( John 13:1-11 Continued)
This then is the great instruction that the Lord was giving His servant at this time. “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit,” every whit; and that cleanness every whit, I repeat, is not merely the effect of being washed with blood. Washed with blood meets what our sins are; what we want as having sinned before God—before God. But it does not meet all that we want as giving us communion with God, and there is where the word comes in, and the importance of the word, and of the Holy Ghost’s applying the word. Because God will bring us to a common mind with Himself, and a common hatred with Himself of the evil that characterizes ourselves. God will give us a settled sense of it so that we hate it according to His own hatred of it, and that we, too, consequently, have an entrance into the good into which Christ has gone, because that was the effect of it. It is all founded upon the going in there where there is no evil, and we are brought into association—in short, have a part with Him now—by this very cleansing which deals with every impurity that is contracted every day.
Now this has, as I might almost say, dropped out of Christendom (I dare say there are some here that know a little of what is commonly taught), for I really could not tell, and I have read not a little on these subjects, but I really could not tell of any person, or of any work, that has ever set forward this most important truth. In short, the great mass of God’s children at the present day are just where Peter was then; that is, they have not the sense to see, they have not the sense, by the Spirit of God, to see the greatness of the love of Christ in giving them a portion with Himself where He is now. They have no thought of it. Consequently, you find that they are very little fitted for it by and by. This, on the contrary, falls in completely with what we find in the Epistles; that is we are “made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.” But supposing there comes in something that is inconsistent. Well there is the washing of the feet.
There is the dealing with whatever is practically inconsistent with it, and bringing our souls back, restoring us to communion, that is, that there should not be an inconsistency between our standing in Christ and our practical walk here below; nay, nor our thoughts or feelings, because there is power. Quite granted that our hearts naturally are a fountain of all evil; but then there is such a thing as the heart being purified by faith. There is such a thing as the Spirit of God filling the inner man with the thoughts of Christ, and it is in this way. It is not by changing the evil, it is not by removing the evil yet—that will be at the coming of Christ; but it is by giving power to the good. It is by strengthening the new man, and feeding and filling the new man with God’s grace, God’s truth, with Christ, in short, practically. It is all this that fills, and, consequently, strengthens the new man.
And so it is that one is divided, as the apostle says, into “spirit, soul, and body” —constituting the whole man. It is not, I repeat, the extinction of evil, or the disappearance of it, but it is judged. Our old man is crucified with Christ, and a person knows the force of another word of the apostle Paul—that is, if Christ be in you, what then? Why, he tells us that in that case—in the eighth of Romans—there is this treating ourselves as “dead because of sin,” and “alive because of righteousness.” The Spirit is alive, you see, as he says; that is, the body is dead because of sin, and I am entitled to treat it as a mere instrument. If I allow the body to be active, and to have its way, it is always self, because then it guides me, then it takes possession of me, carries me off with itself, so to speak; and that is just what one is not to do if Christ be in you. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin.” If I do not act upon my being dead with Christ, but allow it activity as a living thing, then it works its own way and serves sin, because that is not changed. And, on the other hand, if I do treat it thus as dead, the Spirit is life. It is not only that I have got life in Christ, but the Spirit is life. The Holy Ghost acts in practical power, and He is life because of righteousness, and it is only thus that there is this practical working either in the having done with sin or of the righteousness of God below.
Well here, then, we have this great instruction from our Lord Jesus. At the end of the chapter we touch upon what I shall a little unfold from another scripture—the warning. The Lord introduces it after He has brought out His own death. When Judas is gone, the Lord has the whole scene before Him. “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” It is not merely the Father, but God, and God, as such, being glorified always supposes sin judged. It brings, therefore, the death of Christ in the judgment of sin—the solemn judgment of sin—before us. “If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him,” which He did by setting Him at His own right hand directly after His death and resurrection when He ascended to heaven. Instead of waiting for the kingdom and bringing in the Jew, He glorified Him straightway. All this, you see, is essentially connected with what is peculiar to Christianity. And then He tells them, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me; and, as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Peter again, too, quick to speak to the Lord, says, “Whither goest thou?” Jesus answers him, “Whither I go thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterward.” How gracious! How gracious to tell him of his incapacity before His death, and of that following which will be a most sure consequence, brought by the gracious power of God and made true to his soul. “Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.” It was not that he was insincere. I doubt whether there ever was a sincerer soul than Simon Peter. And it is not in our insincerity, it is not there that our folly lies, but the very contrary, because we trust self in some shape or another. “Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.”
