaning of what he understood not then. In
pain and shame, indeed, he learns it, as more or less we all do, but a lesson
well worth learning at what-ever cost, and, indeed, absolutely necessary to be
learnt; a lesson it will be well for us if we learn, and at less cost, through
his example as the Word gives it us, than by our own.
A root is a little
thing apparently, and below the surface. Who would judge to be so grave a thing
the expression of honest affection to his Master which spoke out of him in the
words, "Lord, I am ready to go with Thee to prison and to death." How easily
such like things in us pass undetected in ourselves and others! At least, if
detected, how little serious we deem them! Who would have thought that the
fruit of this would be, "I know not the man." Yet it was, plainly. Not, of
course, the fruit of the affection, which was really there - he was no
hypocrite,- but of the wretched self-confidence, only able to carry him into
the danger, but not through it; sure to break down, and needing to be broken
down, at whatever cost; necessitating the perfect love of God itself to give
him over into Satan's hands to break it down.
Look at Job. There is not one
like him upon the earth, a perfect and upright man. That is God's testimony.
Why put such an one through those sorrows which are the very type of suffering
to this day? Alas! Job nourished and cherished this perfectness of his, as
hundreds now their christian perfection, as they style it. Therefore, ' Behold,
he is in thine hand." Satan had asked the same thing concerning Simon Peter, a
lesson for perfectionists to the end of time, but a lesson for many more
besides. "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired "- it is "demanded," rather -" to
have you, that he may sift you as wheat." Mark that "demand." It is as wheat he
demands them, for he is the sifter of God's wheat. This applies to all the
disciples; but there is one in special need among them, and him the Lord
singles out from among the rest: "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail
not." How tender that anticipation of the trial before Simon Peter, yet no
prayer that he may escape it; it was necessary that he should be exposed to it,
and that, too, with the certainty of breaking down. How solemn that warning!
And how different yet the Lord's judgment of the matter to ours. In ours, that
terrible denial in the high priest's palace would be the thing most thought of.
In His it was the laying bare only of the state which necessitated it.
While warning it is, there is yet comfort in the warning. If I have fallen into
the ditch, it is that I might be turned back out of the path which led to it.
It was needful I should fall, and love allowed it for my recovery. But that
recovery is not effected simply by my getting out of the ditch, therefore I
must be got back to where my path diverged from the true one; yes, and have got
the sign - post up upon the by-path, too. It is for want of this that we fall
again so often in the same way. To judge the open sin is easy, and no assurance
at all that I shall avoid it for the future, no token in itself of recovered
spirituality. "If we judge ourselves we should not be judged." To judge our
sins and to judge ourselves are two different things. For the last we must have
distinguished and judged the state of which the sins are only the issue-the
root on which, if it be not removed, fresh fruit will surely grow.
This is
restoration in full result. We must notice, however, that there is another kind
of restoration needed first and in order to this. Many overlook it or displace
it, and to their own serious hindrance. To this the Lord's prayer for Simon
Peter plainly looks on, and His own announcement of it to him, along with the
announcement of the sin itself, would do its part in due time towards it. The
tendency of sin - all sin - is to weaken faith, and. put distance between the
soul and God. And then this again is what makes (so long as it lasts) recovery
impossible. Not merely if you are not washed, but "if I wash thee not thou hast
no part with Me." And we - we must have put our feet with all their defilement
into His gracious hands, that they may be cleansed. For that we must be with
Him. Distance will not do. With Peter we may think it only becoming to hold off
amd say - and say it with reverent consideration of His greatness and His
holiness -"Thou shalt never wash my feet." We may try to cleanse them by
confession and self-judgment, and so make ourselves fit to be with Him again.
We shall accomplish nothing by all this. He alone washes. We must needs submit
to the supremacy of love and grace in Him, and be with Him not as cleansed but
as defiled, and let Him cleanse.
We will return to this, and look at it
more in detail presently. What we begin with is, that in all cases actual sin
is the out cropping of a state of soul which went before it, and necessitated
that we should be given up to it. And moreover, this state is very generally,
and at the best, some form of self-occupation and satisfaction. We never fall
because of weakness merely. We fall because we do not realize our weakness. We
have our hand out of our Father's hand. What could harm us if it were not
so?
But there are many forms of this, and some so unsuspected, it will be
well to pause and look at them a moment. Peter's might be plain; but his
undoubtedly true affection to his Master, and upright honesty of purpose,
disguised it for him. Such do you find with many a young soul fresh with a
fervour most real but yet untried. What is the meaning of the miserable
breaks-down and failure so soon experienced often after conversion? Not surely
that God would have us fail! Not that there is a necessity of failure to which
we are delivered! No, but that even at the expense of failure we must be
allowed to see what we are who would so fain serve God, and be something now,
if we never were till now. Did He leave us to that, what should we not lose?
