The Cross Archives

Most sermons that I have heard, including some that I have preached myself, that focus on Simon Peter tend to portray him as something of a buffoon. They present Simon Peter as a boaster and a blowhard. Peter, as the Gospels admit, said and did some foolish things. But that did not make him a fool.

John’s Gospel describes how Jesus gave Simon a new name. John 1:42 says, “When Jesus saw him, He said, ‘You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas’ (which when translated is Peter).” Cephas is a transliteration of the Aramaic word for rock. “It was far more than a statement of fact and a prophecy,” theologian and New Testament scholar E. F. Harrison observed. “It was an appraisal and promise.”[1]

If Simon recognized an inconsistency between the label and his personality, he did not acknowledge it. According to Luke 5:8, it was only later, after Jesus schooled him on the art of fishing, that Simon said to Jesus: “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”

Simon’s extremes appear to have been extremes of personality. Jesus called James and John the Sons of Thunder, yet it is Simon who comes across in Scripture as the brash and impulsive talker of the group. He is like that student who the class depends on to ask the question they have all wondered about, but are afraid to voice. He also seems like a natural leader. And, of course, we all know how Simon promised that he would never disown Jesus, even if it meant death.

Simon’s Failure

Was this merely an empty promise? I suppose it depends on what we mean by empty. His words certainly proved to be false. He fled from the garden, along with the rest, but not without first putting up a fight. Simon tried to make good on his promise. He drew a sword and struck a blow. It was only after Jesus told him to put away his sword and surrendered, saying, “It must happen in this way,” that Simon fled (Matt. 26:54).

Even then, Simon was still a follower of sorts. According to Mark 14:54, “Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. There he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire.” But it was here that Peter, the rock, crumbled when one of the high priest’s servant girls saw him and declared, “You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus!”

Simon flatly denied it, saying, “I don’t know or understand what you’re talking about.” He stood up and moved to stand by the gate, hoping to avoid further scrutiny. But the girl would not let the matter go. She continued to peer at him, pointing him out to the guards seated by the fire. Simon denied it again.

It didn’t take long before everyone was staring at him. “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean,” one of the bystanders said. Simon began to call down curses and swear. This is not the sort of speech we usually think of when we talk about swearing in our day. Simon did not resort to vulgar language in a desperate attempt to prove that he was not the sort of person who would follow Jesus. Even if he had, it is unlikely that such a strategy would have thrown them off scent. After all, one of the criticisms leveled against Jesus by the religious leaders was that he was friendly with sinners (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34).

Simon’s Curses

Simon’s curses were far worse than mere potty language. He swore a vow and called down curses upon himself if he were lying. This language reinforced Simon’s emphatic declaration: “I don’t know this man you’re talking about” (Mark 14:71). One way to look at his failure is as a threefold denial. It was that, of course, just as Jesus had foretold (Luke 22:34). But the other side of this is that Simon also had three opportunities to make good on his bold promise. “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you,” Simon had said. And all the other disciples had made the same claim (Mark 14:31).

It cannot be denied that Simon failed to make good on what he had promised Jesus. Yet, it would be a mistake to brand him as a coward. “It ill becomes prudent and safety-seeking men to criticize Peter for falling to a temptation which would never, in the same circumstances, have come to them at all,” the commentator William Barclay cautions. Simon stumbled into his great failure after a night of what Barclay describes as “fantastically reckless courage.”[2]

In other words, we cannot repudiate Simon without condemning ourselves in the process. Yet, I think this is just where we go wrong in our reckoning of Simon—especially those of us who preach and teach. We use his story as a platform to stand on and teach a negative moral lesson. “This is Simon,” we say. “He said he would be faithful and was not. Don’t be Simon.”

This is Simon Peter

Such a message is certainly preachable. It’s easy to follow and liable to provoke a reaction. It will cause the audience to nod in agreement or hang their heads in shame. But it is not the gospel. I suppose one could argue that it is law and, therefore, could serve as a preamble to the gospel. But if this negative assertion is all we can learn from Simon’s failure, I am afraid it offers little real help. After all, if a person like Simon (whose access to Jesus’ words and actions was far more direct than any of us has experienced) could suffer such a spectacular failure, why should we expect better from ourselves? We often feel as if we follow Jesus at an even greater distance.

