Simon was but slightly moved by Peter's stern rebuke. He paid no heed
to the exhortation to pray for forgiveness and to repent of his
wickedness, but still remained in substantially his old error, in that
he accredited Peter with power, and asked him to pray for him, as if
the Apostle's prayer would have some special access to God which his,
though he were penitent, could not have. Further, he showed no sense of
sin. All that he wished was that 'none of the things which ye have
spoken come upon me.'
How useless are convictions which go no deeper down than Simon's did!
What became of him we do not know. But there are old ecclesiastical
traditions about him which represent him as a bitter enemy in future of
the Apostle. And Josephus has a story of a Simon who played a degrading
part between Felix and Drusilla, and who is thought by some to have
been he. But in any case, we have no reason to believe that he ever
followed Peter's counsel or prayed to God for forgiveness. So he stands
for us as one more tragic example of a man, once 'not far from the
kingdom of God' and drifting ever further away from it, because, at the
fateful moment, he would not enter in. It is hard to bring such a man
as near again as he once was. Let us learn that the one key which opens
the treasury of God's blessings, stored for us all in Jesus, is our own
personal faith, and let us beware of shutting our ears and our hearts
against the merciful rebukes that convict us of 'this our wickedness,'
and point us to the 'Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world,' and therefore our sin.