Matthew 26:33

OVER-CONFIDENCE

‘Peter answered and said unto Him, Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended.’

Matthew 26:33

No other apostle makes us feel so much at home with him as St. Peter. He is one of the three or four of whom we know most. We know his sad history as related in this chapter. What was the secret of it all?

I. The confidence of inexperience.—St. Peter’s over-confidence was first of all the confidence of inexperience, aided by lack of imagination. It is repeated again and again under our eyes at the present day. Castles in the air are built by inexperienced virtue to be demolished, alas, at the first touch of the realities of vice.

II. Reliance upon natural temperament.—And once more St. Peter’s over-confidence would seem to have been due in part to his natural temperament and to his reliance on it. Impetuosity was the basis of his character; it had stood him in good stead; it had, no doubt, been strengthened by exercise during his earlier years as a fisherman of the Galilean lake. God’s grace does not destroy the natural character; it purifies, it raises, it sanctifies character.

III. A warning note to ourselves.—What this episode really teaches us is to measure well, if possible, our religious language, especially the language of fervour and devotion. When religious language outruns practice or conviction, the general character is weakened; it is weakened by any insincerity; it is especially weakened by insincerity addressed to the All-true. Let us be sparing of free professions of our own.

—Canon Liddon.

Illustration

‘The country lad who has been brought up in a Christian home, and is coming up to some great business house in London, makes vigorous protestations of what he will and will not do in a sphere of life of the surroundings of which he can as yet form no true idea whatever. The emigrant who is looking forward to spend his days in a young colony where the whole apparatus of Christian and civilised life is yet in its infancy or is altogether wanting, makes plans, leaving the nature of a situation of which he cannot at all as yet from the nature of the case take the measure, altogether out of account. The candidate for holy orders who anticipates his responsibilities from afar, gathering them from books, gathering them from occasional intercourse with clergymen, makes resolutions which he finds have to be revised by the light of altogether unforeseen experiences. St. Peter never knew what it was to be the only human being loyal to Christ, until he sat in that outer court of the high priest’s palace, and the terrible isolation was too much for him.’