What did Jesus tell Peter?

When it was a question, at a later day, of His servant Peter, who, prompted by Satan, had fallen into human thoughts, and would have dissuaded his Master from the cross, He does say, "Get thee behind me." For certainly Christ did not want Peter to go away from Him and be lost, which would have been its effect. "Get thee [not hence, but] behind me," He says. He rebuked His follower, yea, was ashamed of him; and He desired that Peter should be ashamed of himself. "Get thee behind me, Satan," was thus appropriate language then. Satan was the source of the thought couched in Peter's words.

When they had dined, the Lord says to Peter, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" referring, I suppose, to the other disciples, for Peter had said, "Though all should deny thee, yet will not I." The word the Lord uses for "love" implies love in a general sense. Peter replies, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee." Here Peter's word for love implies special attachment to a person. The Lord thereupon gives him a charge, saying, "Feed my lambs," but follows it by a second query not so comprehensive as the first. This time it is merely, "Lovest thou me?" and no comparison with others is suggested. Again Peter answers, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee," still sticking to his word implying special affection. The Lord thereon says to him, "Shepherd my sheep." Then the Lord again changes the form of His question, and saying the third time, "Lovest thou me?" uses Peter's own word for "love," — "Hast thou indeed this special affection for Me?" is its meaning.

Three times Peter had publicly denied Him; three times the Lord asks him if he loves Him. And now Peter is broken down entirely, and replies, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." He, as it were, says, "Lord, Thou canst look into my very heart; Thou knowest whether I love Thee or not; though all else might doubt my love, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I do love Thee." It was enough: the springs of self-confidence and self-esteem, so ruinous to us all, had been touched; and now the Lord fully restores him, and, as publicly as He had been denied by him, puts him in a place of confidence and approval, as He sweetly says, "Feed my sheep." He says to him, as it were, "I can trust you now, Peter; I am going away, but I put into your care those I love best, My sheep and' My lambs, to shepherd them, and to feed them."

But look at the merciful ways of the Lord Jesus: for this it is of all things we want most to see — not Peter's fall, but Christ's fulness of grace. Before it He had said (Luke 22:31), " 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." Satan demanded to have the disciples to sift them in general as wheat; and the Lord said to Simon individually, "But I (emphatically) have prayed for thee," not merely "for you." Ah! did not Peter need it? How sweet soon would be the proof of such interest and deep concern on the Lord's part about himself under such circumstances, as if there had not been another to care for, and all His love were concentrated on the one on the point of such-grievous dishonour of His name. "I have entreated for thee, that thy faith fail not quite. And thou, when thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren." The word rendered "converted" means the turning to God, whether it be conversion originally, or the turning back when one has departed from Him. The latter is of course what is meant here. It is what we commonly call "restoration" of soul rather than what people in general understand by "conversion." The word is suitable to either. "Thou, when once thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren."

Peter then asks our Lord, "How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" (ver. 21.) We had instruction how we were to act in the case of a personal trespass. But Peter raises another question. Supposing my brother sins against me over and over, how often am I to forgive him? The answer is, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven." In the kingdom of heaven — not under the law, but under the rule of the rejected Christ — forgiveness is unlimited. How wonderful — the deeper holiness revealed in Christianity, is at the same time, that which feels with deepest love, and goes out with it to others! So we find here, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times," which was Peter's idea of the largest grace, "but, Until seventy times seven." Our Lord insists that there really was no end to forgiveness. It is always to be in the heart of the Christian.

Peter again, too, quick to speak to the Lord, says, "Whither goest thou?" Jesus answers him, "Whither I go thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards." How gracious! How gracious to tell him of his incapacity before His death, and of that following which will be a most sure consequence, brought by the gracious power of God and made true to his soul. "Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake." It was not that he was insincere. I doubt whether there ever was a sincerer soul than Simon Peter. And it is not in our insincerity, it is not there that our folly lies, but the very contrary, because we trust self in some shape or another. "Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice."

That may happen, for God can apply the word, but that is not washing one another's feet, for that is active individual service. But, in John 13, the Lord is sitting with the disciples as their companion in the world, and there, knowing that the glory was His and that He was going to it, in the perfect holiness of His nature He says to Peter, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." I am going away, but I am not going to give you up, I must have you with me where I go, and dirty feet will not do for heaven.

