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Illustration of His Methods
59
So they went on, the crisis drawing nearer. They were boastful
and contentious, hoping for high positions, and not dreaming of the
cross.
Peter’s experience in betraying Jesus had a lesson for them all. To
self-trust, trial is defeat. Christ could not prevent the sure outcome of
unforsaken evil, 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. Again and
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, “You will deny three times that you know Me.”
Luke 22:34
. But the grieved, loving heart of the disciple responded,
“Lord, I am ready to go with You, both to prison, and to death”
Luke
22:33
. 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! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he
may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith
should not fail: and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your
brethren.”
Luke 22:31, 32
.
When in the judgment hall the words of denial had been spoken;
when Peter’s love and loyalty, awakened under the Savior’s glance
of pity, love, and sorrow, had sent him forth to the garden where
Christ had wept and prayed; when his tears of remorse dropped on
the ground—then the Savior’s words were an anchor for his soul.
Christ, though foreseeing his sin, had not abandoned him to despair.
If the look that Jesus directed toward him had spoken condem-
nation instead of pity, how dense would have been the darkness that
encompassed Peter, how reckless the despair of his tortured soul! In
that hour of anguish and self-abhorrence, what could have held him
back from the path trodden by Judas?
He who could not spare His disciple the anguish, did not leave
him alone to its bitterness. His is a love that never fails nor forsakes.
Human beings, themselves given to evil, cannot read the heart;
they do not know its struggle and pain. They need to learn of the
rebuke that is love, of the blow that wounds to heal, of the warning
that speaks hope.
It was not John, the one who watched with Jesus in the judgment
hall, the one who stood beside His cross, and who of the Twelve was