Mark 14:66 Commentary and Bible Study

We now read of the apostle Peter’s fall and restoration in the Gospel of Mark, and by human standards it is amazing that we do, because this is Peter’s Gospel. Mark was his helper, his assistant, his secretary, as it were. Mark took down everything that Peter remembered, by the prompting of the Holy Spirit about the Lord and his ministry. We are not at all surprised to read of Peter's denial of the Lord in Matthew's Gospel and Luke’s and John's, but in his own gospel! We like to read biography, but it's very difficult for a biographer to get to the faults and failings of his subject. The letters he really wants to see, the thoughts he would really like to hear and the reminiscences, are not available to him. The real follies and failings, yes, and the sins are not available. So even if he's trying to write an objective biography, he doesn't know the half of the worst about the person of whom he writes. And what about the autobiographies? Well, the author gives us a little insight into some difficulties, into some bad reactions, but the things he chooses to tell us are very mild failings. He doesn't usually tell us of his big acts of wickedness. But here is Peter’s Gospel: ‘I am that one’, he says. Christ, his Lord and Saviour, had said to him, ‘You cannot undergo the baptism that I shall undergo’ of suffering, but Peter replied, ‘I can.’ He goes on to say, ‘Though all these other disciples’ – he implies – ‘will fail you, I will never fail you. I will never deny you. I will always stand loyal.’ But the first to utterly collapse was Peter, and he confesses it, and he acknowledges it. How rapidly he fell, and how terribly he fell! and he tells us all. It is interesting that some of the old writers, the Puritan writers, do not call this Peter’s fall and restoration. They like to call it just his restoration, and there is quite a point there because Peter, sadly, was asking for a fall. The potential for a fall was in him all the time. When the fall took place, it was the occasion of his glorious restoration and making of him as a new person and this is the particular encouragement to us.Peter had got in. How had he got in? John came in first; he went to the high priest's house and he was admitted by the maid on duty at the door (John 18:15-16). They knew John in that household. Whether he had supplied fish or something from his business to the high priest's house, or whether he was related in some way, we do not know. But the maid girl admitted him, and then he interceded for Peter, and Peter was let in too.