How would our very piety soon shut out God from us, the Strong One's strength
that beareth us and all our burdens; the love of Himn who carrieth in His
bosom! To know His worth, we learn our worthlessness, and that the lesson is
cheaply learned will be proclaimed in eternal Hallelujahs.
'l'here are
others apparently not at all on this ground, amid indeed at its very antipodes.
They have learnt so fully,they would say) what failure is, that they can think
of little else but this. Speak to them when you may, they have nothing but
lamentation over their short-coming to respond with. Sunk under the load of a
body of sin and death, they imagine that to be self-judgment which is mere
self-occupation, and which gives no whit of power for the holiness they long
after.
This is not self-complacency, it is true; but it is a desire after
it. If not able to utter the Pharisee's "God, I thank Thee," they are at least
miserable because they cannot do it. They have not reached that point of
self-judgment at which we turn away in hopelessness from what we have no
further expectation from. On the contrary, it is because they have this
expectation that they find such grievous and continual disappointment. This,
therefore, almost equally with the former condition, exposes the soul unarmed
to temptation. If "the joy of the Lord is your strength," it is but little joy
they have. In both cases evil is the fruit, because did God suffer good, it
would be but worse evil. We should dress up self with that of which we had
robbed Christ, and all seeming good would be perverted and transformed to its
mere opposite. "No flesh shall glory in His presence." Therefore the solemn and
reiterated warnings of Scripture, not to bring us to content with
fruitlessness, but to show us the way rather of bearing frtmit. God takes up
Job, a perfect man as mione else omi earth, amid how painfully He has to teach
him his vileness. The Lord takes up Peter with his honest love to His Master,
amid has to let him learn in the high priest's palace that he could deny that
beloved Master with oaths and curses. He has to be in Satan's sieve that lie
may be "converted," not from the denial of his Lord,- that was but the bitter
and painful means by which he was to find that where he was before;- but out of
the self-complacency and self-sufficiency which was, in His sight who seeth not
as man seeth, the deeper evil. Satan's desire in sifting was not this, of
course, but this was God's use of it, and its end.
How slow are we to
recognize this ! Yet it is utmost important to do so, for if we look at the
fruits in the life as isolated from the condition they manifest, we may judge
and judge the former, and, leaving out the latter, leave still the root out of
which again and again the evil springs. So in the case of another, equally with
our own, we may address ourselves to the mere things into which one may have
got, forgetting the deeper question of what got one into it. And here we shall
find that Peter's fall is no exceptional one. Self-trust is ever our ruin.
Never trusting ourselves we shall never be disappointed. The answer to all that
we are is the cross whereon, for what we were, Christ died. We have died,- we
are dead,- with Him, that He might be indeed the object of our life. "To me to
live is Christ." If it be that, God, with all that He is, is with me. Power
cannot be lacking to accomplish what is His own purpose. Alas, that it should
be so easy to mistake my desire to be something for Christ, for this, the only
rightful object of the soul!
2.-THE ADVOCATE AND HIS
INTERCESSION.
"My little children, these things write I unto you, that
ye sin not," says the apostle (i John ii. i). It is important to ask of what he
had been writing with this end in view. We may answer that essentially,
communion with the Father and the Son had been his topic, and the full-ness of
joy in it-for "the joy of the Lord is your strength "-would be their safeguard.
The two passages are evidently in close relationship to one another: "these
things write we unto you, that your joy may be full," and "these things write I
unto you, that ye sin not."
Thus occupation with Him in whom Divine love
has visited us, is our preservative from the snares of the enemy, from the
solicitations of the world around us, and from the lusts of the flesh to which
these alone appeal, and which give them all their success. Lust is spiritually
the beggar's badge, the sign of emptiness and dissatisfaction. The soul filled
is the soul guarded. The earnest and reiterated exhortation of the epistle of
experience, is the needed one for holiness and fruitfulness alike: "Rejoice in
the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice!"
"God is light" and "God is
love." These are but two aspects of what is essential unity, and in reality
inseparable from one another. In Christ, God manifest, they are "grace and
truth." In contrast with law, when God was hidden in the holiest, "grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ." Here the real unity of these two things is
apparent: for "grace" there cannot be where sin is untruly dealt with; while
"truth" that came by the Son of God incarnate could as little be divorced from
the love that brought Him down. Yet there is an order in which these two are
presented to us, and this order is not unimportant to us. How differently it
would appear if we read "truth and grace," instead of "grace and truth! " for
grace it. is which (in the presentation of these to our hearts) comes
necessarily first, and thus is "truth in the inward parts" established; while
yet, so little can truth be divorced from grace that, until truth be
established there, the proper enjoyment of grace there cannot be.
