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SUBJECT: 10. Chapter 10: Christ Being Isolated a Second Time
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C H A P T E R T E N
Christ Being Isolated a Second Time
And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus unto the palace of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man’s disciples? He saith, I am not. And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold; and they warmed themselves; and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.
And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not. One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? Peter then denied again: and immediately the cock crew.
And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then he began to curse and swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew.
—Joh_18:15-18; Joh_18:25-27; Mat_26:72-74.
BEFORE touching on the subject of Peter’s denial of Christ it will be worth our while to ask ourselves just what we expect to discuss. Perhaps it is not putting it too boldly to say that in many of our sermons about Peter’s denial we introduce a break into the passion story, a kind of pause which recurs annually during the seven-week season of Lent. Not that we sever the text we choose from the gospel of the passion, for no one would think of doing that. But the moment many of us begin to ponder this “episode,” we all too frequently follow in the rut of an applicatory sermon about Peter’s soul, or otherwise set ourselves the task of presenting a study “zur Psychologie des Petri.” Then we speak, either with sympathy or disgust, about Peter’s act of denial, add an application in which the audience is compared with Peter, and, depending upon our personal attitude at the time, draw certain conclusions from these parallelisms. Much reference, of course, is made to Peter’s remorse and to his fears. This is generally done in a poetical form; at least the treatment is always a lyrical one. Perhaps Jesus does come in for some consideration; perhaps He is alluded to once or twice—say, when He looks upon Peter and when His glance causes Peter to burst into tears. In other words, two favorite themes generally arise from this connection: the “glance” which Jesus casts upon Peter, and the tears which he wept bitterly. Now we will admit that much significance can be attached to the effect of the eyes of Jesus upon those of Peter. For we, too, believe that the mastery which Jesus exerted with His eyes when He looked upon Peter was a far-reaching and salutary one.[1]
[1] At this point the author inserts a sonnet of Heiman Dullaart which serves to illustrate and typify this preoccupation with the “subjective” influence of the eyes of “Jesus” upon the “soul” of Peter, a preoccupation to which the author is here taking exception. The poem is omitted because in the translator’s opinion it is too authentically artistic to be faithfully reproduced.—Translator.
We ask leave to remark, however, that a sermon which limits itself to these considerations is something quite different from a preaching of the suffering Christ. All times are fit occasions to talk about the tears which Peter wept, about the potency inhering in Jesus’ eyes, and about the conflict in the soul of Jesus’ impetuous pupil, Simon Peter. All times are fit occasions for that; it makes no difference whether the day be included in the passion weeks indicated on the calendar of the church. But he who would preach the suffering Christ must not present psychological sketches “based on” Peter’s denial, for to do that is not to preach the suffering Christ. That is to preach about some subdivision or other of the doctrine of redemption, about the course which the life of grace takes in the human soul, and which is illustrated then in the dramatic story of Peter’s denial of Christ, but that is not a preaching of the suffering Messiah. He who would preach Him may not even be satisfied when he has pictured the irresistible appeal of Jesus’ eyes simply by way of getting a kind of messianic flavor into the sermon. Instead, he must begin and end with Christ, and must feel bound, from the beginning, to the underlying principle that Christ’s passion is at this time entering upon a new phase of suffering. Proceeding from this idea he must try to discover the route by which Christ now moves towards deeper abysses of affliction in the moment of Peter’s cursing and swearing.
Unless the event is treated in that way, the “passion” sermons are not worth that very serious title. At best they are but the treatment of a subject (that of repentance, for instance, or of remorse, or of the power of God as manifested in Christ, or of the first cause of repentance) which can be considered just as well on any Sunday of the year.
Accordingly, we commit ourselves consciously now to the theme of the history of revelation in the passion as we make our starting point and constant emphasis the fact that Christ because of Peter’s denial becomes more deeply entrenched in His isolation.
We have referred before to the isolation, to the forsakenness of Christ. We did so in connection with the flight of the disciples in Gethsemane, and with that of the anonymous youth who while fleeing left his loin cloth behind him. Perhaps the question arises with you whether it is good sense to raise the motif of Christ as He is in His isolation again at this time.
We reply at once that it is reasonable to do so. For the process by which the Son of man is left absolutely alone comes to Him in varying tempos. The theme will return again later on. That will be when the sun hides its light from Jesus and when God in the darkness which lasts three hours, hours as long as three eternities, forsakes Him and makes Him the victim of a death caused by bleeding and being utterly forsaken.
That point Christ has not now reached. Yes, He is approaching it. The course of Christ’s suffering moves on at its tragic pace. The first time we saw Christ in His isolation was in the first part of the gospel of the passion. It overtook Christ as He entered upon His suffering. Now He has arrived at its second stage. He is passing through His passion. In this stage also He tastes the bitterness of absolute isolation. This drives Him to the third stage, to be treated in our third volume, in which we see Him suspended in darkness. The isolation which began in Gethsemane was intensified as He stood before the Sanhedrin, and will become infinite in that concluding movement which may be called: Christ emerging from His passion.
