And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you, to sift [you] as wheat;
The Lord warns Peter about something happening out of sight. Satan has asked for the disciples, and God has said yes. Why would God hand His own people over to be shaken? And what remains when the shaking ends?
The word behind "demanded" is not a casual wish. One commentator, noting the force of the Greek, explains what kind of asking this was:
"Has begged" is the sense here. The ek in exētēsato points to intensity and persistent asking.
But pressing hard is not the same as having power. Satan must ask, and God sets the limits:
Always remember: no matter what Satan wants, he cannot touch one hair of our heads without God's permission. Both Job and Simon were in Satan's hands for a time, but in each case Satan could go only as far as divine wisdom allowed him. God let Satan lead Simon into a temptation, and Satan made him fail in it. Yet all Satan really achieved was to destroy Simon's self-confidence. He could not destroy his faith.
The picture is a threshing floor, and the word itself tells the story:
Peter and all the disciples were to be "sifted like wheat." But every trial any child of God goes through is sifting. That is what tribulation means, and "in the world you will have tribulation" is a sure word. The word comes from the tribulum, the threshing tool that separated the wheat from the chaff. Loss of loved ones, sickness, personal suffering, loss of possessions, hard circumstances, strong temptation — all these sift the wheat from the chaff. And Satan is not far away when the sifting begins.
The enemy expected an empty sieve. He had miscalculated what he was sifting:
As in Job's case, the enemy had presented himself before God to accuse them. He chose the moment that suited his plans, when the Lord would be taken from them and they would have no visible protection. He asked to put them into the sieve. He was certain that nothing would remain which God could accept. This way he thought to wrench them away from Christ, but he was mistaken. No doubt nothing of man would remain in the sieve; but what God had worked in the disciples must remain. In his hatred Satan forgot that if he had all power over the flesh, he had none at all over God and what comes from Him.
The Lord names Simon, but the demand covers the whole group. Older English translations showed a difference modern English hides: "you" for them all, then "thee" for Simon by himself. That change points to where the crack was:
You notice the change. "Satan demanded to have you." It was not only Simon, though He addresses Simon — Satan wanted them all. "But I have prayed for you." Why for Simon alone, and not for them all? Because Satan was making a dead set at Simon, and what gave Satan the opening was this: Simon's self-confidence. Confidence in what? In his natural character? Not at all — in his love for the Lord. If his confidence had been in the Lord's love to him it would have been a very different matter.
Satan asked for all of them. The Lord had already prayed before Peter knew anything was wrong:
Peter did not yet know his danger or his need. Before he knew either, the Lord prayed for him. … He had demanded to have them all so that he might sift them like wheat. He did not get them. Peter did go astray by rushing into temptation, but God heard the Lord's intercession for him.
The prayer that follows did not ask God to cancel the trial:
The Lord said, "Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you." What did He ask — that Peter should not be sifted? No, not at all. Peter needed sifting, because he had confidence in the flesh. But the Lord prayed that his "faith may not fail." That is, Peter would be held up under his trial. His heart would not lose its grip on Christ. He would be sure of His love and get the blessing intended.
God used Satan for this work. That is startling, and there is a line the enemy cannot cross:
Peter needed sifting, and God employed Satan to do the work — just as with Job, and the man in 1 Corinthians 5. It seems very wonderful, very mysterious, very solemn, that God should use Satan like this. Yet so it is. God uses him "for the destruction of the flesh." He cannot touch the spirit. That is eternally safe. But it is terrible work to get into Satan's sieve.
- Asked — the demand was urgent and insistent, but Satan still had to ask. The enemy moves only as far as God permits.
- Granted — God allowed the sieve because Peter trusted his own love for the Lord, and that confidence had to break.
- Sifted — trial is the threshing tool that separates wheat from chaff. Nothing of man survives it. What God has worked in a person remains.
- Guarded — Satan wanted the whole group and got none of them. He can reach the flesh; he cannot touch the spirit, and Peter's faith held.
- Ahead — the Lord prayed for Peter before Peter knew he was in danger, and that prayer was heard.
but *I* have besought for thee that thy faith fail not; and *thou*, when once thou hast been restored, confirm thy brethren.
On the night before the cross, Jesus warns Simon Peter that Satan has asked for him. He then speaks of a prayer already made, and of what Peter must do after the fall. Two questions follow. What did Christ actually ask for? And why did He not ask that Peter never fall?
The timing is the heart of it. Christ speaks of the prayer in the past tense. Peter is still standing, still confident, still hours away from his fall.
With Peter, it was not after he had fallen that Christ says to him, "I have prayed for you," but before. His intercession for Peter was going on all the time. He exercises it because we go wrong, not because we are right. Our feebleness and failure become the occasion for the exercise of this grace.
That order changes how we understand repentance. Peter's tears did not unlock Christ's help. They came from it.
Repentance is the effect of His advocacy... He prayed for him before the sin was committed. Then He looked at Peter at the right moment. Peter repented, went out and wept bitterly. But He had prayed for him before he repented.
