And the Lord, turning round, looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he said to him, Before [the] cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice.
The scene is a courtyard at night, and Peter has just denied for the third time that he ever knew Jesus. A rooster crows, and the prisoner on trial turns His head to meet His disciple's eyes.
The Lord was suffering at that very moment. Commentators point out that His thought was not for Himself but for the man who had just disowned Him. Only Luke records it.
His injured Lord, in the middle of His own distress, thought of His poor servant, who was being driven along by the enemy like a fallen leaf. "And the Lord turned and looked at Peter." We owe this exquisite expression of divine grace to Luke.
John's Gospel leaves this look out. Commentators trace that difference to the distinct character of each account.
Notice that John's Gospel gives us neither the Lord's praying for Peter beforehand and His assurance of restoration, nor His turning and looking at Peter after his last denial. Luke alone gives these plainly — the one Gospel whose character they suit and sustain (see Luke 22:31-32 and 61-62). In John everything turns, not on the discovery of what man's heart is and the grace of the Lord, but on the Person of Christ as the one central object.
Luke records no words from the Lord here, only a look. Writers ask what such a look could say. They rule out anger and read it as love answering denial.
A look, we may be sure, of infinite love. Peter had just turned his back on the Lord by saying, "I do not know the man." At once the Lord turned to Peter. His look must have said to Peter's heart, "You claim not to know Me, but I know you and love you."... Note too that Peter's heartless denial stirred up no resentment or anger in the heart of the Lord. A very small show of ingratitude or desertion or malice from others can stir bitter thoughts in our hearts, and bring out bitter words. It was not so with our Lord.
That look also had to carry Peter through the days before he saw his Master again.
I believe it was a look of wounded love beyond words — tender and unchanging. And I believe Peter lived on that look for the next three days, until he met his Master again in resurrection, and fellowship was restored.
The verse joins two things: the Lord looks, and Peter remembers what the Lord had said. Each did a distinct work in him, and the door he walked out of was not the door Judas took.
The look of the Lord brought back the word of the Lord, for we read that Peter "remembered the saying of the Lord." The look of the Lord broke his heart. The word of the Lord reached his conscience, and so he "went out and wept bitterly." Judas "went out into the night" — the eternal night of blank despair. Peter "went out" in deep repentance, on the way to restoration. He "went out" because his awakened conscience would no longer let him stay in false company.
The look was not the Lord's first move. Writers join His earlier prayer for Peter to this look as two halves of one rescue, arriving when Peter had sunk lowest.
We have already noticed Peter's gradual descent — his sad progress, stage by stage, in moral distance and blameworthy decline. He forgot to watch and pray. He followed far behind. He warmed himself at the enemy's fire. Then came the cowardly denial, the cursing and the swearing. All this was down! down! down!... But when the erring, straying, sinning one had reached the very lowest point, grace shone out with heavenly brightness — in what secured his restoration, and in what brought it about. The first we have in Christ's prayer; the second in Christ's look.
What the Lord did with Peter, He still does with believers who fail. Writers see the pattern here: the Spirit brings His word home to the conscience.
Later, when a particular failure comes, the Spirit applies the word to us. It convicts us of that failure and humbles us for it in self-judgment. So we see in Luke 22:61 that the Lord turned and looked at Peter when he fell... It was the washing of water by the word. The words of Jesus came back to his soul in all their life and power.
- Prayer first. Before Peter ever fell, Christ had prayed for him. That prayer secured his restoration; the look brought it about.
- Look next. The look carried wounded love, not resentment: "You claim not to know Me, but I know you and love you."
- Word after. The look broke his heart. The remembered word reached his conscience, and Peter wept bitterly.
- Two exits. Judas went out into despair. Peter went out in repentance, unable to stay any longer in false company.
- Same today. The Lord still restores His own by bringing His word home to the conscience — a washing of water by the word.
And Peter, going forth without, wept bitterly.
Peter's tears come at the lowest point of his story. He has just denied his Master three times, and the Lord has turned and looked at him. Two questions follow. What breaks a person down like this? And do tears mean he is restored?
Peter's collapse did not catch the Lord off guard. Before that night He had told Peter what would happen, and He had prayed for him. So the tears are not Peter's own doing. They answer that prayer.
This is just as much pure grace as the grace that first looked on us when we were in our sins. In Peter's case, the Lord told him beforehand what would take place. "Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." We all need sifting; "but I have prayed for you." Before Peter got into the danger the Lord had prayed for him. His grace works at the very moment it is needed. "He looked at Peter," and his weeping was an open acknowledgment of Christ's intercession.
The Lord speaks no rebuke here. The look does the work. It brings back the very warning Peter had shrugged off.
"The Lord turned and looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord." The Lord always takes up the point of failure. The first part of Peter's failure was that he made light of the word of the Lord. He really did not believe Him about himself and about his danger, although he did believe in Him as to His own glory... he did not believe Him in practice, that is, about his own danger at that moment. Now he saw what a fool he had been. It was repentance, but only the beginning of repentance.
Peter does not only weep. He leaves. Another man that night also went out, and the contrast matters.
The look of the Lord broke his heart; the word of the Lord reached his conscience. So he "went out and wept bitterly." Judas "went out into the night" — the eternal night of blank despair. Peter "went out" in deep repentance on the way to restoration. He "went out" because his awakened conscience would no longer let him stay in false company. He wept bitterly because the unchanging love of the Lord had reached his heart.
What broke Peter was not a rebuke. Hamilton Smith sets him beside the fallen sinner of Luke 7 and finds one cause in both.
What was the effect of that look? It broke the heart of the poor backsliding Peter. Like the fallen sinner of Luke 7, the backsliding saint of Luke 22 sees his sins in the light of the Lord's love. The love that rose above his sins broke his heart.
The denial was the fruit. Frederick Grant looks under it for the root.
A root is a small thing, and it lies below the surface. Who would think it serious when honest affection spoke out of him in the words, "Lord, I am ready to go with You to prison and to death"? Who would have thought that the fruit of this would be, "I know not the man." Yet it was, plainly. It was not the fruit of his affection, which was real — he was no hypocrite. It was the fruit of his wretched self-confidence. That self-confidence could carry him into the danger, but not through it. It was sure to break down, and it needed to be broken down, at whatever cost. It took the perfect love of God itself to hand him over to Satan to break it down.
Peter's story does not end with the tears. Writers point to a later work, when the Lord dealt with the cause.
I do not wonder that he wept bitterly. The grace of the Heart that he had wounded broke him down. Afterwards we read of the Lord meeting and restoring this backsliding one... He not only restores Peter, but He brings him to judge the thing that led him away, and then He trusts him again. The backslider never gets right with God until he has it all out with Him. When you get back, and judge the point of departure, then He restores the soul.
- Prayer first. Before Peter entered the danger, Christ had prayed for him. The tears answer that prayer.
- Look next. He looks, and does not scold. The look reaches Peter, and it carries love.
- Word remembered. The look brings back the warning Peter had made light of. Recovery starts where the failure started.
- Out he goes. An awakened conscience will not stay in false company. That is what parts Peter's going out from Judas's night of despair.
- Tears begin it. Bitter weeping opens the work. Full restoration comes later, when the Lord makes him judge the self-confidence at the root.