We cannot ignore the climax any longer. It becomes an obsession. For that which accrues to Him now must be a heavier burden of suffering than that which was His when the disciples fled, and when the bashful boy, that candidate for the threefold Christian office of prophet, priest, and king, was taken from Him.
The roaring of the water rushes on; the awful quiet grows more oppressive; the solitude ever increases.
In this connection we think of the statement in the psalm where we read: God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this. Note the pronounced emphasis of that statement. It tells us that our hearing is not the equivalent of God’s speaking. We human beings must listen twice to a statement which God has spoken once, and we must do so for two reasons.
The first reason is that our sinful life by nature is opposed to God’s speaking. Hence we must listen to His voice twice in order to learn the meaning of what it says, in order to be captivated by it, in order to thoroughly appreciate its significance. This is a reason which does not hold for Jesus Christ inasmuch as He is without sin. Rut there is a second reason. We human beings must grow in attention, must develop in the capacity for and the act of hearing. The river bed along which the stream of revelation is slowly driven must be worn deeper and deeper in our inner life; we must be prepared more and more for becoming receptive to God’s utterances. Now this development, this deepening of the stream of revelation in our lives, this becoming more and more receptive to God’s speaking, characterizes Christ also. He is sinless, yes; but He is also true man. Think, for example, of His significant statement about having learned obedience from that which He had suffered.
To return now to our starting point. God addressed Himself to the soul of Christ once, saying: Be forsaken. Twice Christ heard it. And He will hear it once again. The second time that Christ noticed the threat of His being forsaken, of His being completely isolated, is this moment in which Peter denies Him by his oaths and curses.
Naturally, we must not think that this denial was an expression of something new in Peter, of something which had not been characteristic of him before, something which up to this time had gone quite unnoticed by the Master. The polluted springs welling up out of the dark recesses of Peter’s heart had long been active in their subterranean abodes. Peter’s sin of denying the Christ had been conceived in his soul long before this moment in which it was born. Who, then, would dare to say that, as Jesus was aware of it, a new thing was taking place when Peter denied Him? Had He not Himself predicted beforehand that this very denial would occur? Had He not said: Before the cock shall crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice?
No, this moment adds nothing to what existed already, to what was already impregnating the atmosphere and the polluted hearts of men. Jesus Himself knew “what was in man.” And He also knew what was in Simon Peter.
Jesus knew it, knew it precisely, and knew it well. But the experience of it—ah, the experience of it, and the suffering of it in actuality—that was new. The actual experiencing and suffering always contribute a new element to the passion of Christ. Once God had pronounced the fact of isolation; but in this moment of Peter’s denial Christ is feeling it a second time. The first experience of isolation (the flight of the disciples) and this second experience of it (Peter’s denial) differ greatly from each other. The first time the theme is being specifically realized. The details, the particulars, of that grievous affliction begin to become actualized in Him.
Can you personally appreciate this new experience of Christ? His first isolation was terrible, but the disciples at least, when they fled, did not choose to oppose Him. They simply chose in favor of themselves, in favor of their lives. They lack the strength to make the full affirmation, but not one among them stoops to positive negation. But now, as Christ is being thrown back into abject forsakenness a second time, the last disciple whose soul’s ebb and flow courses through that of Jesus, positively chooses against Him. Peter’s answer is full of enmity: I do not know the man. Can it be that Simon Barjona is not quite sure of the name of Joshua of Nazareth?
We can say that when Christ experienced what was meant by isolation that first time, the fatal thrust of the affliction reached His flesh only. But now that Peter thrusts Him into profound isolation, the thrust reaches His bones. The figure is a Biblical one, and lucid enough. It is precisely that which the faithful disciple, the positive confessor, the confidant of Jesus does. This he does who was twice forgiven for speaking a satanic word. Indeed, he was forgiven much. And can he really love so little now?
That first time the disciples fled. But at least they said nothing. Theirs was a dumb flight. But Peter, as he immerses Christ in awful solitude this second time, curses and swears; his oaths and his profanity shatter the night.
In fact, those fleeing disciples a little while ago—or is it a longtime ago?—cry out as they flee: I know Him; yes, one and all, we know Him; we know Him, therefore we flee. But Peter, denying Him, segregating Him now, asserts: I know Him not, good people, I know Him not. Hence, I can keep on comfortably warming myself at the fire. When the disciples fled from Christ, they, by the act of their embarrassed fleeing, proclaimed aloud: We are abandoning Him for the future, although we confess to having had dealings with Him in the past. But Simon Peter says: I knew Him not, and His future does not affect me; His problem is no concern of mine; all this commotion about the Nazarene leaves me cold.
The disciples isolate the Master according to the soul. But Simon Peter delivers the Master up to the pain of solitude as He is in His office and in the ministration of that office. In short, Peter abandons the Christ according to the spirit.
