Thoughts From William Barclay

Dear Friends,



A while back I purchased a book entitled, “Many Witnesses, One Lord” by William Barclay. In it he speaks of how each apostle has a slightly different emphasis when speaking of salvation and our relationship with Jesus. In today’s thought he compares Paul with Peter.

Just as all the Gospel’s reflect a slightly different emphasis on the life of Jesus (especially in John’s Gospel), so also with the epistles. In today’s thought he considers what Peter chooses to focus on. It’s a good reminder of things we must never forget and foundational truths we must never let go of. Enjoy.

“For Peter faith is a combination of unshakable loyalty and equally unshakable hope. It is not for Peter, as it was for Paul, a kind of inner union with Jesus Christ; it is rather deathless loyalty responding to deathless love in immortal hope.

Salvation for Peter is something which is at the end of the road, rather than it is for Paul a present experience [of course, in reality it is both]… Peter would say, ‘I set out on the Christian way, and the longer I walk in it the more I know and love my Lord.’

1. To Peter Jesus is the perfect example. ‘He left us an example that we should follow in His steps’ (I Peter 2:21). The word example is hupogrammos and it means the line of handwriting at the top of a page in a handwriting exercise book which the student must copy as best he can. Jesus is the pattern which the Christian must ever try to reproduce.

2. To Peter Jesus is Lord. ‘In your hearts, he says, reverence Christ as Lord’ (I Peter 3:15). The word is Kurios. It means the absolute master and owner of any person or thing. It is the word used for the Roman Emperor; the word which in the Greek Old Testament is used to translate the name of God. To Peter Jesus is the undisputed Lord and Master of his life, to whom is owed an absolute loyalty and an absolute obedience and a humble worship.

3. To Peter Jesus is the Living Foundation Stone. In I Peter 2:6-8 he quotes Isaiah 28:16, ‘See I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame’… So then, to Peter Jesus is the only sure foundation of life; he is the one whom men rejected but who has become head over all; he is the one over whom the unbeliever will stumble to ruin but on whom the believer will build his life.

4. To Peter Jesus is the Judge. ‘Men will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead’ (I Peter 4:5). Jesus is not only the pattern in this life; he is also the judge in the life to come.

5. To Peter Jesus is the Shepherd. In Palestine… pasture was hard to find and surrounded by deserts and cliffs where straying sheep might perish of hunger or plunge to disaster. The shepherd had to be forever on the watch, day and night, and had to be at any time ready to risk his life to seek and find sheep that had strayed away. Jesus is the sentinel of his people’s safety and the rescuer of their lost souls at the cost of his own life.

6. To Peter Jesus was Passover Lamb. Christians have been redeemed, ‘not by any human currency of silver and gold, or the empty way of life handed down to us by our forefathers, but by the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without spot or defect’ (I Peter 1:18-19)… It is the blood of Jesus, the sacrifice of his life, which saves his people from their sins, and from the judgment of God.”

Barclay lists three more (Jesus as Scapegoat, Jesus as Suffering Servant, and Jesus as Guardian of our souls). It's all of them together that comprise the way Peter viewed Jesus. And although each one is worthy of far more consideration; I leave you to do that on your own.

Yet I do want to add how intensely interesting I find it that for Peter (who earlier in his life succumbed to fear and denied Jesus three times) the emphasis in his later life (as Barclay points out) would be, “unshakeable loyalty” or what he calls, “deathless loyalty.”

I happen to be one who is convinced that when Peter was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death in 64 A.D. (hung upside-down on a cross lining the main road that led into the city of Rome, along with his wife and 700 others) he thought back on his humiliating denial of Jesus earlier in his life. It would seem impossible to me that he didn’t. In fact, I would suggest it’s a testimony to the fact that sometimes our most humiliating past failures can form and fuel our determination never to fail in that way again.

In the name of Jesus our Lord, Example, Shepherd, Judge, Sacrifice, and Foundation Stone…!

Pastor Jeff