I will turn, then, to a further warning—a truth that the Lord presents to us of very great moment —that we may have it fully before us. In the 22nd chapter of Luke, and the 31St verse, “And the Lord said, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee.” You observe the change. “Satan hath desired to have you.” It was not merely Simon, although he addresses Simon, but he desired to have them all. “But I have prayed for thee.” Why “for thee”? Why not merely “for you”? Because Satan was making a dead set at Simon, and what gave Satan the opportunity was this—Simon’s self-confidence. Confidence in what, beloved friends? In his natural character? Not at all; no, but in his love for the Lord. If his confidence had been in the Lord’s love to him it would have been a very different matter. Had that been actively—been distinctly —before his soul, he would have weighed the Lord’s warning; but he really was so sure that he loved the Lord so much, that, no matter what the trial was, he could go through it. He did not believe the others could. We may be tolerably good judges of others, beloved friends; we are very had judges of ourselves. Cannot we see that in Simon? Can we see it in ourselves? “I have prayed for thee,” said He who had all truth and whose love was going out, and most of all, for the man that was most dishonoring Him. Why so? Was dishonor a light thing? No, but His love was great and most real. And by whom and for whom is love most brought out? Where there is most need—the deepest need. “I have prayed for thee.”
And mark, Simon Peter heard it from His own lips before he went astray. If he had not, we have no right to say that he would have been restored as he was. We know that he was, restored, but God uses means, and one of the great means of restorative power for our souls is the love that we knew before we went astray. There is nothing that gives the heart more of rebound back to the Lord, and of horror at ourselves, than the very fact that the Lord told us so fully, so distinctly, before we went astray. “I have prayed for thee.” Do you think that Peter forgot that— “I have prayed for thee”?—because it would not have done if He had said, “I have prayed for you.” That is all true about you generally, but it is “thee” — “I have prayed for thee.” No, he never forgot it. He never forgot it in the hour of his need. I do not say in the hour of his wanting it; I do not say in the moment of his sin; but I do say that, when the horror of the sin filled his soul with despair, these words would he, and no doubt were, brought up by God’s Spirit before his soul. “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” Neither did it. His faithfulness did, but not his faith. We have no reason to believe, beloved friends, that he wavered as to the Person, or that he wavered about Christ’s great love to him, but—Peter was occupied with man. This we shall see another evening, for I am only going to speak of the warning, to-night.
“That thy faith fail not,” then, is the word; “and when thou art converted,” that is, turned back again to the Lord. It is the very same word that is used about one’s first turn, only Scripture does not limit it to that. The word “converted” is very much, in our common language, applied to the first turning to God, but we must remember that in Scripture it has a larger force, and means the turning again, even if one has gone astray, and that is exactly the meaning of it here. This is, therefore, what we commonly term restoration of soul, rather than conversion, but it is the very same word which applies to both. “When thou art turned to me” (if you please, or any word that would express that, just to vary it from our common usage) “strengthen thy brethren.”
The very fact of his being an object of such grace, and that power which drew him back again, would give confidence not only to him, but to them. He would be an instrument suited to the Lord, so little is it true that God does not restore a man—that you are not to trust a man who has once broken down. Why here is the most honored of God. We must not suppose, beloved friends, that saints are like horses. If a horse once falls he breaks his knees, no doubt. But is it possible that I have such a poor conception of divine grace as to think that? I dare say the figure has been very often used just in the opposite way. One would have thought that these words of our blessed Lord would have arrested the lips that said so. Not so; not so. Peter not only broke down then, but he broke down in another sense as seriously, for he failed as completely about the Gentiles after he had had a special commission to open the door to the Gentiles. He failed as completely about that as he failed here about Christ; but, for all that, there was no person—unless it be the apostle Paul himself—that was more used of God in strengthening his brethren. I think it a serious thing to weaken the spring of confidence in a soul that has slipped aside. I do not say that in order to weaken the gravity of slipping aside; but I do say that we must be zealous for the grace of God, and we must be faithful to the word of God; and we must take care that we do not, therefore, enfeeble a manifest truth of God that comes out as, for instance, in this very case. “When thou art converted’’—or, restored— “strengthen thy brethren.”
Now that is pre-eminently what we find in the Epistles of Peter—all through them both, I should say. Of course, they are not confined to that, neither does it refer to what he wrought, but it is a general reference to the character of his ministry. It was not only a confirming ministry; it was not only one that converted souls, but, as far as his brethren were concerned, it was one calculated eminently to strengthen, and this most clearly from the way in which God had taught him the grace of the Lord Jesus. No doubt it is a better thing to be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus, so as not to slip aside; but the next best thing is that we have so profited by a slip, if we have been careless and unwatchful, that we have drunk more deeply into the grace of God than we ever did before. And surely, out of that, we are able to strengthen one another. So it was here. “He said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter” (for here we resume from where I left off in John) “the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise his scrip.” It was no longer to be miraculous power, or miraculous opening the door of any one for them. There was no longer to be that. There had been that in their previous testimony. I do not believe that sending them in this new form of testimony was lower ground. There was less of wonder about it, but I do not believe, beloved friends, that the walk of faith is less because it is not clothed with miraculous power.