We shall return to that last consideration again. But is it not true that in the short space of time that intervenes between the capture and the nightly session of the Sanhedrin, God is greatly and quickly aggravating Christ’s suffering? When Christ must plunge into a deeper recess of the abyss of curse and death—and this is intentional on heaven’s part—Peter is brought into His way, and made to swear in Jesus’ hearing: Who is that stranger? I do not know the man.
If anyone should think our phraseology somewhat irreverent, we would remind him of the duty of appreciating what a blow on the cheek and what a fatal thrust to the loins mean for Jesus, and how actual is the realism of an event in which a disciple can declare himself independent of a host whose intimacy he has enjoyed at His first communion, at His last passover, and in Gethsemane.
We shall say very little about the chronological order in which the particulars of the day took place. In putting together the several episodes we shall not be doing any guesswork if we form the following pictures in our minds.
First of all we must know that Simon Peter had fled with the others when the Master was taken captive. Then, when the band had gone on, he, prompted not by curiosity but by love and by the inner conflict raging within him—these made his flight seem unpardonable—felt constrained to follow the Master again. In this endeavor he was accompanied by another person. We are not told who this other man was. Some think that it was John; but others raise objections to this supposition. These say that there is not a single reason to justify the assumption that John accompanied Peter. And they suggest that we must think of this second person, who had access to the inner court of the high-priestly palace, as one of high descent, one who must have belonged to the followers of Jesus in a more general sense. Be that as it may, the right of access enjoyed by this second person—he was known to the people at the palace—was used by him as a means of getting Peter into the court also. Now it may be that this court should be thought of as the part which connected the two wings of Caiaphas’ palace with each other. However, it may also be that the court lay between the dwelling place of Annas and the house of Caiaphas.
That is enough to throw the necessary light on what follows. As Peter enters, the servant sees him and asks whether he perhaps also belongs to the company of “that man.” Peter disavows it; but when she talks to him again later as he is warming himself at the fire, she persists in making the suggestion. Peter can only deny it anew. The ground at his feet may be aflame—that makes no difference; he holds his position. A little later another of the maid-servants reiterates the suggestion that he too was with Jesus, the Nazarene. Naturally, this interests the onlookers. Here and there a group of people begin to congregate. One can detect a whispering among them. Peter may enter a second disclaimer, may shift from foot to foot in his effort to keep his poise and to deflect this embarrassing attention which is being paid to him, but the fact is that he has now twice lost his game. The cock may crow: Peter clings to his place. What is more, he swears an oath to confirm his disavowal.
Even that does not mark the conclusion of Simon’s temptation. After about an hour, another person approaches him, and this person touches a vulnerable spot. For this fellow is a relative of Malchus, the man whose ear Peter struck off in Gethsemane. This man, moved by curiosity perhaps, steps up to Peter, notes his manner of speaking, detects that he has not yet overcome the inflection peculiar to a typical Galilean, recalls further that he has seen this very man in the glare of the torches and candles in Gethsemane, and, consequently, announces: That man also belongs to his crowd; he is one of the Nazarene’s friends.
That was placing Peter “on the spot.” If he were to acknowledge now that these had told the truth, the eventual condemnation of Christ would also spell his doom. Accordingly he denies having had any association with Him. He uses strong words in his denial. He curses and swears, swears many heavy oaths.
The curses and the oaths reach the ears of Jesus. This is the moment in which they are leading Christ across the inner court, whether by way of conducting Him from Annas to Caiaphas or from Caiaphas, that is, from the session of the Sanhedrin, to the waiting room which will detain Him until the events of the morning.
Just as Jesus passes Peter, the cock crows. God opens the beak of the fowl, because He needs it to call Peter’s attention to the word which Christ had spoken beforehand. That is the first demonstration of might in the schedule of heaven. Priests and asses, Levites and serpents, Sanhedrins and cocks, each and all have their place in the programme of the kingdom of heaven, and each speaks at its appointed time. But there is a second manifestation of power now in the kingdom of heaven; Christ fastens His eyes fixedly upon those of Peter. This irresistible glance of Christ whose mouth is mute but whose eyes are just so much more eloquent combines with the sign of the cock’s crow to break the chains to which Peter’s soul and spirit have been captive. It breaks his heart. All his curses turn in upon himself. A sob—and Peter stumbles out of doors to weep very bitterly. He has rejected the faithful heart,
smudged his uniform, trampled upon his banner, and all this in a moment.
Why say more than that about Simon Peter? We would seek not him, but Jesus. What did the denial of Simon Peter mean to the Saviour? That is the only question deserving an answer here. There is no gain in talking further about Peter. Simon, too, must go back to Jesus; and we all must learn to take our eyes off Simon’s soul and to attend exclusively to the Christ. The truth is such as Heiman Dullaart once had Peter himself say:
O Christian sinner, fallen in the way, come see
A guilt incomparable in me,
And see the love in the Redeemer’s face
For every penitent who trusts His grace;
I feel the former fevers burn,
The ancient fires now return;
Defying envy, might, and sword
Danger and death, I seek my Lord
That He, though bound, may set me free.