But what if the lesson is not “Don’t be Simon” but the opposite? Suppose that it is, instead, “This is Simon Peter. He said he would be faithful, but he was not. We are all like him sometimes.” After all, there is a reason that Mark goes out of his way in his Gospel to make sure we know that “all the others said the same” (Mark 14:31). Simon is no coward. He is Simon the Bold, who follows Jesus right into the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, even if it is at a distance. But Simon is also no hero.

I am convinced that Simon meant what he said. But Simon’s commitment, though sincere, was ill-informed. Sincerity is a good start when it comes to obedience, but it is no guarantee of performance. He failed to understand both his own weakness and what God was actually doing. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation,” Jesus had told him in Gethsemane. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). I suppose if Simon had prayed better, it might have preserved him from the shame of denial, but it would not have kept Jesus from the cross. Jesus is the hero of the Gospels. He alone overcomes all temptation.

Simon’s Boldest Act

We are inclined to view Simon of the Gospels as a person who is defined by big words and even bigger failure. We feel a certain affection for his buffoonery. But when we reduce Simon to a caricature, we miss the essence of his character. Simon Peter turns out to be more of a mirror than a cautionary tale. Despite his denial, he proved to be a genuine follower of Jesus, even at a distance. The difference between Simon and Judas is that Simon came back. I think this was where his true boldness lay. Not the confidence of assertion or the flash of his sword, but in his unwillingness to finally walk away from Christ.

Sometimes the believer’s boldest act is to draw near to God despite our failures. Simon’s failure is not a license to dismiss our spiritual stumbling as insignificant. But it is a warrant to turn again and follow, despite the shame we feel. In 1 Timothy 1:15-16, the apostle Paul writes, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” I don’t know whether Simon Peter ever read those words. But he surely could have written them.

[1] Everett Falconer Harrison, “The Son of God among the Sons of Men 3 Jesus and Simon Peter,” Bibliotheca Sacra 102, no. 407 (1945): 301.

[2] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 352-353.

Every generation seems to have its own idol. Each one represents the spirit of the age, a false god who shapes the ethic of the culture at large. All too often, these idols find their way into the church. Sometimes they are brought in intentionally by those who fear that the church has become irrelevant. More often, they are introduced unwittingly by Christians who have absorbed the ethic from the culture in which they live. They do not learn it in a formal sense, by thoughtful examination and critical analysis. Rather, it comes to them through the atmosphere, the way the smell of smoke clings to one who has been near a fire even when they try to keep their distance. These spirits are never introduced to the church as idols but as scholarship or forward-thinking or some “new” and “enlightened” understanding that somehow shows that what Jesus really meant by what He taught is in line with whatever our modern prejudice happens to be.

These days the idol of the age is best represented by what I would call “the cult of nice.” Nice is a quality urged upon us by mothers, who advise us that, if we can’t say something nice about someone, we shouldn’t say anything at all. Unfortunately, those who attempt to enact this philosophy rarely opt for silence. If you have ever had the unfortunate experience of working with such people, you have discovered that they tend to be fundamentally dishonest when it comes to their assessment of others. They dismiss bad traits and inflate those they deem to be good, even when they are merely an affectation. Such people would probably find something positive to say about Satan himself if he were a member of their team.

These days the idol of the age is best represented by what

I would call “the cult of nice.”

The cult of nice is a code that shapes ethics and whose appeal springs from its disarming simplicity. The basic rule of the cult of nice can be summarized in this sentence: “Whatever does not spring from niceness is not of God.” Part of its appeal is that it has a kind of Johannine ring about it. We find several statements that sound something like this in John’s writings. For example, in 1 John 4:16, the apostle says, “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” The cult of nice identifies itself with this principle but restates it: “Whoever is nice lives in God, and God in them.”