Why, look at the Corinthians. There were plenty of miracles there. Were they spiritual? Far from it. It is, therefore, a complete delusion to suppose that miracles of themselves show spirituality. I should say, on the contrary, it requires a great deal of grace to carry the power or miracle, so to speak—a great deal of grace—and that is precisely what I should gather from it, and I have no doubt that it is one of the reasons why the Lord did not continue miracles long—because the state of the church would not bear it. He, at the same time, did show that even in that state, a bad state in a particular quarter did not hinder miracle; but certainly it in no way implied spiritual power in the use of miracle. It was, therefore, a very good reason why, and 1 have no doubt there were moral reasons which God, of course, could alone adequately judge of, why He withheld them longer. But, however that may be, now they were to be cast upon God’s caring for His people in more ordinary ways. It was to be no longer a going in the name of the great King, and the disciples armed with power in every possible way as the vouchers of the King’s presence—the Messiah’s presence. They had had that. “But now,” He says, “he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” But to guard against any thought of this being meant in a mere literal way—to show that it was meant only as the sign of the ordinary safeguards and means of daily life—this comes out. “And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.”
Now that very thing shows that He did not mean it literally, because two swords would be a very poor provision or eleven disciples—that is quite evident. If it had been eleven swords one could understand, but the fact of the Lord saying that two swords are enough shows at once that it was quite a mistake to interpret it in the mere literal sense; and we see that those who took it literally made a very bad use of it in a little while, and Peter is the very man.
But that is not what I am going to draw your attention to now, but this—that when the Lord leads them out to the mount of Olives, and the disciples follow Him, when He was at the place He said unto them, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” This is a very serious thing. It is just as true as another word that we might not be able to put along with it, and that is, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation.” No, it is blessed to fall into temptation, but it is never blessed to enter into temptation. There is all the difference between entering into temptation and enduring temptation. And there was exactly what Peter had to learn most bitterly—to enter into temptation. Now the man that endures temptation is the man that prays before the temptation comes. He does not enter into it. When it comes he is blest; he endures. Peter did not. Peter entered; that is to say, that the entrance into temptation shows that there is a want of sense of danger—a want of sense that I need God, that I need God now. No doubt there is. But if the Lord tells me that temptation is at hand, and I do not pray, it is evident that I am not depending upon God; and so, instead of falling into temptation, the temptation, on the contrary, if I may say so, falls upon me, and, more than that, I enter into it instead of enduring it. The endurance of temptation is when the person suffers, and suffers because he does not yield. The entrance into temptation is when he does yield because he does not pray; because he is not in. dependence upon God, for there was exactly what was now coming out. “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” He did not pray, and he did enter into temptation.
How different was it with the Lord! “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine he done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” Now there was the Savior — “And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly” the only one that it might have seemed temptation could not affect, temptation could not ensnare. And so it was most true: there was nothing that was assailable by temptation inwardly, nothing whatever; but, for that very reason, He knew what it was to suffer being tempted. Peter did not. Peter, on the contrary, gratified himself, as we shall see, when I come to show his fall; but that must remain for another night. I am only going to speak of the warning, as well as the instruction—the instruction that was so soon before, the warning that so soon followed. I shall show that the fall just as quickly followed, and the restoration in due time. But in the Lord’s case there was the depth of entrance—not into the temptation. He did not enter into temptation, but the Lord weighed it all, felt it all. The Lord had all the bitterness, all the sense of it, but a thing outside. And how? Because He took the gravity of it. He felt the reality of it in His own spirit before God. He always did, no matter whether it was a question of a temptation that was presented to Him by the adversary. And He had gone through that before. There had been temptation in the pleasant form. There was the temptation to seek that which God had not given, and the Lord refused. But now there was temptation in a totally different form—the endurance of what was most painful. And what was anything that could befall Peter compared with that which was before the Lord? For it is the greatest mistake to suppose that it was merely death. It was such a death as He alone could know, and the Lord therefore does go through the whole scene in spirit with God.
“And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was at it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow.” But this was not the sorrow of grace: this was really selfish sorrow. They were sorrowing at what they were going to lose; at all this distress that was coming on. It was not the true sorrow of grace that felt the seriousness of the moment, and that took warning from the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. “He found them sleeping for sorrow, and said unto them, Why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before.”
Now it is not my intention to-night to go farther than that which I have now presented to you; but I believe that we have here the very thing that resulted in the speedy fall of Peter. We shall see the character of that—the way in which grace met and surmounted it, and restored this beloved one to God, and that will close the discourses that I am about to give upon this subject.
[W. K.]