What has the spirit of prophecy to say to me as I see Christ standing there forsaken and denied. But one thing: namely, Behold the Man of sorrows. He is the Man of sorrows but the penetrating glance which He fastened upon Peter tells us also that He is the Man of highest wisdom. He knew when Peter spoke His “big” words; even though He stood at a distance, He knew all. Then He experienced the pain, more keenly, more bitterly than in Gethsemane, of the fact that henceforth communion would be impossible to him. That was part of it, but not all. When certain things are withheld from a person, that person merely suffers the poverty and meagerness of a negative something. But Christ in His suffering also senses the positive side of isolation. The sin of His people cuts His soul with its acute right angle of death and curse, wounding Him positively. He must know that the seed of the woman, the spiritual seed of Abel and of Seth, is disintegrating and falling away from Him who is the crown of that woman’s seed, the Saviour of Abel, the afflicted man of innocence, the end and glory of the generation of Seth.
Alas, Christ is being forsaken, abandoned, at each of His own zeniths, thrown down from each of His own mountain peaks. He stood on the prophetic mountain and there He was humiliated. The place was His own—it was peculiarly His own. Now again He is standing on his own heights, on a peak which is peculiarly His, for God has placed His foot on the hill of the Seed of the woman. But the one of that most holy seed who was nearest of kin to Him forsook Him. And did more: he denied Him. In the hour of the crisis, Christ Jesus must observe that the seed of the woman is disintegrating. He may not, He can not, and He does not want to comfort Himself with the thought that even He is the very one who will bind together that disintegration. He feels that He is one with all the rest of that seed. The enigma of Gethsemane comes back, and in an even more serious guise his time. We observed then that Christ could not comfort Himself with the thought of the coming life as He stood over against the impending death. Now we must observe again that He cannot solace Himself with the thought of the assurance of His coming power of reunification (drawing all people unto Him) as He stands here, surrounded by this awful abandonment, and filled with a realistic sense of complete isolation. For He must desire His own even as they are in the. very act of rejecting Him. Christ knows that He is one with them all. He must confess before the Father that all are conjoining with Him. Should He fail to do so, He could no longer be a Mediator in this unique hour. Completely rejected though He is, He must now, with the full force of His love, draw these all unto Himself. He must confess them with all of His strength, not before men, but before the Father. He may not act as though this were already the day of judgment—that great day in which He will some day refuse to confess those who have not confessed Him.
Certainly, the sorrow of this true seed of the woman is an incomparable grief. He sees a great rent being torn in the mystical body in which, as the Head of us all, He knows Himself to be incorporated with us. Yes, this is incomparable abandonment: to be the point at which disintegration sets in—the nucleus of the process of dissolution. Ecce homo: Behold the man: the great seed of the woman. His soul is being driven into solitude. By whom? you ask. By Cain and his ilk? Yes, indeed, by the friends of Cain. But by the friends of Abel too. The great Abel, that is, the greater than Abel, can achieve salvation for the children of His spiritual generation only through absolute abandonment. All who have eaten bread with Him, who have greatly desired to eat bread with Him in the kingdom of heaven, have rebelled against Him. There is no friendship to support its own Author; no food to feed its own Root.
Accordingly, Jesus’ soul no longer has a tribune from which to express itself in the world. Nor did anyone approach the place of intercession used by His love. Or if any came, it was but to chase Jesus away, to chase Him away in order that the wicked Absalom (for so they called him) might no longer lure the subjects of the great David of the future, the coming Messiah, whom the Jews await, away from Him. He may no longer talk with anyone. Pray, Peter, do not talk too loud; not too loud; for He might hear the voice, and the priest in Him, it may be, might yearn to comfort you in the place of communion which is His love. Then He would feel even more painfully that His hands and feet are bound, that He may exercise His right to comfort no longer. Be very still, Simon: He may want to draw Himself up by the help of your extended arms, and experience that these too are denied Him. What echo is there to throw His voice back? What resonator responds to His calling? Ah, my God, is it His lot to have to be the rock of offence against which Peter must stumble in his impetuosity? Lord God, hast Thou Thyself made the heart of this people fat, and dost Thou “send” Him “leanness of the soul,” who would find pasture with Thee?
But even this is not the end? Simon isolated Christ, the solitary One, as He is in the conflict of His office also. Simon swore against Him by the use of oaths and it is the oath which has done this to Him. That preciously sworn oath is what thrust Him, as the bearer of God’s office, farther into the abyss than anything else in Peter and in Peter’s denial.
Caiaphas swore with an oath.
Christ swore with an oath.
And Peter also swears.
All these are paying in the same coin—but they are paying the enemy. They are robbing Christ. It is precisely the oath-swearing of Peter which aggravated His suffering, and which most severely tested the strength of His messianic will to redemption.
We must step nearer now to listen to that oath.
