'And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.'
--Luke xxii. 61.
All four Evangelists tell the story of Peter's threefold denial and
swift repentance, but we owe the knowledge of this look of Christ's
to Luke only. The other Evangelists connect the sudden change in the
denier with his hearing the cock crow only, but according to Luke
there were two causes co-operating to bring about that sudden
repentance, for, he says, 'Immediately, while he yet spake, the cock
crew. And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.' And we cannot
doubt that it was the Lord's look enforcing the fulfilment of His
prediction of the cock-crow that broke down the denier.
Now, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to weave a consecutive
whole out of the four versions of the story of Peter's triple
denial. But this at least is clear from them all, that Jesus was
away at the upper, probably the raised, end of the great hall, and
that if any of the three instances of denial took place within that
building, it was at such a distance that neither could the words be
heard, nor could a look from one end of it to the other have been
caught. I think that if we try to localise, and picture the whole
scene ourselves, we are obliged to suppose that that look, which
smote Peter into swift collapse of penitence, came as the Lord Jesus
was being led bound down the hall out through the porch, past the
fire, and into the gloomy archway, on His road to further suffering.
As He was thus brought for a moment close to him, 'the Lord turned
and looked upon Peter,' and then He passed from his sight for ever,
as he would fear.
I wish, then, to deal--although it must be very imperfectly and
inadequately--with that look that changed this man. And I desire to
consider two things about it: what it said, and what it did.
I. What it said.--It spoke of Christ's knowledge, of Christ's pain,
of Christ's love.
Of Christ's knowledge--I have already suggested that we cannot
suppose that the Prisoner at one end of the hall, intensely occupied
with the questionings and argumentation of the priests, and with the
false witnesses, could have heard the denial, given in tones subdued
by the place, at the other end. Still less could He have heard the
denials in louder tones, and accompanied with execrations, which
seemed to have been repeated in the porch without. But as He passed
the Apostle that look said: 'I heard them all--denials and oaths and
passion; I heard them all.' No wonder that after the Resurrection,
Peter, with that remembrance in his mind, fell at the Master's feet
and said, 'Lord! Thou knowest all things. Thou didst know what Thou
didst not hear, my muttered recreancy and treason, and my blurted
out oaths of denial. Thou knowest all things.' No wonder that when
he stood up amongst the Apostles after the Resurrection and the
Ascension, and was the mouthpiece of their prayers, remembering this
scene as well as other incidents, he began his prayer with 'Thou,
Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men.' But let us remember that
this--call it, if you like, supernatural--knowledge which Jesus
Christ had of the denial, is only one of a great body of facts in
His life, if we accept these Gospels, which show that, as one of the
Evangelists says, at almost the beginning of his history, 'He needed
not that any man should testify of man, for He knew what was in
man.' It is precisely on the same line, as His first words to Peter,
whom He greeted as he came to Him with 'Thou art Simon; thou shalt
be Cephas.' It is entirely on the same line as the words with which
He greeted another of this little group, 'When thou wast under the
fig-tree I saw thee.' It is on the same line as the words with which
He penetrated to the unspoken thoughts of His churlish entertainer
when He said, 'Simon! I have somewhat to say unto thee.' It
is on the lines on which we have to think of that Lord now as
knowing us all. He looks still from the judgment-seat, where He does
not stand as a criminal, but sits as the supreme and omniscient
Arbiter of our fates, and Judge of our actions. And He beholds us,
each of us, moment by moment, as we go about our work, and often, by
our cowardice, by our faithlessness, by our inconsistencies, 'deny
the Lord that bought' us. It is an awful thought, and therefore do
men put it away from them: 'Thou God seest me.' But it is stripped
of all its awfulness, while it retains all its purifying and
quickening power, when we think, as our old hymn has it:
'Though now ascended up on high,
He bends on earth a Brother's eye.'
And we have not only to feel that the eye that looks upon us is
cognisant of our denials, but that it is an eye that pities our
infirmities, and knowing us altogether, loves us better than we
know. Oh! if we believed in Christ's look, and that it was the look
of infinite love, life would be less solitary, less sad, and we
should feel that wherever His glance fell there His help was sure,
and there were illumination and blessedness. The look spoke of
Christ's knowledge.
