Acknowledging Our Weakness
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” But he said to Him, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!” And He said, “I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me.” Luke 22:31-34
I am reading David Benner’s book, “The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery.” In it, he points out that “It is highly unlikely that [Peter’s] betrayal of Christ was his first encounter with the fear that must have been behind it.” That unless he repressed his fears, that he denied they were an issue or blame-shifted or rationalized them away.
Perhaps he had an image to live up to. The context of the passage above is that immediately preceding it “there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest.” I think it was reasonable to assume that Peter was arguing that it was he that was the greatest.
If this was the case, then he needed to portray himself as strong. This was the narrative that he needed to tell himself and others. Perhaps this was why he said, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!”
But Peter did not really know himself. He did not know that parts of him we weak and fearful.
When you think about his response to Jesus saying that Satan would shift him like wheat—showing that Jesus truly knew Peter’s true self with his weaknesses, Peter was basically telling Jesus that Peter knew himself better than Jesus did! Well, we will later see how that worked out…
In the sifting process, Peter would be confronted by his fears and see that he was far weaker than he thought he was.
It is very encouraging that although Jesus knew that Peter would blow it, that He stated his confidence in Peter in advance: “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus was not focused on his hurt feelings of Peter’s upcoming letting him down in the Garden of Gethsemane and then denying Him. Rather, He he told Peter how God would use this great failure as something he would use to encourage others who would also struggle with failure.
Banner’s thesis of his book is that in order to know God fully that we must fully know ourselves, including our weaknesses. Our weaknesses are a gift for us to come to know God’s unconditional love all the better.
Might I learn from Peter’s mistake of asserting that I am strong when in fact, there are lots of parts of me that are weak and struggling and are prone to and indeed do fail. Rather, may I learn to be more like Paul, who would boast about his weaknesses. (2 Cor 12:9)
May I have a healthy knowledge of myself, so I am not like Peter who felt he knew himself better than Jesus knew him.