Peter’s life in the Bible is a powerful picture of a deep and thorough transformation work — and this picture has everything to do with you. A New Testament believer’s life is a life of transformation. Like Peter’s, it is one that starts from seeing the vision of Christ and the church to becoming the builded church in reality. Peter was far from perfect, and yet from who he was in the gospels, in the book of Acts, and in his later epistles, we see a man progressing from one stage of his life to the next, until the Lord’s words to him became true in his experience: “…upon this rock I will build My church” (Matt. 16:18).
Peter’s life had many spiritual highs, but also many failures. Although he was the first disciple to understand by revelation that the Lord Jesus was the Christ, and the Lord even promised him the keys to the kingdom of the heavens (v. 16, 19), he was also rebuked by the Lord: “Get behind Me, Satan!” (v. 23). Peter saw the Lord transfigured before his very eyes (17:1-2), yet he also denied knowing Him three times (26:75). But these failures did not stop Peter’s progress, nor did they change the course the Lord set out to use Peter for His building purpose. Could we say the same about ourselves when confronted by our failures? Could we afford the Lord to call us “Satan”? Would we be offended, or dig ourselves deeper into our own shame and misery?
But going through painful situations or failures is not the goal; neither are there any guarantees that we will be acceptable just having suffered them. Peter needed to be transformed not to be better, but to part with his very soul-life, which is his self. Flesh and blood — the natural man — can never reveal Christ (16:17). Neither is it able to answer the calling to build and be acceptable to God. In order to realize the revelation of Christ and the builded church, we must go through a process that leads us to our very end. That very end will cause this weary soul of ours to finally turn so we can follow the Lord into His death and resurrection. A mature Peter, later in his life, writes to remind the saints that it is only “through Jesus Christ” that we as living stones may be “built up as a spiritual house into a holy priesthood” and “offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God” (1 Pet. 2:5). This answer is the way to rebuke Satan and the way to shut up the gates of Hades that surround us.
Peter used his life to prove to us what is “denying the self” and what is “bearing the cross” — not to lose his soul-life only but to gain his soul-life (Matt. 16:25). He saw beyond the pain of “denying the self” and “bearing the cross,” not being offended in severe rebuke, not hopeless after his failures, not sucked into the gates of Hades, so that he could serve saints into a real revelation of Christ and the builded church. From the gospels, to Acts, to even his seeming “disappearance” until the later books of the Bible, Peter was changed. He could be bold when the Lord needed him to be and could also retreat for the Lord’s interest. He did not act politically nor misuse his seniority, and could love and endorse fellow brothers like Paul as his “beloved” (2 Pet. 3:15). This is a soul that is no longer lost, but a soul that is shepherded by Christ (1 Pet. 2:25). Our life is not a life of endless wandering in the wilderness and never coming out. To the end, the Lord desires that we follow Him through the process to be His glorious church. Saints, the Lord has His mission — and He has completed it on the cross. Let us linger no longer in our failures, but submit to the urgent transforming work He is doing in us!
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 11/23/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)