John 13:38

13:36-38 What Christ had said concerning brotherly love, Peter overlooked, but spoke of that about which Christ kept them ignorant. It is common to be more eager to know about secret things, which belong to God only, than about things revealed, which belong to us and our children; to be more desirous to have our curiosity gratified, than our consciences directed; to know what is done in heaven, than what we may do to get thither. How soon discourse as to what is plain and edifying is dropped, while a doubtful dispute runs on into endless strife of words! We are apt to take it amiss to be told we cannot do this and the other, whereas, without Christ we can do nothing. Christ knows us better than we know ourselves, and has many ways of discovering those to themselves, whom he loves, and he will hide pride from them. May we endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, to love one another with a pure heart fervently, and to walk humbly with our God.

Mark saith, before the cock crow twice. So the other three evangelists must be expounded, who say no more than before the cock crow, not mentioning how often; but the history makes it good, that our Saviour meant twice, for it was not before the second crowing of the cock that Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

John 13:38 . Ἀπαρνήσῃ , thou shall have denied Me) owing to cowardice. So far are you from being ready to die. The threefold denial was thrice foretold: first in this passage; next, as recorded in Luke; lastly, in Matthew and Mark. There is a wonderful connection of the first verse of the following chapter with this prediction. For He most sweetly replies to the question that had gone before, as to whither He is going , although Peter, and the rest of the disciples with him, were at the time so exceedingly weak and wavering.

38 . I say unto thee ] In the parallel passage in S. Luke ( Luke 22:34 ) Christ for the first and only time addresses the Apostle by the name which He had given him,—‘I tell thee, Peter ;’ as if He would remind him that the rock-like strength of character was not his own to boast of, but must be found in humble reliance on the Giver. S. Luke agrees with S. John in placing the prediction of the triple denial in the supper-room: St Matt. ( Matthew 26:30-35 ) and S. Mark ( Mark 14:26-30 ) place it on the way from the room to Gethsemane. It is possible but not probable that the prediction was repeated; though some would even make three predictions recorded by (1) S. Luke, (2) S. John, (3) S. Matt. and S. Mark. See introductory note to Chapter 12 and Appendix B. thrice ] All four accounts agree in this. S. Mark adds two details: (1) that the cock should crow twice , (2) that the prediction so far from checking S. Peter made him speak only the more vehemently, a particular which S. Peter’s Gospel more naturally contains than the other three. S. Matthew and S. Mark both add that all the disciples joined in S. Peter’s protestations. It has been objected that fowls were not allowed in the Holy City. The statement is wanting in authority, and of course the Romans would pay no attention to any such rule, even if it existed among the Jews.

(38) wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? —Comp. for this phrase Note on John 10:11 . The pronouns are emphatic, and there is a solemn emphasis in the repetition of what St. Peter had said. He was using words of which he knew not the full meaning. He spoke of laying down his life for his Lord. He would hereafter be able to follow, because his Lord would lay down His own life for him. For the remainder of the verse, comp. Notes on Matthew 26:34; Mark 14:30; and Luke 22:34.

By this shall all men ... - That is, your love for each other shall be so decisive evidence that you are like the Saviour, that all people shall see and know it. It shall be the thing by which you shall be known among all men. You shall not be known by special rites or habits; not by a special form of dress or manner of speech; not by special austerities and unusual customs, like the Pharisees, the Essenes, or the scribes, but by deep, genuine, and tender affection. And it is well known it was this which eminently distinguished the first Christians, and was the subject of remark by the surrounding pagans. "See," said the pagan, "see how they love one another! They are ready to lay down their lives for each other." Alas! how changed is the spirit of the Christian world since then! Perhaps, of all the commands of Jesus, the observance of this is that which is least apparent to a surrounding world. It is not so much that they are divided into different sects, for this may be consistent with love for each other; but it is the want of deep-felt, genuine love toward Christians even of our own denomination; the absence of genuine self-denial; the pride of rank and wealth; and the fact that professed Christians are often known by anything else rather than by true attachment to those who bear the same Christian name and image.

The true Christian loves religion wherever it is found equally in a prince or in a slave, in the mansion of wealth or in the cottage of poverty, on the throne or in the hut of want. He overlooks the distinction of sect, of color, and of nations; and wherever he finds a man who bears the Christian name and manifests the Christian spirit, he loves him. And this, more and more as the millennium draws near, will be the special badge of the professed children of God. Christians will love their own denominations less than they love the spirit and temper of the Christian, wherever it may be found.

John QUO VADIS? A RASH VOWJohn 13:38 . In the last sermon I partly considered the dialogue of which this is the concluding portion, and found that it consisted of an audacious question: ‘Why cannot I follow Thee now?’ which really meant a contradiction of our Lord; of a rash vow; ‘I will lay down my life for Thy sake’-and of a sad forecast: ‘The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice.’ I paused in the middle of considering the second of these three stages, the rash vow. I then pointed out that, however ignorant the Apostle was of what ‘following Christ’ meant, he had hit the mark, and stumbled unknowingly upon the very essence of the Christian life, and an eternal truth, when he recognised that, somehow or other, to ‘follow Christ’ meant to die for Him. That is so, and is so always, for there is no following Christ which is not a ‘dying daily,’ by self-immolation and detachment from the world, and from the life of sense and self. But this rash vow has to be looked at from a somewhat different point of view, and we have to consider not only the strangely blended right and wrong, error and deep truth, that lie in its substance, but the strangely blended right and wrong in the state of feeling and thought, on the part of the Apostle, which it represents. And taking up the dropped thread, I first deal with that, and then with the sad forecast which follows.

So then, looking at these words as being like all our words, even the best of them, strangely mingled of right and wrong, good and evil, I find in them- I. A noble, sincere, but transient emotion and impulse. ‘I will lay down my life for Thy sake.’ Peter meant it, every word of it; and he would have done it too, if only a gibbet or cross could have been set up then and there in the upper room. But unfortunately the moments of elevation and high-wrought enthusiasm, and the calls to martyrdom, do not always coincide. In the upper room, with its sacred atmosphere, it was easy to feel, and would have been easy to do, nobly. But it was not so easy, lying drowsily in Gethsemane, in the cold spring night, waiting for the Master’s coming out from beneath the trembling shadows of the olive trees, or huddled up by the fire at the lower end of the hall in the grey morning, when vitality is at its lowest. So the sincere, noble utterance was but the expression of impulse and emotion which lifted Peter for a moment, and did him good, but which likewise, running through him, left him dry, and all the weaker because of the gush of feeling which had foamed itself away in empty words. For let us never forget that however high, noble, or divinely inspired emotion may be, in its nature it is transient and is sure to be followed by reaction.