And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.
And THE SECOND TIME THE COCK CREW. The other three Evangelists, who mention but one crowing of the cock-and that not the first, but the second and last one of Mark-all say the cock crew "immediately," but Luke says, "Immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew" (Luke 22:60). Alas!-But now comes the wonderful sequel.
It has been observed that while the beloved disciple is the only one of the four Evangelists who does not record the repentance of Peter, he is the only one of the four who records the affecting and most beautiful scene of his complete restoration (John 21:15-17).
Luke 22:61: "And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter." How? it will be asked. We answer, From the chamber in which the trial was going on, in the direction of the court where Peter then stood-in the way already explained. See the note at Mark 14:66. Our Second Evangelist makes no mention of this look, but dwells on the warning of his Lord about the double crowing of the cock, which would announce his triple fall, as what rushed stingingly to his recollection and made him dissolve in tears.
And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept. To the same effect is the statement of the First Evangelist (Matthew 26:75), except that like "the beloved physician," he notices the "bitterness" of the weeping. The most precious link, however, in the whole chain of circumstances in this scene is beyond doubt that "look" of deepest, tenderest import reported by Luke alone. Who can tell what lightning flashes of wounded love and piercing reproach shot from that "look" through the eye of Peter into his heart! "And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice. And Peter went out and went bitterly." How different from the sequel of Judas' act! Doubtless the hearts of the two men toward the Saviour were perfectly different from the first; and the treason of Judas was but the consummation of the wretched man's resistance of the blaze of light in the midst of which he had lived for three years, while Peter's denial was but a momentary obscuration of the heavenly light and love to his Master which ruled his life. But the immediate cause of the blessed revulsion which made Peter "weep bitterly," was, beyond all doubt, this heart-piercing "look" which his Lord gave him. And remembering the Saviour's own words at the table, "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I prayer for thee, that thy faith fail not," may we not say that this prayer fetched down all that there was in that "look" to pierce and break the heart of Peter, to keep it from despair, to work in it "repentance unto salvation not to be repented of," and at length, under other healing touches, to "restore his soul"? (See the note at Mark 16:7.)
Remarks: (1) The demeanour of the Blessed One before Annas first, and then before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrim, is best left to speak its own mingled meekness and dignity. We, at least, are not able to say anything-beyond what has come out in the exposition-that would not run the risk of weakening the impression which the Evangelical Narrative itself leaves on every devout and thoughtful mind. But the reader may be asked to observe the wisdom which to Annas speaks, but before the Sanhedrim keeps silence while the witnesses against Him are uttering their lies and contradictions. In the former case, silence might have been liable to misconstruction; and the opportunity which the questions of Annas about "His disciples and His doctrine" afforded, of appealing to the openness of all His movements from first to last, was too important not to be embraced: whereas, in the latter case, the silence which He preserved-while the false witnesses were stultifying themselves and the case was breaking down of itself the further they proceeded-was the most dignified, and to His envenomed judges most stinging reply to them. It was only when, in despair of evidence except from His own mouth, the high priest demanded of Him on solemn oath to say whether He were the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, and the moment had thus arrived when it was right and fitting in itself, and according to the law, that He should "witness" the "good confession," that He broke silence accordingly-and in how exalted terms!
(2) Perhaps the best commentary on the sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer - "Lead us not into temptation" - is to be found in the conduct of Peter, and the circumstances in which he found himself, after our Lord warned him to "pray that he might not enter into temptation." See the note at Matthew 6:13, and Remark 9 at the close of that section. The explicit announcement that all the Eleven should be stumbled in Him and scattered that very night, might have staggered him; but it did not. The still more explicit announcement addressed immediately to Peter, that Satan had sought and obtained them all-to the extent of being permitted to sift them as wheat-but as to Peter in particular, that He had prayed for him, that his faith might not fail, was fitted, surely, to drive home upon his conscience a sense of more than ordinary danger, and more than ordinary need to watch and pray; but it did not.