There are two kinds of denials: a denial with, and a denial without, the oath. The two are not equally severe. When Simon Peter denies Jesus by means of an outright disclaimer, he has loosened his hold of Jesus’ soul. But when the oath is added, and the self-condemnation, then the basic concept of Christ’s office is also being rejected. The denial taken simply as a denial separates Peter from Jesus’ existence. But the denial accompanied by the oath is a repudiation of the purpose of Christ’s existence, and a disavowal of the raison d’etre of the Christ. Peter takes an oath.
We shall say no more about the swearing of oaths as such, for we have spoken of that before in this volume (page 124 ff). It is enough to recall here that from Christ’s point of view a casual act of swearing an oath means a complete self-withdrawal from the possibility of meeting God, and from the sphere of communion with God. The man who lightly takes an oath upon his lips has wrung himself loose from the sense of dread which he should feel at the mention of the name of God. When Simon is swearing his perfervid oaths, he is wounding Christ’s spirit a thousand times worse than he would be doing if he were simply to deny the Master without the act of swearing. Peter is not merely laughing away the sublimity of Jesus’ soul, but also the substructure of Jesus’ maintenance of His office, the great assumption underlying all His words and thoughts, the basic principle governing all He does and does not do. By taking the oath, Peter not only disclaims all share in the joys and sorrows of Jesus’ soul, but he also disavows any participation in the background and underground, in the life principle of Christ’s official life.
Peter’s oath, therefore, had to reach Christ’s ears in order that He might be absolutely isolated, not only as He is in His life-functions but also as He is in terms of His most basic and official being. The disciple who disowns Jesus Christ by means of his facile laughter, his resounding oaths, and his positive curses, is withdrawing from the very atmosphere of which Christ says, “Only in this medium is it possible for me to live.” Simon Peter, who lightly swears his oaths, completely sets his Master apart on the mountain of Israel’s perfected existence. He puts Him on exhibit on the mountain of prophecy also. There the wind of God’s justice beats against the innocent Jesus, draws out the tornado of Satan’s wrath, and blows the poison of Israel’s flesh into Jesus’ face. And thus even the last disciple to follow Him sets Him apart, alone. This means not only that Peter leaves Jesus to what in the future may chance to happen to Him; no, it means that he positively sets Jesus outside of the pale of friendship. Simon rises up to oppose Christ’s quintessential life movement; by his facile oath-taking, he mocks the simplicity of Jesus’ service of God, a service which calls yes, yes, and no, no, and which regards, irrespective of its further content, whatever is more than these as coming from evil. Do not forget the modification, irrespective of its further content. Even if Peter had confessed his association with Jesus, had admitted that he had sworn his oaths unnecessarily, that he was spiritually warming himself at a fire of his own lighting, that he was maintaining and honoring the degree of absolute zero, the absolute zero of God’s law-laden presence—even then he would have caused the Saviour uncommon suffering. Simon denies, and that is something. He denies with an oath—and that is everything. Simon swears. He wounds the Rabbi not only in terms of the externalities of His Work, he mocks not only this or that manifestation of “Jesus,” but he mocks the climate in which Christ must live, the atmosphere which Christ must breathe. He laughs at the thought that Christ has lungs which can inhale with impunity only the air that is found on God’s mountain peak.
Simon’s swearing, then, was severer suffering for Christ’s soul than the blow of a hammer was for His body later. Simon’s false oath laughs in haughty and derisive laughter about that which for Christ is simply and absolutely primary. A person can be grieved by nothing quite as much as by a maligning and negation of his basic life-theme, of his basic life-motivation, of the raison d’etre of his being. If on occasion one acts out of character, and people mock one’s conduct, then the mockery is actually a kind of vindication of one’s dominant and prevailing character. But when a person’s character itself is being mocked, when the scheme of his life, its basic and unifying principle, when that which for him is self-evident is being blatantly mocked and defied, then such a person feels that he is being subjected to the crucifixion of his spiritual self. And thus Simon Peter crucified his Lord, Jesus Christ. He crucified Him spiritually, crucified and buried Him as God’s office-bearer, as the Author of the naive yet very consciously uttered statement: Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? Surely that simple statement made self-evident the fact that He was filled with God. No need, certainly, to swear an oath when God’s own sun shines full on one’s face!
Therefore we may not underestimate the significance of the oath which Simon swore; we may not limit our consideration to the fact that he swore it.
In the same hour in which Christ is struggling to preserve the purity of the oaths, and the possibility of persevering in the kingdom of continuous oath-taking, in the very moment, that is, in which He officially, as the Servant of the Lord and of the authority, swears the oath in the presence of God and of the court, Satan by means of Simon’s lips had the oath falsified. In one and the same moment, then, two oath-swearers are standing in the judgment hall of Israel. The one swears his oath in obedience and thus emphatically dedicates His life-seriousness to God; the other takes the oath in the strength of the old man of sin and thus demonstrates how troubled the atmosphere of the world is, how the heart of man has been withdrawn from the law of the dwelling place of God, and how natural man must deny Christ not only as he manifests Himself in His ordinary life functions but also as He is in His essential being. Simon, Simon, Do you see what you have done? You have presented three incidents of falsehood by swearing, and by swearing just as positively as did the decadent personnel of the lost priests of a decaying people; and you have related those three incidents to a state of being, have related the acute transgression to a state of chronic decay.