Look at what Christ asks for. He does not ask that Peter escape the fall.
"I have prayed for you, that" — what? Was it that he might not fail? No, but that, having failed, his faith might not give way. Had Christ not prayed for His poor, feeble servant, he would have gone from bad to worse, and from worse to worst. But the intercession of Christ obtained for Peter the grace of true repentance, self-judgment and bitter sorrow for his sin. In the end it brought complete restoration of his heart and conscience.
Sifting separates grain from husk. So there must be grain there in the first place.
Notice, Satan sifted him just because he was wheat. Perhaps you have sometimes wondered whether there was any wheat there at all. If there were no wheat there would be no sifting. Satan never sifts mere chaff... And he will do the same with any of us, if we are not watchful and do not judge ourselves.
In verse 31, "you" is plural in the original. Here it is singular. Christ turns from the group to one man.
The Lord Jesus told Peter that Satan had desired to have "you" (a plural word), that is, all the disciples... But it is Peter alone to whom He says, "I have prayed for you (singular) that your faith may not fail."... The Lord Jesus, as the faithful Advocate, prayed for Peter before his fall. Certainly then Peter's faith did not fail, though he failed.
Older translations read "when you are converted." That wording confuses readers, because Peter already believed. The word means turning.
The word translated "converted" means turning to God. It covers conversion at the start, and also turning back after someone has departed from Him. The second is of course what is meant here. It is what we usually call "restoration" of soul, not what most people mean by "conversion."
Notice what Christ tells the restored man to do — and what He does not tell him.
He does not say, "When you are restored, take care you do not fall again." He says, "When you are restored, strengthen your brothers." That is what Christ cares about. You must learn from failure; but when you are restored, strengthen the brothers. That is our business, and we can only strengthen each other by the ministry of Christ.
It also answers the instinct to write off anyone who has fallen.
He was the object of such grace, and of the power that drew him back again. That fact would give confidence not only to him, but to them. So it is quite wrong to say that God does not restore a man, or that you must never trust someone who has once broken down... Peter broke down here, and he broke down later just as seriously: he failed over the Gentiles — the non-Jews God had sent him to welcome... Even so, no one except perhaps the apostle Paul was used by God more to strengthen his brothers. I think it is a serious thing to weaken the source of confidence in a soul that has slipped aside.
- Asked — Satan demanded all the disciples. Christ answered by praying for one man by name.
- Prayed — Christ prayed before the sin, not after it. Peter's tears were the fruit of that prayer, not the price of it.
- Held — Christ did not ask that Peter avoid the fall, but that his faith not give way. Peter failed; his faith did not.
- Turned — "converted" here means restoration of a believer who has wandered, not the first turning of a sinner to God.
- Strengthened — Christ's aim was not caution but usefulness. The man who fell became the one who could steady others.
And he said to him, Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death.
Peter has just heard that Satan asked to have him. He does not ask for help. He pledges his own strength instead, and commentators read that answer as the exact spot where his fall began.
The timing of Peter's words makes them serious. He speaks right after the warning about Satan. One writer shows what he should have said instead.
No sooner has the Lord said, "Satan has desired to have you," than Peter says, "I am ready." You get the secret of Peter's fall in these words. Had Peter been right, he would not have said, "I am ready." He would have prayed, "Lord, do keep me; Lord, do help me; Lord, do not let me fall under Satan's power." But he was self-confident. Self-confidence is, I believe, the cause of all our failure. Self-distrust, on the other hand, is the secret of our getting on with the Lord.
The warning did not shake Peter. One writer names what was speaking in him.
The Lord now (v. 33) let Peter's self-confidence show itself plainly. "Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death." "I am ready." This was the flesh, ready to face everything. The flesh even when warned is always self-confident. If it had had even one atom of strength, the Lord's solemn warning should have kept it from falling.
Peter was not pretending. He simply did not know his own heart.
We do not in the least question Peter's sincerity. We feel perfectly sure he meant all he said; and, further, that he had not the most remote idea of what he was about to do. He was ignorant of himself, and we generally find that ignorance and self-confidence go together. Self-knowledge destroys self-confidence. The better you know yourself, the more you must distrust yourself.
We usually date Peter's failure from his denial. One writer dates it from this sentence.
But at that moment Peter's self-confidence was so strong that he all but told the Lord He was wrong. He said to Him that he was ready to go with Him to prison and to death. His denial later was a sad shame. Yet his self-confidence was a worse evil than his denial, because it was the root cause of that denial.
One writer sets Peter beside Ittai, a foreigner whose eye was on his lord and not on himself.
What a contrast between this stranger and Peter, the Jewish disciple who had followed the Lord from the beginning. Oh, how quick Peter was to speak, though Jesus never asked him to: "Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death." Peter thought of what he himself was. Ittai thought of what his lord was to him. Poor Peter! He never suspected it, but his faith was the smallest and poorest faith there could be, for he had a high opinion of himself.