Above all, the appalling announcement, that-instead of the certainty of his standing, even if all the rest should fall, and of his readiness to go to prison and to death for his blessed Master-the cock should not crow twice before he had thrice denied that he knew Him, was fitted, one should think, to dash the confidence of the most self-confident believer; but it made no impression upon Peter. Once more, in the garden his Lord found him sleeping, along with the other two, in the midst of His agony and bloody sweat; and He chided him for his inability to watch with Him one hour on that occasion. He gave him and the rest a last warning, almost immediately before Judas and the officers approached to take Him, to "watch and pray, that they entered not into temptation." But how did he take it? Why, he insisted on admission within that fatal quadrangle, which from that time he would never forget.
We wonder not at his eagerness to learn all that was going on within that court; but one who had been so warned of what he would do that very night should have kept far away from a spot which must have seemed, even to himself, the most likely to prove the fatal one. The coil of the serpent, however, was insensibly but surely drawing him in, and he was getting, by his own act and deed, sucked into the vortex - "led into temptation." Through the influence of "that disciple who was known to the high priest," the door which was shut to the eager crowd was opened to him. No doubt he now thought all was right, and congratulated himself on his good fortune. He lounges about, pretending indifference or the mere general curiosity of others. But it is bitterly cold, and an inviting fire is blazing in the court. He will join the knot that is clustering around it-perhaps he will pick up some of the current talk about the prisoner, the trial, and its probable issue.
He has gotten close to the fire, and a seat too-so near, that his countenance is lighted up by the blazing fuel. He has now gained his end, and in so cold a night how comfortable he feels - "till a dark strikes through his liver"! (Proverbs 7:22-23.) O, if this true-hearted and noble disciple had but retained the spirit which prompted him to say, along with others, of the unnamed traitor that sat at the supper table, "Lord, Is it I?" (see the notes at John 13:21-25) - if he had watched and gone to his knees, when his Master was on His, agonizing in the Garden, his danger had not been so great, even within the court of the high priest. There, indeed, he had no business to be, considering the sad prediction which hung over him-this, in fact, was what sold him into the enemy's hands. But, if we could have supposed him sitting at that fire in a "watching and praying" spirit, the challenge of him by the maid, as one who had been "with Jesus the Nazarene," had drawn forth a "good confession." And what though he had had to "go to prison and to death for His sake"? it had been but what he was undoubtedly prepared for as he sat at the supper table, and what he afterward did cheerfully in point of fact. But he was caught without his armour. The fear of man now brought a snare (Proverbs 29:25). His locks were shorn. The secret of his great strength was gone, and he had become weak as other men. O, let these mournful facts pierce the ears of the children of God, and let them listen to One who knows them better than they do themselves, when He warns them to "watch and pray, that they enter not into temptation."
(3) See how the tendency of all sin is to aggravate as well as multiply itself. Peter's first fall naturally led to his second, and his second to his third; each denial of his Lord being now felt as but one and the same act-as only the keeping up of the character which he would regret that he had been driven to assume, but, once assumed, needed to keep up for consistency's sake. 'The deed was done, and could not be undone-he must now go through with it.' But merely to reiterate, even in a different form, his first denial, would not do for the second, nor the second for the third, if he was to believed. He must exaggerate his denials; he must repudiate his Master in such a style that people would be forced to say, We must be mistaken-that man cannot be a disciple, so unlike all we have ever heard of His character and teaching. So Peter at length comes to "anathematize" himself if he should be uttering a lie in ignoring the Nazarene, and solemnly "swears" that he knows nothing of Him.
Nor, although there was about an hour's interval between the first and the second denials, is there any reason to suppose that he had begun to give way, or seriously meditated confessing his Lord within that court. His mind, from the first moment that he fell before the maid, would be in a burning fever-his one object being to avoid detection; and this would keep the warning about the cock-crowing from ever coming up to his recollection; because it is expressly said that it was only after his last denial and the immediate crowing of the cock, that "Peter remembered" his Lord's warning. Well, these details will not have been recorded in vain, if they convince believers that, besides the danger of the strongest giving way, there is no length in defection to which they may not quickly go, when once that has been done. Times of persecution, especially when unto death, have furnished sad enough evidence that Peter's case was no abnormal one; that be acted only according to the stable laws of the human mind and heart in such circumstances, and only illustrated the laws of the Kingdom of God as to the sources of weakness and of strength; and that in similar circumstances the children of God in every age, when like him they flatter themselves, in spite of warnings, that they will never be moved, will act a similar part.
