Mat 26:33-35 | Clarke | STEP | Verse 33 Peter - said unto him, Though all men shall be offended - yet will I never - The presumptuous person imagines he can do every thing, and can do nothing: thinks he can excel all, and excels in nothing: promises every thing, and performs nothing. The humble man acts a quite contrary part. There is nothing we know so little of as ourselves - nothing we see less of than our own weakness and poverty. The strength of pride is only for a moment. Peter, though vainly confident, was certainly sincere - he had never been put to a sore trial, and did not know his own strength. Had this resolution of his been formed in the strength of God, he would have been enabled to maintain it against earth and hell. This most awful denial of Christ, and his abandoning him in the time of trial, was sufficient to have disqualified him for ever from being, in any sense, head of the Church, had such a supremacy been ever designed him. Such a supremacy was never given him by Christ; but the fable of it is in the Church of Rome, and the mock Peter, not Peter the apostle, is there and there only to be found.

Matthew 26:33-35

Verse 33

Peter - said unto him, Though all men shall be offended - yet will I never - The presumptuous person imagines he can do every thing, and can do nothing: thinks he can excel all, and excels in nothing: promises every thing, and performs nothing. The humble man acts a quite contrary part. There is nothing we know so little of as ourselves - nothing we see less of than our own weakness and poverty. The strength of pride is only for a moment. Peter, though vainly confident, was certainly sincere - he had never been put to a sore trial, and did not know his own strength. Had this resolution of his been formed in the strength of God, he would have been enabled to maintain it against earth and hell. This most awful denial of Christ, and his abandoning him in the time of trial, was sufficient to have disqualified him for ever from being, in any sense, head of the Church, had such a supremacy been ever designed him. Such a supremacy was never given him by Christ; but the fable of it is in the Church of Rome, and the mock Peter, not Peter the apostle, is there and there only to be found. Verse 34

Jesus said - Our Lord's answer to Peter is very emphatic and impressive. Verily - I speak a solemn weighty truth, thou wilt not only be stumbled, fall off, and forsake thy Master, but thou wilt even deny that thou hast, or ever had, any knowledge of or connection with me; and this thou wilt do, not by little and little, through a long process of time, till the apostasy, daily gathering strength, shall be complete; but thou wilt do it this very night, and that not once only, but thrice; and this thou wilt do also in the earlier part of the night, before even a cock shall crow. Was not this warning enough to him not to trust in his own strength, but to depend on God? Verse 35

Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee - He does not take the warning which his Lord gave him - he trusts in the warm, sincere attachment to Christ which he now feels, not considering that this must speedily fail, unless supported by the power of God.