Peter

In Luke 22:32, Jesus tells Peter what to do “after thou art converted.” This seems like an odd thing for Him to say, Peter has been part of His ministry for three years. Peter has walked on the water; he has witnessed the transfiguration, and seen Jesus with Moses and Elijah (how did Peter know who the other two men were?); he has proclaimed Jesus to be the Christ, to which Jesus responded that that was revealed by His Father. Peter was the Rock on which Jesus would build His church. How is it that Jesus is talking about Peter’s conversion in future tense?
There are a lot of things in the Gospels that would indicate that Peter was a minister of the Gospel. He witnessed a lot of miracles: a coin in a fish’s mouth, that Peter himself hooked from the sea; his mother-in-law healed of a grave illness, a fig tree that withered because Jesus cursed it. He was right by Jesus’ side for most of the three years of Jesus’ ministry. He himself cast out demons and healed the sick.
At the same time, there are instances that showed that Peter really didn’t understand what Jesus’ ministry was all about. Once Jesus rebuked Peter sharply, because Peter promised to defend Jesus if anyone tried to hurt Him. Even after being rebuked for that, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter grabbed a sword and was apparently ready to fight off the entire Roman army. Peter didn’t want to let Jesus wash his feet (but then when Jesus explained to him that He had to wash his feet in order for Peter to have a part in Jesus, then Peter wanted his head and hands washed, too). Peter fell asleep at the Garden of Gethsemane, during a time when Jesus most needed the support of His disciples. Peter was also the one that denied that he knew Jesus.
So what happened to cause Peter to be converted? What was the event? The big thing that happened after Jesus made that statement was that He was crucified. Remember that Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again. How does one get born again? Romans 6:4 says that we should walk in newness of life after we have been buried with Him by baptism unto death. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us to purge out the old leaven, and become a “new lump” and makes reference to Christ being our Passover sacrifice. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that we are new creatures in Christ; all things are become new. Hebrews 10:20 tells us that we have a new and living way, through the flesh of Jesus.
It becomes clear that being born again has a lot to do with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that, really, there were no Christians prior to the death, burial, and resurrection. There were followers of Jesus, but they didn’t have the whole Gospel truth, because it hadn’t happened yet. If Peter had his way, then Jesus would never have been crucified, and we would all be in our sins. Of course, Peter was converted when he understood the why of it all: that Jesus came as a sacrifice to save us from our sins.

I was reminded yesterday of an experience that I had as a teenager. I had some people trying to share the gospel with me, and they spent a lot of time talking about how bad Hell is going to be, and that I should be very much afraid of going there. Also, they tried to impress upon me that I didn’t have to go there, that all I had to do (they said) was believe. They even went so far as to say that if the Gospel message was true, then I could follow it, and go to Heaven, but if I followed the Gospel message and it wasn’t true, then eventually my body would just decay in the ground. The biggest thing that impressed me about their well-meaning attempts was that it seemed that they were trying to blackmail me into believing in the crucifixion. I don’t respond well to blackmail. Fortunately, later on, I found myself drawn in by God’s love for me.I know that a lot of people feel that, to share the Gospel effectively, you have to scare people. I don’t know, I suppose that works sometimes, but it would seem to me that it’s the exception, rather than the rule. I will admit that sometimes the carrot and the stick approach seems effective (do what I want, and I’ll give you a carrot, otherwise, I’ll hit you with the stick), but it occurs to me that the stick should be more of last resort. Sometimes you have to scare people to get their attention (but once that gets your attention, you should very carefully examine the Gospel for its merits), but if someone obeys the Gospel purely out of a desire to avoid eternal damnation, they are wasting their time. They may as well enjoy this life, because the next one will be considerably less pleasant. Your relationship with God should be based on love (Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fear God, we should, but, in general, that should be less of a motivation than love for God). Sometimes we are motivated by desire, and sometimes we are motivated by the fire.
I think that Apostle Paul was frightened into really examining the Gospel. Of course, part of the scare was incontestable evidence that what he had believed his entire life was completely wrong, but once God scared him into looking at Christianity objectively, he became a fierce proponent of the Early Church. Again, though, this is the exception; I think most of us would have just run as fast and as far as we could in the other direction, blind or not.
The point has also been made that God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son… and we killed Him. Some would say, “Oh, but we didn’t kill Him, it was those Jews!” That is just anti-Semitic semantics. The point is, He created us, He came amongst us, as one of us, and we human beings killed Him. Don’t point fingers, don’t try to blame someone else, we did it. Keep in mind, though, that was His plan all along. Jesus took the form of man in order to become the perfect sacrifice in order to absorb the wrath that we already deserved before He even came. He had to die, so that we could be saved. It’s not important who killed Him; it’s important that He sacrificed Himself to save us. The High Priest that twisted Jesus’ words in order to obtain a conviction, Pontius Pilate, who ordered the crucifixion (no matter how much he tried to wash his hands of it), even the soldier who put his spear in Jesus’ side at the cross; those people are all just as entitled to salvation as any of the rest of us (don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think those people actually were saved, but they had the same opportunity to be saved as any of the rest of us, and the same right to claim Jesus as Lord that any of the rest of us have). The crucifixion is not an example of why God should be angry with us, so much as it is an example of how much God loves us, that He would be willing to accept the punishment that we deserved so that we wouldn’t have to. Of course, I certainly wouldn’t want to be one of the ones who reject God’s love after He made such a sacrifice for us…

