Peter Wasn’t Ready

“And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter… And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” — Luke 22:61–62 (KJV)

Murray loved the apostle Peter. “I do not know a man in the Bible who gives us greater comfort,” he said, because Peter was so full of failures, and yet look what Christ made of him.

Peter was a genuinely devoted disciple. He left his boats and nets to follow Jesus. He obeyed when Jesus told him to let down his nets after a night of catching nothing. He stepped out of the boat and walked on water. He was the first to say that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. “If he were living nowadays,” Murray says, “everyone would say that he was an advanced Christian.”

And yet something was badly wrong. Murray puts it in one sharp line:

“He had left his boats and his nets, but not his old self.”

When Jesus talked about his coming death, Peter told him off. When the disciples argued about who was the greatest, Peter wanted first place. He trusted his own ideas and his own strength. On the night before the crucifixion he promised Jesus he would never deny him, even if everyone else did. Hours later, frightened by a servant girl, he said three times: “I do not know the man.”

Then the moment that changed everything. As the rooster crowed, Jesus, who was being tried and beaten, turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered what Jesus had said, went out, and wept bitterly.

Murray says that look was a look of love. Even in his own suffering, Jesus did not forget Peter. And that broken moment was the turning point of Peter’s life: “the point where Peter was converted from self to Christ.” After that came Pentecost, and the fearful denier became the bold preacher, filled with the Holy Spirit.

You may be a lot like Peter. Keen, sincere, really trying, and still full of yourself: your plans, your reputation, your strength. Murray says the self-life is not fixed by trying harder. “It is Christ Jesus who can rid you of it.” What he asks is that you humble yourself before him.

Failure is not the end. For Peter it was the doorway. If you have let Jesus down badly, he is still looking at you with love, and the same Christ who led Peter to Pentecost, Murray says, “is waiting today to take charge of every heart that is willing to surrender itself to Him.”

One thing to do this week: think of a time you let Jesus down, a time you were too proud, too scared, or too sure of yourself. Read Luke 22:54–62. Then tell Jesus about your failure, and thank him that he looks at you with love too.