The people must see this and hear it. Just as Mary’s act of anointing must be remembered by the whole world, so the Spirit has directed that these ill-savoring oaths of Simon be remembered.
You ask why the Spirit perpetuates the memory of these unedifying things? Ah, do not put it that way. He wants you to see the Christ and to remember Him. The Spirit would present the Christ as He, entirely alone, went through all the stages of suffering inherent in the word, that is, in the Word of the sermon on the mount.
Alone, entirely alone. Such was His appointed task. For Christ gave expression to that which He had seen and heard (Joh_3:32).
No one in all the world had ever spoken thus. In the sermon on the mount He also gave expression to that which He had seen and heard. Quite naturally, therefore, He touched on the subject of the oaths.
But He who gave expression to a statement which in conception and intent can only proceed from Himself and from God must bear His own ordeal. In the last analysis it is the task of the solitary to be alone unless they can succeed in becoming a life-giving spirit.
Today this miracle is being achieved in the Christ (1Co_15:45). However, the miracle cannot take place without suffering. Hence He must be alone in His fundamental, basic motivation. He must be alone over against the via dolorosa of the word, over against the whole sermon which He pronounced on the mount about the kingdom of heaven. Some interpreters have a way of thinking which suggests that Simon sinned against this or that text which might be cited from the sermon on the mount. Against this or that text denied by the flesh, contradicted by the unsanctified mind, yes. But the situation is worse than that: the background of the sermon, the substructure, the scheme, the fundamental purpose and tendency of the sermon, it is this which sin and flesh are here denying.
That is why Simon uses oaths to deny; that is why Christ heard those oaths, and why He had to go on in spite of them, to go alone and along a way which was hardly paved with texts and figures borrowed from the sermon on the mount. He says: swear not at all. Simon, you are as ill as you are because you cannot be ordinary. The angels are very ordinary, very common in the presence of God, and I am. We swear no oaths. Alas, how thou dost grieve me.
Have you seen the Man of sorrows in His isolation? Then you may go on to say: In His isolation lies His strength; in His bondage He performs His task. Look, they are leading Him from one corridor to another. He is bound; He cannot speak; He can do nothing. The usual avenues of contact between Jesus’ soul and the soul of Simon are barred by those people who are passing judgment on Jesus. Accordingly, Jesus appropriates this fact; He does not approach Peter and He says nothing to him. But there is still one language left to Christ with which He can speak. It is the language of the eye. Christ, turning around, looked at Peter. And immediately the cock crew.
Those were two quakes in the kingdom of heaven. Christ opened His eyes; and the cock opened its mouth. The last point first. We do not agree with those who prefer to ignore the cock’s crowing. These say that the expression “the cock crew” was nothing more than the usual, daily phrase for indicating time; and they sometimes add the unproved contention to support their position that there were no cocks in the city. According to this, the phrase “immediately the cock crew” means only that a certain hour had arrived. This interpretation is wrong. The text says, “Immediately the cock crew.” Obviously, the “immediately” would not make sense if no cock had actually crowed. Besides, Jesus had predicted beforehand that it would take place just as it did actually occur.
Hence we must say that the crowing of the cock is a separate moment, a unique step on the way which God traverses, and on which He works miracles from beginning to end. The fact that the cock crew at exactly this time, and that the dispute in which Peter was involved reached its climax just now and that Christ, by being led from one place to another, was given a chance to fix His eyes upon Peter’s soul, represents a confluence of circumstances possible only to divine providence. The cock’s crowing at just this time was a wonder. God wanted the miracle to take place and He arranged it so that Peter’s soul might by this meatus be led back to its Lord and God. The conjunction of these three events in a single moment is surely not less miraculous than—to select a comparison at random—the rising of the star which pointed the Magi to God and to the manger. One cannot speak of degrees of the miraculous in speaking of miracles. The forces which caused the waters of the Red Sea to wall up and be released again are the very same which at God’s appointed time governed a cock’s crowing, the chatter of a conglomeration of people, and a conflict between an old and a new man.
The confluence of these three moments proves to be an even more striking evidence of God’s providence if we remember that the cock had crowed before, but without arousing Peter to introspection. Now the familiar sound of the fowl recurs and now Peter’s consciousness is shocked. Suddenly the meaning of Christ’s own words spoken before Gethsemane leap from the subconscious margin to the crest of Peter’s attention. Whence that contrast between the first and second crowing of the cock? Why should the cock-crow mean nothing to Peter the first time, and everything the second?