Mysteries In Scripture

There are a lot of mysteries in the Bible: What did Jesus write on the ground? What happened to Jesus in between ages 12 and 30? What in the world does the Book of Revelation actually mean?
Personally, I think that if these things were truly important, they would have been written down. Some people get very bothered about those things, and I can somewhat understand, but I think too often we get sidetracked by things that might not have any real significance, and we miss the things that are truly important. The disciples asked Jesus why He taught in parables. A lot of Bible scholars will tell you that He was trying to relate things in such a way that people would understand them. In an agrarian culture, it made sense to relate the Kingdom of Heaven to farming (even though sometimes the characters in His parables did things that wouldn’t make sense to a farmer, He managed to get His point across). There is a great deal of truth to that, and yet, the answer that Jesus gave was, so that seeing they might see, and yet not understand. Why would He not want people to understand? Didn’t He come to earth to teach us what we needed to know? Isn’t that what the parables were all about?
The point is, Jesus wanted people who were willing to put forth a little effort into understanding His teachings to be able to, but He also wanted people that had no interest in truth to be able to walk away with whatever ideas that they brought with them. He wasn’t trying to force people to believe, but He was making the Gospel message attainable.
When I was younger, I wondered why it was that God led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land, but then made them exterminate the Canaanites that lived there. Couldn’t God have wiped out the inhabitants, or convinced them to move? Of course He could have, but what they obtained too easily, the Israelites would have esteemed too lightly. The same thing holds true for us, today. If all the knowledge of God were simply handed to us, it would mean very little to us; we would probably take it for granted. So, God gave it to us in a form that needs to be studied to be understood, and even then, to get a true understanding, one would need to spend a considerable amount of time in prayer, asking God to help us to understand.
Alternatively, if we did what we did only because we knew that it was required of us (and there was no question about what was required), then there wouldn’t be much (if any) reward for that. I’ve heard people make the statement that you just can’t legislate morality. In the sense that no framework of laws can exist that will force people to be moral, that is a true statement. We have had people that tried to be thought-police, but you really can’t be sure that another human being is thinking the right things, or acting out of the right motives. If I do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, I may convince most of my neighbors that I am a terrific guy, but God is not fooled. God wants us to do the right things for the right reasons, so He gives us wiggle-room in the commandments. Does this mean this, or does it mean that? What if I misinterpret what God wants? If the motivation is right, then God will understand, and forgive, an honest mistake. If one is just trying to see how much one can get away with, though, that’s not going to fly. If one gets caught up in trying to understand all of the intricacies of things that don’t really even pertain to them, then it becomes very easy to lose focus on what things are truly important. Don’t allow yourself to become sidetracked; seek the face of God, and allow Him to direct your paths.