So they went on, the crisis drawing nearer; they, boastful, contentious, in anticipation apportioning regal honors, and dreaming not of the cross.
Rebuke That Reclaims
“I Have Prayed for Thee”
For them all, Peter’s experience had a lesson. To self-trust, trial is defeat. The sure outworking of evil still unforsaken, Christ could not prevent. But as His hand had been outstretched to save when the waves were about to sweep over Peter, so did His love reach out for his rescue when the deep waters swept over his soul. Over and over again, on the very verge of ruin, Peter’s words of boasting brought him nearer and still nearer to the brink. Over and over again was given the warning, “Thou shalt ... deny that thou knowest Me.”[[106]] It was the grieved, loving heart of the disciple that spoke out in the avowal, “Lord, I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison, and to death;”[[107]] and He who reads the heart gave to Peter the message, little valued then, but that in the swift-falling darkness would shed a ray of hope: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired 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.”[[108]]
“When Thou Art Converted”
When in the judgment-hall the words of denial had been spoken; when Peter’s love and loyalty, awakened under the Saviour’s glance of pity and love and sorrow, had sent him forth to the garden where Christ had wept and prayed; when his tears of remorse dropped upon the sod that had been moistened with the blood-drops of His agony,—then the Saviour’s words, “I have prayed for thee; ... when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren,” were a stay to his soul. Christ, though foreseeing his sin, had not abandoned him to despair.
If the look that Jesus cast upon him had spoken condemnation instead of pity; if in foretelling the sin He had failed of speaking hope, how dense would have been the darkness that encompassed Peter! how reckless the despair of that tortured soul! In that hour of anguish and self-abhorrence, what could have held him back from the path trodden by Judas?
Not Alone
He who could not spare His disciple the anguish, left him not alone to its bitterness. His is a love that fails not nor forsakes.
Human beings, themselves given to evil, are prone to deal untenderly with the tempted and the erring. They can not read the heart, they know not its struggle and pain. Of the rebuke that is love, of the blow that wounds to heal, of the warning that speaks hope, they have need to learn.