Denying Christ

In a disturbing turn of events, after declaring his fidelity and wielding a sword in defense of Jesus, Peter denies even knowing Jesus not once, but three times. It is curious that Peter will attack a member of a mob with a sword, but when confronted by a servant girl, he nearly swears his denial. I guess in the heat of the moment, brave (even if ill-advised) action is easier than after we’ve had a chance to cool off and seemingly face the reality of defeat.

But I digress. This thrice denial by Peter is one of the most famous stories from Sunday School and it is somewhat confusing because Jesus says that whoever denies him, he will deny before the Father. But Jesus welcomes Peter back and commissions him with a teaching position for the people of God. What’s going on? Is this just an example of forgiveness for a guy who we all know was a little rash in his behavior?

Peter’s denial was a denial under pressure and resulted from a concern for his personal safety. If he hadn’t felt sorrow for his denial; if he hadn’t come back to Jesus, perhaps this simple verbal denial would have kept him from continuing as a disciple or even entering Heaven. Maybe because the sort of denial we are warned against by Jesus, is deeper and greater than a mere verbal recanting of friendship.

The denial that we are warned against isn’t in response to “do you know Jesus?” No, the sort of denial that can be damning is one that denies the message of Jesus, revealed in the Man who is Jesus. To believe in Jesus isn’t a simple mental exercise or assent to a proposition. The answer to the question, “who do you say that I am,” isn’t a vacuous “Son of God” as though we have remembered the correct rubric.

No, to deny Jesus is to deny both who he was and what he taught. In Mark 8, Jesus says,

34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life[d] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Rather than deny, here we read ashamed but the idea is the same. Jesus here ties who he is “of me” and what he taught, “my words.” The type of teaching we should understand is revealed in the characterization of the current generation as “adulterous and sinful.” The teachings of Jesus are the antithesis of adulterous and sinful.

Writing to Titus, Paul gives some insight when he writes,

¹⁵ To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. ¹⁶ They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.  

These who deny Christ can be known because they are defiled and unbelieving. They say the right words but their lives reveal them to be unfit in their denial of him by how they live.

This is the denial from which we cannot recover – the denying of the call of Jesus on our lives. When we reject the call to a change in the trajectory of our lives, to transformation into the likeness of Jesus, there is no hope for us.

But I think this denial reaches even deeper into who we are. We are made in the image of God and called to become most fully his likeness. We are called to that because that is who we are – the likeness of Jesus is not foreign to us. When we deny Jesus and his call on our lives, we in truth deny ourselves. We proclaim that we have an existence and a purpose separate from who Jesus is and from becoming his likeness.

Denying Jesus ultimately has us
denying the Father, Jesus, the Spirit, and even our own being. When we live lives not worthy of Jesus, we deny him. If we are not becoming lovers, we rob God of the glory he should receive from us. When we resist our transformation into the likeness of Jesus, we deny the Spirit who works within us to that end. When we reject Jesus in this way, we become like men who look into a mirror and then when they walk away, forget what they saw. We deny ourselves and we descend into a broken, hurting, and ego-centric existence.

When we realize the scope and depth of the impact of denying Jesus, we can better understand why he would deny us before the Father.

When you look in the mirror and then walk away from it, do you remember what you saw? How does that impact your life from day to day? Have you become more like Jesus over time, or not so much?