³⁸ Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times.”

Second bomb dropping, Jesus gives the haunting assessment of Peter’s claims to loyalty. What could this brave disciple be thinking at that moment? The Master has absolutely no confidence in him. Peter knows the Lord had an uncanny ability for predicting the future. After all, this is the One whom he had previously proclaimed as, “The Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). How could he directly contradict the Son of God?

Worse than being chided for resisting Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem or being addressed as “Satan” (Matt 16:23), this charge of impending disloyalty must have been crushing to the one who was overzealous in his presumptive attempts to protect Jesus from any opposition. After three plus years of following Christ, in the end Peter was going to fail. He could protest no more, the Lord had spoken definitely, what would be the use? End of story, right? Wrong.

Again, the reader, even in the gospel writer’s day, was already aware of how the story goes from here, for the other gospel accounts had already been in circulation for a number of years. Every one of the four chroniclers records this statement of Jesus to Peter. His legacy of failure is recorded indelibly for all generations to come. But again, that is not the end of the story, and we err to think this failure defines Peter. In truth, we must not allow any of our own failures to define us either.

The end game is what God does about our failure and how we respond to that. We know how the story plays out, with Jesus meeting Peter after the resurrection. Ignoring his failure, the Lord tells him three times to shepherd God’s people. Peter’s failure became simply a foundation or context for showing God’s great mercy and grace in using broken and failing people to do great, responsible work for Him. Probably in his own mind he could rival Paul’s statement, “… Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life” (1 Tim 1:15–16).

Could this indelible experience of failure and restoration be reflected in his writings later to the scattered Christians, “… clothe yourselves with humility… for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God… (1 Peter 5:5–6)?

Lord, never let me forget Your graciousness and mercy in overlooking my failures and disloyalty, and still wanting to use me to serve You.