Perhaps more than any other disciple, the apostle Peter’s life exemplified how hard it is to be faithful. He was obviously committed to Christ, but he also stumbled in colossal ways.

The biggest mistake he ever made came at the worst possible time in Jesus’ life, the night of His betrayal and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:47-56). Jesus already had called out Peter that night for napping while Jesus bared his deeply grieved soul to His Father in prayer (Matt. 26:36-46). “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” Jesus said to Peter.

You might think a reprimand like that would wake him up, literally and figuratively. But Peter was still sound asleep spiritually. He was loyal enough to follow Jesus discreetly after He was arrested — but not brave enough to say he was a disciple of Jesus when asked.

Peter had three chances to confess His faith and defend the Son of God. Instead, he denied Jesus three times in progressively angrier responses:

• “I do not know Him, woman!” Peter said the first time.
• “I do not know the man!” he shouted the second time.
• “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!” he swore and cursed the third time.

Then a rooster crowed and Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken to Him hours before: “Assuredly, I say to you that this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”

No doubt to Peter’s dismay, his denials of Jesus are among the few stories that appear in all four gospels of the New Testament (Matt. 26:69-75; Mark 14:66-72; Luke 22:54-62; John 18:15-18, 25-27). Even worse, Peter insisted to Jesus that the moment would never come. “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble,” Peter had boasted foolishly.

He still had much to learn, and the next big lesson came after Jesus rose from the dead. Only the gospel of John tells that story (21:15-19). Jesus repeatedly asked Peter, “Do you love me?” And Peter grew more exasperated each time. “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You,” he said after the third time.

Three denials of Jesus on the night of His betrayal. Three professions of love for Jesus after He conquered death by resurrection. Do you think Peter grasped the symbolism of those spiritual three-peats? Did he need to hear the rooster crow again?

Jesus finished His lesson to Peter with these words: “Tend My sheep. Truly, truly I tell you, when you were younger, you used to put on your belt and walk wherever you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will put your belt on you, and bring you where you do not want to go.”

Those words foretold Peter’s fate. He was going to glorify God by dying on a cross like Jesus did. Then Jesus said to Peter, “Follow Me!”

It took time, but Peter eventually did. He learned what it meant to be a disciple.

It takes us time, too. This feast is our weekly reminder — a spiritual gut check in the symbolic form of Jesus’ body and blood. It says something about the state of our own souls that we need a weekly reminder after everything Jesus did for us, but we do.

Like Peter, we are works in progress. We too often deny Jesus by the way we live. We say we love Him on Sunday, then forget Him the rest of the week. This memorial is important. It honors Jesus and strengthens us. But true discipleship demands more.

Remember Him today. Follow Him tomorrow. Live eternally.

For more ideas to share at the Lord’s Supper, see “Christ Before Our Eyes: 52 Readings to Draw Closer to Christ at the Lord’s Supper” (advertisement), by Shane Scott.