(4) Secret things indeed belong unto the Lord our God, but those which are revealed unto us and to our children forever (Deuteronomy 29:29). We intrude not into those things which we have not seen, vainly puffed up by our fleshly mind (Colossians 2:18); but the few glimpses with which Scripture favours us of what is passing on the subject of men's eternal interests in the unseen world are of too vital a nature to be overlooked. In the book of Job we have revelations to which there is a manifest allusion in our Lord's warning to Peter, and without which it could not perhaps be fully understood. The all-seeing Judge is seen surrounded by His angelic assessors on human affairs, and Satan presents himself among them. "Whence comest thou?" the Lord says. "From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it," is the reply-watching men's actions, studying their character, seeking whom he might devour.
'In these roamings, hast thou seen My servant Job (asks the Lord), a saint above all saints on the earth?' 'O yes (is the reply), I have seen him, and weighed his religion too: 'Tis easy for him to be religious, with a divine hedge about him, and laden with prosperity. But only let me have him, that I may sift him as wheat, and we shall soon see what becomes of his religion. Why, touch but his substance, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.' 'Behold, he is in thine hand (is the divine response), to sift him to the uttermost; only upon his person lay not a hand.' So Satan goes forth, strips him of substance and family at once, leaving him only a wife worse than none, who did but aid the tempter's purposes. Observe now the result. "So Job arose and tore his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." But the enemy of men's souls is not to be easily foiled. He has missed his mark once, to be sure; but the next time he will succeed. He mistook the patriarch's weak point. Now, however, he is sure of it. Again he enters the councils of heaven, is questioned as before, and rebuked, in language unspeakably comforting to the tempted, for moving the Lord to destroy His dear saint without cause. 'Not without cause (replies the tempter): Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life: suffer me once more to sift him as wheat, and it will be seen what chaff his religion is.' 'Then, behold, he is in thine hand, to smite his person even as thou wilt; only save his life.' So Satan went forth, and did his worst; the body of this saint is now a mass of running sores; he sits among the ashes, scraping himself with a potsherd; while his heartless wife advises him to have done with this at once, by sending up to God such a curse upon Him for His cruelty as would bring down a bolt of vengeance, and end his sufferings with his life.
Now hear the noble reply: "Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips." He is seen to be wheat and no chaff, and the enemy disappears from the stage. This now is what our Lord alludes to in His warning at the supper table. Satan, still at his old work, had demanded to have these poor disciples, to sift them too; and he had gotten them-in that sense and to that extent. [The reader is requested to refer to the remarks on the sense of the word exeeteesato (G1809), Luke 22:31.] But while that transaction was going on in the unseen world, a counteraction, in the case of Peter, was proceeding at the same time. He whom the Father heareth alway "prayed for Peter that his faith might not fail." And (as implied in the tenses of the verbs employed-see the remarks on the above passage) when the one action was completed, so was the other-the bane and the antidote going together.
Poor Peter! Little thinkest thou what is passing between heaven and hell about thee, and thy one source of safety: That thou gottest that "look" of wounded love from thy suffering Lord; that thy heart, pierced by it, was not driven to despair; that the warning of the triple denial and the double cock-crowing did not send thee after the traitor, by the nearest road to "his own place:" what was all this due to but to that "prayer for thee, that thy faith fail not"? Now, for the first time, thou knowest the meaning of that word "fail." Perhaps it deluded thee into the persuasion that thou wouldst not give way at all, and thou wert thyself confident enough of that. Now thou knowest by sad experience what "shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience" thou hadst made, but that the means of preventing it were fetched down by the great Intercessor's "prayer."
(5) If Christ's praying for Peter, even in the days of His flesh here below, availed so much, what a glorious efficacy must attach to His pleadings for them that are dear to Him within the veil? For here, His proper work was to give His life a Ransom for them: there, to sue out the fruit of His travail in their behalf. But along with these intercessions, are there no such "looks" now cast upon His poor fallen ones, such as He darted upon Peter, just when he had gone down to his lowest depth in shameful repudiation of Him? Let the fallen and recovered children of God answer that question.