There can be but one answer. The reason is the overwhelming effect of Jesus’ eyes. Christ desired the cock’s crowing with fear and trembling. He fastened His eyes upon heaven and at the same time upon Peter, His weak disciple. Most miraculously do the ways and avenues of the providence of God and of the fore-vision of the Son of man coincide here. Now that Christ can turn His eyes upon Peter He, very human the while, cooperates with the high God who is exalted above the clouds but who is also very present, and who is present in Jesus’ words and heart. God’s government and maintenance together form the mystery of His providence. And God’s providence is an almighty and omnipresent power. Accordingly, it is God’s providence which, according to the will of God, opens and closes the eyes of men, and which opens and closes the door of their normal and of their subconscious life according to His genuine counsel. It is that providence which permits the complications of the discussion between Christ and the Sanhedrin and the discussion between Peter and the soldiers and servants to issue in a climax in its own way and in its own time. This providence it is which in its sublime purposiveness opens and closes the mouth of a fowl in order that everything may at exactly the right time perform its right function in the universe. Everything—servants, soldiers, asses, slaves, and the jealousies of slaves, these and the soul of my Lord Jesus who is being subjected to murder,—all combine to perform their function at precisely the right time.
This is the one thing—this is the providence of God, the almighty and omnipresent power of God which is present also in a cock’s mouth; this, and the concursus of Jesus who as the servant of servants carefully seeks out His route in His striving to reach God’s providence.
And the second thing is the potent humanity of Jesus Christ. As a servant He worked in the direction of the providence of God; now He will be clothed upon with power from above. God puts an overwhelming potency into His tired eyes. Now those eyes can lure with a potency as irresistible as the cords of love. God has a commission for His Jesus. Just for the moment, God wants to lead Christ past Simon. Just for a moment God will give Christ the chance to do something, to do everything for Simon. For just one moment God will create the possibility of human fellowship between Simon and Jesus. Only the language of the eyes will be possible there, however; and eyes are always restricted to a narrow focus. Nevertheless, on that very narrow path, in that split second in which God’s speeding judgment leads Him past the restless soul of Peter, Christ must fasten all the energies of His genuine humanity on Simon’s soul in order that the crest of Peter’s conscious attention may again recognize the symbol of the crowing cock, and in order that the power of Satan may now be broken in him. As genuine man, Christ must by means of His eyes exert an energy so strong and puissant that our meagre, human words, which mutter something about telepathy, auto-suggestion, hypnotism, and the like, are by comparison hardly an approximation to this great human reality which inhered in Prince Messiah and resided in the Son of man.
Jesus looked upon His disciples in just that way. Now that He was become a man, He consciously joined Himself with that God who, when Jesus was still a child, directed a star in the sky so that it would lure Magi to a King in the manger and who now opens a cock’s mouth so that it may lure Simon back to his King on the cross. This was incomparable obedience and awful passion. For Christ is like us in all things, sin excepted. Because He is like us in all things, because He is true man, His soul is inclined to concentrate on its own passion. To be condemned to death, to have to go on the way of the cross, robbed of the common favors of God, mocked and defied by the first citizens of the state, is for one who is true man so severe a trial that he could wish to say: Let me alone; I have enough to do to bear my own burdens.
But this day God directs the soul of Simon Peter to the tired heart of Jesus. That God knows that this is an assignment of responsibility, that this is to muzzle the ox that treads out the corn lest he should eat before he does his work. The Son bears all the burdens, and must nevertheless fasten His eyes on Simon and lavish all His energies upon him. Never was a telepathist or hypnotist as mortally tired as was the case when Jesus fixed His will upon Simon, concentrated His full attention upon Peter, lest the Father should let a cock crow in vain. Yes, God describes a circle around Jesus’ attention, a circle in which angels and devils are included—angels and devils, and cocks, and the spirit, the old man and the new, the spirit that is willing and the flesh that is weak. Within this circle, which is spacious enough for the attention of the suffering Christ, the Christ of God must accomplish genuine obedience.
Oh, incomparable passion—to bear death and the death sentence, and in spite of that to have to work creatively and in life-giving fashion with the soul of Simon. To be beaten by all the watchmen of this world (Son_5:7), and in his own city and nevertheless to have to excite love where it no longer cares for itself any more. A bitter affliction—to be placed at the crossroads of the world, to confront the most painful enigmas which God’s providence can put, and yet to have to accommodate Himself to that providence of God in each moment. To be ready as soon as the cock crows, to be ready in order that He may immediately send out all the energy of His love for the preservation of Peter’s soul in that brief moment in which His eyes can focus on him. This He must do in order that those whom God has given Him may not be lost. O grievous commandment—to have a God who has blown all those given Him by the Father away from Him, and who nevertheless forbids Him to lose as many as one of those given of the Father—even when that one disowns the Son by his act of cursing and of swearing. O inexorable law of God— to have to work in cooperation with God, to give cocks and souls and spirits safely into His hand in the very moment in which He knows He has been forsaken of God. This is incomparable suffering.
But in the course of this passion the obedience of Jesus’ soul exerts itself beyond measure to stay inside of the limit of the commandment. Heaven and earth cooperate in this moment. True, heaven may work mechanically through a cock’s mouth, but it lets Jesus act on the basis of His own resources, and move at His own prompting. And He has understood the Father perfectly. By virtue of His own energies and forces He works organically in the direction of heaven so that His eye may at the right time release the energies of eternal life in Simon’s soul, and so that this disciple may again pay attention to cocks, devils, and God.