The order
is plain in the first chapter of the epistle. If" the message which we have
heard of Him, and declare unto you," is "that God is light, and in Him is no
darkness at all," who is He that has brought rms the message, but He whose very
presence among men is in itself a gospel? At His birth the angels had
proclaimed not only "Glory to God in the highest," but also "on earth peace,
good pleasure in men." In Him the Word of life (the apostle has before been
telling us) was "heard," "seen," "looked upon," and "handled" by our hands.
Thus Divine love had brought in Divine light; and now if we "walk in the light
as God is in the light," what has rent the veil behind which in the thick
darkness He had dwelt, and enabled our human eyes to take in the revelation?
Surely, once more, Divine love, which in providing the precious blood to put
upon the mercy-seat, has opened a way of access into the holiest of all.
A
righteous way; and thus "grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life;"
but surely love, not righteousness, has found the way, and righteousness exalts
the love which has done so: grace reigns, though righteous-ness is the basis of
its throne. Love has let out the light; love invites and enables us to "walk in
the light." That is not setting it aside, but the contrary. "Light" implies
"manifestation": "that which doth make manifest is light." In the presence of
God, Himself in the light, we and all things else are manifested. Repentance
and remission of sins are preached to us in the saving name of Jesus (Luke
xxiv. and as we believe the grace which has visited us, we bow to its holy
terms and drink it in. As confessed sinners we find God "faithful and just to
forgive us our sin," and so to "cleanse us" inwardly "from all
unrighteousness." The order of presentation of the truth is ever the same.
So far - and that is as far as the first chapter of John's first epistle
carries us - we have to do with the first entrance of the soul into the
presence of God. The latter verses (which are often taken as applying solely to
the failures of Christians) are strikingly, and accomding to the apostle's
manner elsewhere in the epistle, the testing of a profession which was already
in his day beginning to be wider than the reality. In verses 6 and 7 he is
defining how far amid such profession the efficacy of the blood extends. Love
has let out the light. The light of the holiest carries with it the cleansing
virtue of the blood with which the rending of the veil has furnished the
mercy-seat. It is therefore "if we walk in the light," manifested to ourselves,
"as He is in the light," manifested to us, . . . "the blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth from all sin." It is where we walk, not how, that is in question;
and plainly to make it here a question of a believer's conduct morally, would
be to say that the blood of Christ cleansed jtmst in proportion as there was
nothing to cleanse from.
The three verses following are really the
definition further of what it is to walk in darkness or in light, and are thus
the necessary appendix to the former ones. "If we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves," are in darkness, "and the truth," the product of the light,
"is not in us." "If," on the other hand, "we confess our sins, showing the
action of the light upon us, (we have sins and nothing else to confess) "He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins." This is the connection of repent
ance and remission of sins indicated in the passage in Luke before quoted. It
is so clearly parallel to the preceding verses, and so simply refers to the
cleansing power of the blood of Christ, that to make it the introduction of a
new subject,- and that the subject that we are introduced to, as for the first
time, in but the second verse of the following chapter,- seems really
impossible to concede; yet that we find here principles in God's way of dealing
which may be carried further, and applied in this and in other ways, is true,
for light and love are ever one in God, and what He is He will be; He canrot
deny Himself. But these things the apostle puts before us, as he plainly says,
that wi may not sin. "If," notwithstanding, "any one should sin," that case is
comisidered next. But observe how differently the matter is put. This kind of
sin is put hypothetically only, not as if it were sure to be, but if it be,
then "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He
is the propitiation for our sins." It must be confessed, but the eye of the
person who has sinned is thus not in the first place turned upon himself, but
upon Another, his Advocate. It is of course implied that he knows he has
sinned, but that is not at all the same as restoration. In this, grace must
act, Christ mnust restore; and it is of the greatest importance that our eyes
should he thus directed to whence alone all help comes.
"An Advocate"
(Paraclete): One who takes our cause in hand to see it through for us; "with
the Father," not God as God, but in settled nearness of relationship to us as
His own. Were it as His creatures simply we had to do with God about sin, it
would imply that we had no true position in righteousness at all before Him,
and then intercession could not avail for us. Intercession with God as God is
that of Priesthood, not of the Advocate; and there "such an High-priest becomes
us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." As long as
the blood of Christ is on the mercy-seat, he who has come to God by Him is
perfected by it, and the intercession of the Priest with God is on account of
weakness, not of sin (Heb. vii., x.).
