Why Did Peter Deny Jesus Three Times?
Peter had heard from the Holy Spirit that Jesus was the Christ, Israel’s promised Messiah. Jesus told Peter that this knowledge did not come from flesh and blood but from the Holy Spirit.
Shortly before the crucifixion, Jesus told Peter he would deny Him three times. But Peter strongly disagreed and said he would never deny the Lord. We all know that Peter did deny Jesus. How is it possible that Peter, the only one of Jesus’ disciples to hear from the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Christ, would publicly deny he knew Him?
Could it be that Peter’s faith in telling Jesus he wouldn’t deny Him was based on his faithfulness to Jesus, not Jesus’ faithfulness to Him? I believe it was, and I think Jesus knew Peter’s trust was in his personal will-power, not in God’s faithfulness to him.
Jump ahead. After the resurrection, we see Jesus cooking fish on the beach for Peter who is fishing. They engage in a fascinating discussion where Jesus asks him three times
“Do you love me?”
Peter’s reply in most English translations is poorly translated. He said he did love Jesus but in the original Greek, the word is
“friend,”
not love. Peter tells Jesus he likes Him like a friend. This might explain why he so easily denied the Lord to preserve his own life.
Jesus taught that there is no greater love than a person who will lay their life down for a friend.
We know that this is exactly what Jesus did for us. But Peter wasn’t willing to lay his life down for his friend, Jesus because that love wasn’t there.
We know that later on, Peter’s love for Jesus was undeniable. Yet, at the time he denied Jesus three times and spoke to Him after the resurrection, his love for Jesus was non-existent. He only saw Jesus as a friend. So what changed Peter? It was the realization that even though he had failed and denied even knowing Jesus, Jesus never denied knowing and loving him as God had loved Him. The love Peter came to know and experience after he denied Jesus totally transformed his life.
Many people think revelation knowledge changes you, but it doesn’t. It is knowing God’s love for you that does. Peter heard from the Holy Spirit that Jesus was God’s promised Messiah, but that divine revelation couldn’t give him the spiritual backbone he needed to not deny knowing Jesus. That power came from knowing the love Jesus had for Peter that empowered and transformed him to live a life where he would never deny Jesus again.
“We all possess knowledge. But knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1)