Again, it spoke of Christ's pain. Peter had not thought that he was
hurting his Master by his denials; he only thought of saving
himself. And, perhaps, if it had come into his loving and impulsive
nature, which yielded to the temptation the more readily because of
the same impulsiveness which also led it to yield swiftly to good
influences, if he had thought that he was adding another pang to the
pains of his Lord whom he had loved through all his denial, even his
cowardice would have plucked up courage to 'confess, and deny not
but confess,' that he belonged to the Christ. But he did not
remember all that. And now there came into his mind--from that look,
the bitter thought, 'I have wrung His heart with yet another pang,
and at this supreme moment, when there is so much to rack and pain;
I have joined the tormentors.'
And so, do we not pain Jesus Christ? Mysterious as it is, yet it
seems as if, since it is true that we please Him when we are obeying
Him, it must be somehow true that we pain Him when we deny Him, and
some kind of shadow of grief may pass even over that glorified
nature when we sin against Him, and forget Him, and repay His love
with indifference, and reject His counsel. We know that in His
earthly life there was no bitterer pang inflicted upon Him than the
one which the Psalmist prophesied, 'He that ate bread with Me hath
lifted up his heel against Me.' And we know that in the measure in
which human nature is purified and perfected, in that measure does
it become more susceptible and sensitive to the pain of faithless
friends. Chilled love, rejected endeavours to help--which are,
perhaps, the deepest and the most spiritual of sorrows which men can
inflict upon one another, Jesus Christ experienced in full measure,
heaped up and running over. And we, even we today, may be 'grieving
the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of
redemption.' Christ's knowledge of the Apostle's denials brought
pain to His heart.
Again, the look spoke of Christ's love. There was in it saddened
disapprobation, but there was not in it any spark of anger; nor
what, perhaps, would be worse, any ice of withdrawal or indifference.
But there even at that supreme moment, lied against by false witnesses,
insulted and spit upon by rude soldiers, rejected by the priests as
an impostor and a blasphemer, and on His road to the Cross, when, if
ever, He might have been absorbed in Himself, was His heart at leisure
from itself, and in divine and calm self-oblivion could think of helping
the poor denier that stood trembling there beneath His glance. That
is of a piece with the majestic, yet not repelling calm, which marks
the Lord in all His life, and which reaches its very climax in the
Passion and on the Cross. Just as, whilst nailed there, He had leisure
to think of the penitent thief, and of the weeping mother, and of the
disciple whose loss of his Lord would be compensated by the gaining
of her to take care of, so as He was being borne to Pilate's judgment,
He turned with a love that forgot itself, and poured itself into the
denier's heart. Is not that a divine and eternal revelation for us?
We speak of the love of a brother who, sinned against seventy times
seven, yet forgives. We bow in reverence before the love of a mother
who cannot forget, but must have compassion on the son of her womb. We
wonder at the love of a father who goes out to seek the prodigal. But
all these are less than that love which beamed lambent from the eye
of Christ, as it fell on the denier, and which therein, in that one
transitory glance, revealed for the faith and thankfulness of all
ages an eternal fact. That love is steadfast as the heavens, firm as
the foundations of the earth. 'Yea! the mountains may depart and the
hills be removed, but My loving kindness shall not depart, neither
shall the covenant of My peace be removed.' It cannot be frozen,
into indifference. It cannot be stirred into heat of anger. It
cannot be provoked to withdrawal. Repelled, it returns; sinned
against, it forgives; denied, it meekly beams on in self-revelation;
it hopeth all things, it beareth all things. And He who, as He
passed out to Pilate's bar, cast His look of love on the denier, is
looking upon each of us, if we would believe it, with the same look,
pitiful and patient, reproachful, and yet forgiving, which unveils
all His love, and would fain draw us in answering love, to cast
ourselves at His feet, and tell Him all our sin.
And now, let us turn to the second point that I suggested.