Peter's pledge also set him above the other disciples. One writer calls that pride.
His pride also made him speak lightly of the love of his fellow-disciples. He implied that they might well desert their Master. But his own love for his Master, he suggested, was so much deeper and truer than theirs that such shameful behaviour was impossible for him.
The story does not end with the boast collapsing. One writer follows Peter to the end of his life.
Jesus assures him that if he had failed to confess Him by his own will, God's will would let him do it. God's will would grant him to die for the Lord, as he had once declared himself ready to do in his own strength. Now Peter was humbled and brought fully under grace. He knew he had no strength. He felt his dependence on the Lord, and his utter inability if he trusted his own power. Now the Lord calls Peter to follow Him... what he had claimed he could do and could not, he would now do: follow Christ to prison and to death.
- Ready. Peter meets a warning about Satan with a claim about himself. The right reply would have been a prayer: Lord, keep me.
- Root. Writers trace the denial back to the self-confidence in this verse, which makes it the worse evil of the two.
- Ignorance. He was sincere and meant every word — ignorance of self and confidence in self travel together.
- Direction. His eye was on what he was for Christ, rather than on what Christ was to him.
- Grace. Broken and dependent, Peter later received by God's will the very thing he had offered in his own strength: prison and death for his Lord.
And he said, I tell thee, Peter, [the] cock shall not crow to-day before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.
In the upper room, hours before the arrest, Peter has just said he is ready for prison and death. Why does the Lord answer with a timetable for his fall — a rooster, a night, three denials?
Peter's answer treated the warning as an overstatement, and the Lord did not soften it. One writer looks past the coming denial to what lay under it.
At that moment Peter's self-confidence was so strong that he all but told the Lord He was wrong. He said he was ready to go with Him to prison and to death. His denial later was a shameful thing. Yet his self-confidence was a worse evil than his denial, because it was the root cause of it. The Lord had the last word, however. He told Peter firmly that the rooster would not crow until Peter had three times denied that he knew Him.
Moments earlier the Lord had called him Simon. Now He uses the other name, and one writer asks what the change was for.
"Peter." Compare verse 31, "Simon." Was it not now to say that, strong as he was, he needed reminding of his weakness?
One writer counts this warning as a step in Peter's restoration, and draws a rule from it.
The second step in Peter's restoration was the Lord's warning. Will we not find that no saint ever fell without a warning first? Filled with self-confidence we may pay little or no attention to the warning. But in some form or another the warning will come. How direct it was in Peter's case, for the Lord said, "I tell you… until you deny three times that you know Me."
Peter's problem was not that the words were unclear. He did not believe they were true of him, and that unbelief left him unguarded.
Peter did not believe our Lord's warning. If he had, he would not have entered into temptation, but would have watched, prayed, and been kept through faith. So he had to learn by bitter experience what the flesh is. The word was not mixed with faith in his soul when the Lord warned him so solemnly. He was confident in himself… it was confidence built on his own estimate of what his love for Jesus would enable him to do or bear.
The precision of the verse — this day, three times — points to something only God has. And the Lord had already acted on what He knew.
Foreknowledge is a divine attribute. Satan does not have it, but the Lord does. He knew that Satan was plotting to destroy the faith of Simon Peter. He also knew that the self-confidence of His disciple would make him easy prey. But the Lord was ahead of Satan. He had secured for Peter beforehand the grace that preserved his faith despite his great failure… Peter thought he was equal to any test. He thought he knew himself better than the Lord knew him.
The verse can sound like rejection. One writer reads it as love making provision in advance for the worst moment.
Love not only brings us into all that it has. It also holds firm and makes provision in advance for the greatest possible strain — the moment when every appearance must condemn the one loved. Yet it was no lack of love that exposed Peter to the sin of denying his Master. It was his self-confidence that wrecked his faithfulness. Through grace alone his faith did not fail utterly.
One writer takes the word Peter forgot and turns it on the reader.
Peter should have remembered the word that Jesus had said to him, and been warned by it. I ask you, my Christian reader: is the rooster crowing for you today? That is, is the Word of the Lord speaking to you today about something? If so, pay attention to it, and get nearer to Jesus… Peter paid no attention to the first crowing of the rooster. He went on to deny Him again, with oaths and cursing. Then, as the rooster crowed a second time, I seem to see him pull himself up and remember that he had done the very thing his Master said he would do.
- Warned — the Lord named the sign and the number. Writers note that no believer falls without a warning first.
- Root — the denial was the fruit. The self-confidence that contradicted Christ was the worse evil, and the real cause.
- Unbelief — Peter heard the warning but did not mix it with faith. So he never watched or prayed, and walked into the test unguarded.
- Grace ahead — the Lord was ahead of Satan. He had secured the grace that kept Peter's faith from failing.
- Restored — the warning was already a step in Peter's restoration. The fall was never the end of his story.