The intercession of the Advocate, on
the other hand, is for sin, but with the Father for the children. It is needed,
not to take away guilt, nor surely to turn the Father's heart towards us, but
as regards the government of the Father's house. "Christ, as Son," is "over His
house" (Heb. iii. 6), and all in it are under His hand. As charged with them it
is necessarily His place to act in their behalf with the Father; and, as noted
in the passage before us, being "Jesus Christ the righteous," Him the Father
ever hears. If among mere men even, "the prayer of the righteous man availeth
much," and this be a well-understood principle of holy government, how
absolutely must avail, and how easily intelligible, the intercession of the One
alone absolutely righteous! while in addition to this He is also "the
propitiation for our sins." Such is our Advocate. Well may our eyes be directed
towards Him, then, in the very first place, when the restoration of the soul is
before us. We shall also comprehend that, as Son over the Father's house, He is
more than simple Intercessor.
In Peter's case, which in this as in other
places seems quite a typical one, we are permitted to see the Advocate in His
place and hear the purport of His intercession. We find that before even the
sin had taken place He had been with the Father about it. We find, too, that
Satan also had been before God about Simon Peter among others. "And the Lord
said, Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired (demanded, it should be rather) to have
you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy faith
fail not; and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." The prayer of
the Advocate had not been the effect of Peter's repentance plainly, but of His
knowledge of the need and danger of His unsuspecting disciple. Satan had
demanded them all for his sieve, as the permitted sifter of all that purports
to be God's wheat; and, as in Job's case, he had obtained his request. The Lord
had not for a moment asked that the sifting should not be, but the special need
of Peter He had provided for by the special request for him - He does not say
for them - that his faith might not fail. His failure otherwise He foretold. It
is very noteworthy and solemn that He could not apparently ask that he should
not fail. Simon must be permitted to break down, as Jacob his father before had
to be broken down, that just as Israel sprang out of crippled Jacob, so Peter,
the man of stone, might come out of sifted Simon. Jacob had to give up his
cunning, Job his goodness, Simon his strength, for a like end in all. Our human
virtues lie but too near our vices: our wisdom is our folly, our folly wisdom;
our strength is our weakness, our weakness strength. This is the first lesson
of our primer, and hard to learn: but when we have learnt it, our progress is
wonderful. Jacob crippled is at once a prince with God, and Simon, just now
shrinking before a maid, strengthens his brethren.
For us it is serious
that if we are "wheat," or assume it, Satan has undoubtedly demanded us for
trial, and that the Lord our Advocate does not refuse his claim to that. But He
has prayed for us also, who can doubt? We may well trust ourselves, not in
carelessness, but not in carefulness, to His hand and care.
We have already
in some measure considered the purport of the Lord's intercession, that Peter's
faith may not fail. That sin has a natural tendency to weaken the practical
confidence of the soul in God, I suppose by experience we are well aware. Upon
this Satan works to produce a practical separation from Him, which he well
knows to be fraught with disastrous consequences. At a distance from God
self-judgment is impossible, and power of recovery wholly lost; further
departure follows, and here may be the secret of a long period of declension, a
night and winter of the soul, dark, cold, and unfruitful. The sins which niay
follow upon this are but its necessary result and sign. To deal with these as
if they were the whole matter, or half the matter, is a most serious mistake;
nay, they may be of such a character as to be little noted by the unexercised
conscience of the man "hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." He owns, perhaps,
he is not spiritual, thinks of it rather as his misfortune than his fault; is a
fatalist, when he thinks he is only owning creature nothingness; is "blind and
cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old
sins."
From this state we must carefully discriminate that which is indeed
very different in itself, though under certain conditions it may verge into it.
I mean the state of one who may have known peace, but not deliverance; who is
trying to make something of himself-that self which the cross of Christ has set
aside for him - and finds as the necessary effect neither power in himself nor
help from God. This is not an unexercised state evidently, though through bad
nurturing it may lapse into it, and "the good that I would I do not" may become
at last but acquiescence in the evil from which there seems no escape. Who can
but groan when he considers how large a part of Christians really come under
one of these two conditions? From hence schism, heresies, a worldliness great
enough for the reproach of the world itself, and innumerable other evils! Oh,
for the power of the Word, quick, and sharper than any two-edged sword, to
pierce even to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow, of soul and spirit,
and to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart! God grant us, reader,
honesty with Himself and in His presence, with whomn we have one and all to do.
Peter's case was one of self-confidence, that is, of self-ignorance, the
haughty spirit, sure precedent of a fall. The fall he needed, nothing but the
humbling of it would do for him. The danger was lest he should, as one hopeless
and reckless, drift away from Christ still further, and fall effectually under
Satan's power. Confidence in Him whose grace he had begun to know alone could
hold him fast, so that the break up of self should only the more make that
grace to be exalted, and become the strength henceforth which in himself he
lacked. Having learnt that, he could "strengthen his brethren."
Second Part
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