Apart from faith, Peter was as another man upon the waters. And when he considered the fury of the winds and the waves he began to sink, as any man would do. But even when he had lowered himself to the level of those who lack faith, he was not abandoned when he cried out in his extremity, "Lord, save me." On the contrary, Jesus immediately stretched forth His hand, saying, "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" The Lord remained faithful to the one who had followed him in obedience to His word, and who had honoured Him in this manner by his confidence. This deliverance by the Lord is in accordance with the words of the apostle Paul, who wrote, "If we are faithless, he abides faithful; for he cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). The Lord was the same both in Peter's triumph and in Peter's failure; the only change was in the disciple into whose heart doubt had crept.

But the Lord promises Peter that, when he should be old, he should stretch forth his hands, and another gird and carry him whither he would not. Thus, when it was no longer possible to boast of his own strength or courage, as a helpless old man, Peter would enjoy from God the singular privilege, not only of death for Christ's sake which in younger days he had essayed to face and most ignominiously failed in, but of that very death which the Lord had suffered with its prolonged agony and shame. For the Lord, as we are expressly told, said as He did, signifying not death so much as "by what" sort of death Peter was to glorify God; and after saying this, He saith to him, Follow Me.

As to "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church," Peter had by grace confessed what none ever had, that Christ was the Son of the living God. As entitled to be called Son of God according to promises to Messiah, He had been owned, but Son of the living God He had never been called. This the Father revealed to Peter. The Lord owns the grace conferred on him, and declares that his name should be called Peter (a stone), partaking by grace through his confession of that which he confessed, for it was upon that truth so confessed (that is, on Christ's being the Son of the living God) that He would build His church. Hence it is said that the gates of hades, of the power of death (Satan as having the power of death), should not prevail against the church. For Christ by resurrection was declared to be Son of God with power, above all the power of Satan; and, the church being built on this rock, of His being the Son of the living God, Satan's power, that of death, could not overthrow it. So Chrysostom repeatedly uses it. As James has said, to suppose any real foundation but Christ is denying the Lord. And it is in this character of a divine person having the power of life over death that He can build the church.

No man, after such a blessing as the Lord had just pronounced upon Peter, ever received a sterner rebuke. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona," so soon to be followed by, "Get thee behind me, Satan." So serious the place of a Christian — of a believer at least! so true the One who watches over us in love! Whilst there is the fullest value even for that which nothing but His own grace had given, and the deepest encouragement, yet how stern and unsparing is the Lord in letting Peter see what his thoughts, what his feelings, were; what Peter's heart was thinking about! And what was it that had drawn it our? Peter had owned the glory of His person. It was of God, God's teaching, without question, and the Saviour owned it at once; but that very Peter would turn Him away from the cross! Should that be? "Get thee behind me, Satan." The Lord Jesus came to die, and to die, too, in all the depths of it. For as to all the externals of the cross, they were indeed — deep as they were — but the outward form of that which only God could estimate. They greatly err who look only to what man was the instrument of in the cross of Christ — most true, most real as it was. But here the Lord was particularly looking at the cross as rejection; yet the path of that rejection led straight into the glory in which He was coming by and by. And the Lord accordingly, in the beginning of the seventeenth chapter, would give a view of the glory, and amongst others, to the very disciple that would have stopped His way into, as Peter thought, a suffering that was unworthy, but in truth that which was the foundation of His glory. For we are not here to look at His glory as Son of God; there was no foundation for that, it was its own foundation. That was truly divine, essentially divine. But here it was conferred glory. It is the kingdom; it is what God has given. As it is said in another place, "Wherefore God hath highly exalted him," so, by and by, He will be exalted in the kingdom; and the Lord would give a view of it that it might be not only a prophetical testimony, but, as the apostle Peter says, and he is the one that does say it, "We have the prophetic word more confirmed," that is, we have what was said by the prophets shown out in a reality. It might be only one that passed away; but still to have the sight of all the great elements of the kingdom brought before them in this life was an immense support to faith, an immense cheer, especially to one who must have felt deeply the rebuke that His Master passed upon him.