The believer will note the bearing of our Lord throughout these closing scenes, His lowliness and dignity, His infinite superiority to all who surrounded Him, friends or foes, His entire submission and withal His power intact. He is a man, the Sent One, but Son of God throughout. It is He who shelters and secures the disciples; it is He who offers Himself freely. The traitor and the hand, the torches and the weapons, had all failed, if He had not been pleased in letting His own go to give Himself up. For this indeed had He entered this world, and His hour was now come. But it was His own doing and according to the will of His Father, whatever man's wickedness and Satan's malicious wiles. Not more surely was it the power of His name which overwhelmed the armed crowd of His would-be captors than that His grace alone accounts for His subsequent subjection to their will.
“The band therefore and the commander [chiliarch], and the officers of the Jews, took Jesus and bound him and led [him away] unto Annas first; for be was father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest of that year. But it was Caiaphas that counseled the Jews that one man should die for the people. Now Simon Peter was following Jesus, and the other disciple. And that disciple was known to the high priest and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest, but Peter was standing at the door outside. The other disciple therefore, that was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the porteress and brought in Peter. The maid therefore, the porteress, saith to Peter, Art thou also of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not. But the bondmen and the officers were standing, having made a coal fire, for it was cold, and were warming themselves; and there was with them Peter standing and warming himself. The high priest then asked Jesus about his disciples and about his doctrine. Jesus answered, I have openly spoken in the world, I always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews assemble, and in secret I spoke nothing: why asked thou me? Ask those that have heard, what I spoke to them: behold, these know what I said. But as he said these things, one of the officers as he stood by, gave Jesus a blow, saying, Thus answerest thou the high priest? Jesus answered him, If I spoke ill, testify of the ill; but if well, why smitest thou me? Annas [therefore] sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said therefore to him, Art thou also of his disciples? He denied and said, I am not. One of the bondmen of the high priest, being kinsmen of him whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? Peter therefore denied again, and immediately a cock crew.” (Vers. 12-27.)
Our evangelist notices the fact that the band carried our Lord, not only to Caiaphas the high priest, but before that to Annas his father-in-law, who had preceded him in that office, but was succeeded by Caiaphas before his death. All things were out of course, and in nothing was this more evident than in the closing scenes of the Savior. And therefore does the Gospel recall what was already recorded in chapter 11, where the highest religions office blended with the lowest expediency, and the prophetic Spirit wrought in the wicked high priest, as of old in the unprincipled prophet of Midian. As the rule the Holy Spirit actuated holy men for God's will and glory; but exceptionally He could and did use for that glory those whom Satan was employing to thwart it as much as possible. Nothing can be more striking in Caiaphas' case than the way in which his heartless sentiment is turned by grace into the expression of a great truth wholly outside his ken. (Vers. 12, 13.)
Again we see, Simon Peter following the Lord, but not in the Spirit, nor was the other disciple there to his own honor, still less to the Lord's. For he finds access to the high priest's palace, as known to that functionary, and in no way as a follower of Jesus. And how he must have soon grieved over the kindly influence he exerted to get Peter let in, who had been obliged to stay without! Little did he think that his word to the porteress would give occasion to the terrible and repeated fall of his beloved fellow-servant! But every word of the Lord must be fulfilled. It would seem that the maid who kept the door was not ignorant of John's discipleship, for she says to Peter,” Art thou also of this man's disciples?” But the trying question was put not to John, but to Peter; and Peter, in the garden so bold, now utterly quails before this woman. Such is man, though a saint: what is he to be accounted of? Nor is fleshly energy better really in Christ's eyes than fleshly weakness, which not only lied but denied his Master in denying his relationship to Him as a disciple. And this was warm-hearted, fervent, courageous Peter!
Yes, but it was Peter tried under the shadow of the coming cross. Death is an overwhelming trial to the disciple till he knows what it is to have died with Christ to sin and law, crucified to the world which crucified Him, and able therefore to glory in the cross. It was not so yet with Peter, and he fell; nor can we say more of John and the rest than that they were not so tried. That they would have stood the test better is more than any can accept who believe what God says. (Vers. 14-17.)
The high priest pursues his investigation; Peter renews his sin. And no wonder. For he had slept when he ought to have watched and prayed, and he had ventured into the scene of temptation instead of heeding the warning of the Lord. “But the bondmen and the officers were standing, having made a coal-fire, for it was cold, and were warming themselves; and there was with them Peter, standing and warming himself.” (Ver. 18.) Evil communications corrupt good manners; and the confession of Jesus before friends is very different from confession before bloodthirsty enemies; and Peter must learn by painful experience what he was too unspiritual to realize from the words of Christ. It is blessed to learn our nothingness and worse in His presence who keeps from falling; but every saint, and specially every servant, must learn himself, if not there, in the bitter humiliation of what we are when we forget Him. May we abide in Him, and have His words abiding in us, and so ask what we will and have it done unto us! Peter had not thus failed before men if he had not failed before with his Master. Doubtless it is by the power of God we are kept, but it is through faith.
“The high, priest then asked Jesus about his disciples and about his doctrine.” He desired grounds against the Lord. Was this the procedure of-I will not ask the grace which should characterize a priest, but-ordinary painstaking righteousness? It was not to screen Himself that the Lord points to His open and constant testimony. Others unlike Him might cultivate private coteries and secret instructions, not to speak of darker counsels inciting to deeds that shunned all light of day. “Jesus answered, I have openly spoken in the world, I always taught in synagogue, and in the temple, where all the Jews assemble; and in secret I spoke nothing: why askest thou me? Ask those that have heard what I spoke to them: behold, these know what I said.” It was unanswerably true and right. The only reply was a brutal insult from a Jewish underling who would thus, as he could not otherwise, sustain the high priest. But the Lord answered the low as the high with a righteous dignity immeasurably above them all: “If I spoke ill, testify of the ill; but if well, why smitest thou me?”
So fared the Lord with the high priest: how painful the contrast of the disciple warming himself with the slaves? More than one assailed him with the crucial question, “Art thou also of his disciples?” Again the fear of man prevailed; and he who truly believed in Him did not confess but denied and said, I am not. But this was not all. For “one of the bondmen of the high priest, being kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? Peter therefore denied again, and immediately a cock crew.” (Vers. 26, 27.) Oh what fear of man bringing a snare! What blinding power of the enemy thus to involve a saint in direct and daring falsehood, and this to shame Him who was his life and salvation! But of what is not the heart capable when the Lord is not before it, but fear or lust or aught else by which Satan beguiles? God however took care that the dread of man to His dishonor should cover the guilty disciple with self-reproach and contempt and utter humiliation when an eye-witness could brand him before all with his reiterated lying in denial of his Master.
It will be noticed that we have in this Gospel neither the Lord's antecedent praying for Peter and assurance of restoration, nor His turning and looking on Peter after his last denial, when he, remembering the word of the Lord, went out and wept bitterly. These are given explicitly in the only Gospel whose character they suit and sustain. (See Luke 22:31, 3231And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 32But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. (Luke 22:31‑32), and 60, 61.) Here all turns, not on the discovery of what man's heart is, and the grace of the Lord's, but on the person of Christ as the one central object, not so much the Second man despised by man, and the energy of His love acting on a disciple spite of utter failure in himself, but the Son of God glorifying the Father in the midst of complete and universal ruin.