(6) What light does this last thought, in connection with Christ's special prayer in behalf of Peter, cast upon the eternal safety of believers? "While I was with them in the world I kept them in Thy name: those that Thou hast given Me I kept х dedookas (G1325) - efulaxa (G5442)], and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee: Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one as We are" (John 17:11-12). (7) If prayer on the part of Christ for His people is so essential to their safety, shall their own prayer for it be less so? He who said, "I prayer for thee," said also, "Watch and pray ye, that ye enter not into temptation." And who that verily believes that Jesus within the veil is praying for him that his faith fail not, can choose but cry, "Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe"?
(8) Was it while those false witnesses were rising up against Thee, blessed Saviour, and laying to Thy charge things that Thou knewest not, that Thou didst cast toward Peter that soul-piercing "look"? Or was it in the midst of those heart-rending indignities, at the reading of which one almost covers his face, and the calm endurance of which must have filled even heaven with wonder-was it during one of those dreadful moments when they were proceeding to blindfold that blessed Face, that Thou lookedst full on Thy poor disciple with that never-to-be-forgotten look? I know not. But I can well believe that no indignities from enemies wounded Thee at that hour like that which was done unto Thee by thine own familiar friend and dear disciple, and that this quite absorbed the sense of that. And if in heaven He feels the slight put upon Him by those who will not suffer Him to "gather" them, shall He not feel even more acutely (if the word may be allowed) "the wounds wherewith He is wounded in the house of His friends"?
(9) in reviewing the contents of this section, who can be insensible to the self-evidencing reality which is stamped upon the facts of it, both in their general bearing and in their minute details! What mere inventor of a story would have so used the powerful influence of Annas as to hand over the prisoner to him first, relating what passed between them in the dead of night, before the Council could be gotten together for the formal trial? And who would have thought of making Him answer with silence the lies and contradictions of the witnesses against Him; when these failed to make any decent charge, bringing forward at the last two more, only to neutralize each other by the inconsistency of their statements; and, when all failed, and the high priest in despair had to put it to Him on oath to say if He were the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, then drawing from Him a sublime affirmative? The condemnation and the indignities which followed would be natural enough; but the particulars now enumerated lie quite beyond the range of conceivable fiction.
But far more so are the details of Peter's denials. That the most eminent of the Eleven should be made to inflict on his Master the deepest wound, and this in the hour of greatest apparent weakness, when a Prisoner in the hands of His enemies-is unlike enough the work of fiction. But those minute details-the "following Him from afar" х apo (G575) makrothen (G3113)]; the introduction into the quadrangle through the influence of "that disciple who was known to the high priest;" the cold night, and the blazing fire, and the clustering of the menials and others around it, with Peter among them, and the detection of him by a maid, through the reflection of the fire-light on his countenance, the first denial in that moment of surprise, and the crowing of the cock; his uneasy removal "out into the porch," the second denial, more emphatic than the first, and then the last and foulest, and the second cock-crowing; but beyond every other thought that would never occur to an inventor, that "look upon Peter" by his wounded Lord, and that rush of recollection which brought the sad warning at the supper table fresh to view, and his "going out and weeping bitterly," - who that reads all this with unsophisticated intelligence, can doubt its reality, or fail to feel as if himself had been in the midst of it all? But what puts the crown upon the self-evidencing truth of all this is, that we have four Records of it, so harmonious as to be manifestly but different reports of the same transactions, yet differing to such an extent in minute details, that hostile criticism has tried to make out a case of irreconcilable contradiction, which has staggered some-while the most friendly and loving criticism has not been able to remove all difficulties. This at least shows that none of them wrote to prop up the statements of the others, and that the facts of the Gospel History are bound together by a fourfold cord that cannot be broken. Thanks, then, be unto God for this inestimable treasure, but above all for the Unspeakable Gift of whom it tolls its wondrous tale-a tale as new while we now write as when the Evangelists themselves were holding the pen-a tale, like the new song, that will never grow old!