However, it only takes a modicum of common sense to recognize that niceness and love are not the same. To say that God is love is one thing (1 John 4:8, 16). To say that He is nice is something else. The problem is that “nice” is essentially a cultural trait. What seems nice to one may not seem nice to another. What is more, the Jesus portrayed in Scripture–the same one to whom those who worship in the cult of nice appeal so often to justify their ethic–often behaved in ways that the acolytes of nice would find abhorrent. It only takes a few examples to prove my point.

For example, Jesus used harsh language when referring to those who disagreed with His teaching. He called them “fools,” “blind guides, “snakes,” and “vipers’ (Matt. 23:16–17, 33). Jesus was also divisive. He said things that He knew would outrage those who saw matters differently from Him. When Jesus contradicted the teaching of the Pharisees, His disciples complained. “’Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’ He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.’” (Matt. 15:12–14). In other words, Jesus wasn’t just untroubled by their outrage. He was openly dismissive of it.

Perhaps rudest of all, at least by the standards of today’s cult of nice, was Jesus’ tendency toward exclusion. One of the cardinal doctrines of the cult of nice is that to be truly Christian, we must be inclusive. Inclusion is their Ockam’s razor–the test they use to sift through traditional teachings and decide what to reject as erroneous or obsolete. Jesus was inviting but exclusive in that invitation. He said that His way was narrow instead of broad and warned that “only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14). He claimed to be the way to God to such an extent that He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He even taught that a brother or sister who sins and rejects the repeated appeals of other Christians to turn from their sin should be expelled from the church (Matt. 18:15–17). This is so far from the current culture of nice that even churches that agree with Jesus in principle rarely practice His teaching on this point.

Nice isn’t listed among the attributes of God, yet neither is mean. Like nice, mean is one of those fuzzy words that can be taken several ways. It came from Middle English and was initially used to speak of what two or more people held in common. It developed into a word that spoke of one who was ignoble or base. But these days, we use it mainly to refer to those who are unkind and spiteful. A common complaint of children is that someone has been mean to them.

Nice isn’t listed among the attributes of God, yet neither is mean.

There doesn’t seem to be a single biblical equivalent to the modern vernacular when it comes to mean. Like nice, mean is culturally defined. What seems mean to one person is perfectly fine to another. It is also a movable standard which we usually manipulate in our own favor. Just as those who often criticize others for not being nice fail to condemn the same behavior in themselves, mean people never seem to think that they are mean. They tend to see themselves as stern, businesslike, or no-nonsense sort of folks who are practical and refuse to suffer fools gladly. But the suggestion that their treatment of others is mean is baffling to them.

This is especially true of mean leaders, who are convinced that those who criticize their meanness are merely soft or lazy. They view those who offer such critiques as namby-pamby bleeding hearts who are overly concerned about hurting the feelings of others. More often, they take no notice of them at all. But merely plow ahead without regard for those who disagree with their agenda. They do important work informed by a grand vision. Why should they trouble themselves over such objections when they are so obviously right in their judgments? Not only do they think that they represent God’s interests in their plans, they believe they mirror His character in their actions. This conceit is equally true of those who belong to the cult of nice.

In reality, mean is merely a selfish and distorted imitation that mistakes God’s sovereignty for impassiveness and confuses arrogance with independence. Likewise, nice is an insipid distortion of grace that fails to make the essential connection between God’s compassion, grace, patience, and faithfulness with His holiness and justice (Exod. 34:5–7). A nice god might not lower the boom on you for your sin. But He wouldn’t do anything to help you out of it either. For that, you must look to a God who is more than nice. One who cares enough about you to ignore your preferences and sensitivities and who will tell you what you are really like. To find practical help with your sin, you must look to a God who will not mince words about your foolishness or the desperate state of your condition. More than this, you will need a God who is willing to go beyond words and do something about it because He knows that you can do nothing for yourself.

In short, to find any real help for your sin, you must go beyond nice to truth. You must go beyond winsome or pleasant or amiable to love. Because only love is willing to stand in your place. Only love is strong enough to bear the brunt of the whip and the weight of the cross. Only love will allow itself to be taken by wicked hands and slain. And love alone, after being laid in the grave, is able to stand up again on the third day with arms open in invitation to the ones who put it there. God is not nice. God is love.