God’s servant was never more obedient than when He, prompted by His own sense of responsibility, conformed Himself to God— to the God who in the crowing of the cock laid all His obligations bare before Jesus. Never was Jesus greater in His acknowledgment of God. Never did He respond more sensitively to the times and circumstances of the Father. We will never see Him more beautiful in His love than He is here—isolated, all His attention fixed upon this given disciple of the Father, and upon the Father Himself.
Ah, how can we praise God enough for the vision of the absolutely isolated Christ, and for the fact that in His office He was quite alone? Only that one is faithful to official obligation who greatly desires the office even when everything attractive, when all that is congenial (the word has a sublime connotation here) has been taken from it. Has the office of Christ nothing to give Him except cold solitude; does the service rob Him of everything; does God come to insist on all His claims on love, and will He as He does so not even give Him the favor of a pair of faithful eyes with which to appreciate? Must the keeper of the sheep fasten His heart upon the lord of the flock, even when the sheep by their conduct seem to be goats; and can He still remain faithful at all? If so, that man has made it plain that His desires are purely for the sake of God.
That means that He is Christ—ordained with God the Father, anointed with the Holy Spirit. Thus did Jesus take the task of the shepherd upon Himself. The office gives Him a responsibility from which all appeal and congeniality have externally been removed. There is not so much as a prayer of Simon to maintain spiritual fellowship with the Master.
Nevertheless the Master fulfilled the office. He kept giving Simon the paternal gifts of God. He kept adding His spirit to Simon. Simon, Simon, gold and silver have I not, and words and gestures have I not, but what I have I give you: look closely upon me. Spirit of God, Spirit of the Son of David, veni creator spirtus, there lies one who is wholly naked. O God, the office calls me, and I come, and I have greeted no friend upon the way. Father, I have no friend any more. The friends are gone; henceforth I shall have to call brothers. Henceforth God’s seed will have to spring from my blood. No, I have not avidly joined myself with Peter in order to be rid of Caiaphas, not even for a moment, O Father who art in heaven. The servant of the Lord has not paused to greet anyone while en route; He had gone right on. He had no friend; at least, He felt the companionship of none. Nor did the servant curse the one who swore. The Lord said to Him: Curse David and his son. The Lord pronounced the curse, the curse of the great abandonment. Father, I did not greet my friends when Thou didst call, and I did not curse the man who swore against me when Thou wast teaching me how to extend the blessing. I only sought out Thy child, Father; I did so in passing, and did so intentionally and naturally. I have administered the office, and have found the comfort of luxury nowhere under heaven. That luxury is with Thee, where communion is, and where I cannot come except I drink of Thy cup. Father, in Thy thoughts I have not broken faith with the company when I suffered grievously because of an individual. I looked at Simon, but was not slack in finishing the course for the great congregation. Caiaphas, I am here. I did not fail to respond when the powers that were bade me go.
No, indeed, He paused nowhere; He greeted no one on the way. Therefore He would weep—could weep the tears of Simon, but He had to do so in faith. For He may not yet see the tears of Simon, and seeing, enjoy them. The hour for such comfort is not yet His.
And Peter, going without, wept bitterly.
True, God put his tears into His own bottle (Psalms 56), but He advisedly saw to it that they were not gathered up into Jesus’ flask. Jesus may do but one thing: He may labor for Simon. And rest also? Yes, later, not until later. The storm raged past Him, the moment sped by, and Peter went outside. He went outside because he himself wished to, of course; but he went also because God desired that it should be so. God conducted him out of doors, in order that Simon’s tears might not serve as a premature comfort to the Man of sorrows.
We know that Simon found Jesus again in these tears, but know also that Jesus may not yet rejoice in that. Not until later may He ask: Simon, lovest thou me; Simon, lovest thou me?
Yes, He may ask that later, but not now. The dew which now lingers over Simon’s soul as a blessing to him and a comfort does not rest upon Jesus. He knows all things, yes, but He must experience all the suffering which inheres in the things He knows.
And Peter, standing without, wept bitterly.
O bitter necessity. Time was when Jesus could say: Get thee behind me, Satan. He had to say it. It was a part of His passion. Now He would like to cry out: Step out before me, thou angel of God. But He may not say it. Sorrow is His only portion. His voice can find no place. He moves rapidly now in the direction of His comfortless death. And Peter may not do his weeping inside.
My Jesus passes by again. Jesus of Nazareth passes by. Someone shouts as He goes: Who will follow? But as He goes Jesus fastens His heart upon God. He cleanses the atmosphere which has been contaminated by Peter’s weeping. He pronounces His yea over the eternal election of Simon Barjona, and He softly sings the new song: I come, O God, to do Thy will. I will compensate for the false oaths which Simon swore. Father, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love him.