For the third time Peter denies knowing or following Jesus. We often concentrate upon Peter’s failure, but Barclay observes the following:

“The essence of the matter was that it was the real Peter who protested his loyalty in the upper room; it was the real Peter who drew his lonely sword in the moonlight of the garden; it was the real Peter who followed Jesus, because he could not allow his Lord to go alone; it was not the real Peter who cracked beneath the tension and denied his Lord. And that is just what Jesus could see. A tremendous thing about Jesus is that beneath all our failures he sees the real man. He understands. He loves us in spite of what we do because he loves us, not for what we are, but what we have it in us to be. The forgiving love of Jesus is so great that he sees our real personality, not in our faithlessness, but in our loyalty, not in our defeat by sin, but in our teaching after goodness, even when we are defeated.”

At the very moment of his third denial, a rooster crowed. Jesus turned and looked at Peter and Peter went outside and wept bitterly (Luke 22:61-63).

The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
Looked only, on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,
Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the judgment-call.
And Peter, from the height of blasphemy—
‘I never knew this man ‘—did quail and fall
As knowing straight THAT GOD; and turned free
And went out speechless from the face of all
And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.

THE LOOK by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We have all failed Jesus at some point in our lives. But He doesn’t gaze upon our failures — He looks only upon our faces. When He sees us, He sees all that we can be, not all that we have been. Even at the moment that Jesus was faced with impending death, His thoughts were for His beloved disciple who had just denied Him. And even at that very moment He was looking forward to and planning the time when he would restore Peter to the relationship with Him and the position within His Kingdom which He had planned for him all along.

There is nothing you have done and nothing you can ever do or say that could separate you from Christ’s love (Rom 8:35-39). You are always foremost in His thoughts; is He foremost in yours? If you have sinned, then restoration of relationship is only as far away as your confession to Him (1 John 1:8-9).

Romans 8:35-39  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 1:8-9  If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.