BETRAYAL OF THE BODY
OF CHRIST—JOHN
I. Context: John
13-17
To capture the meaning of Peter’s denial, we will need to
spend some time in the preceding chapters, especially
II. This morning’s
text: Standing in the Path of Sinners
“…And Judas, who betrayed Him, also
stood with them” (18:5).
“Then the servant girl who kept the
door said to Peter, ‘You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?’ He
said, ‘I am not.’ And the servants and officers who had made a fire of coals
stood there, for it was cold, and they warmed themselves. And
Peter stood with them and warmed himself” (
“Now Simon Peter stood and warmed
himself. Therefore they said to him, ‘You are not also one of His disciples,
are you?’ He denied it and said, ‘I am not’ ” (
These texts call our notice to where the characters stand,
or more particularly, with whom they
stand.
III. With Whom do we Stand?
Our identity is bound up with the company we keep, and our
company testifies to where we have placed our allegiance. This is true of Judas
and Peter, and happily, true also of the women who did stand by Christ:
“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus
His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,
and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom
He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ ”
(19:25-26).
From here we realize, first, that our identity is not
centered on what we think or what we believe. We are more than our ideas.
Second, we
necessarily keep company with some community or other; we are not islands.
There is no neutrality. See Peter: in denying his affiliation with Christ, he
affiliated with those who were against Him. But others did stand with Christ,
even in his humiliation.
The story is
even larger than this. Christians must reckon their individual identities as
buried into one another, even as we are in Christ and Christ is in us (John
17:21, Eph. 4:1-6, etc.). Peter dissociated himself from the Church, the
company of Christ, His body. But consider Peter also, who in Scripture typifies
the Church, even in this narrative (see 21:15ff.). The picture in John 18 is of
the Church divided against itself, and in John 21 of the Church reconciled.
In a season of slander or controversy, we must own one another as brothers. We must do this even if it might result in getting muddied by the slander ourselves, or perhaps muddied by the more apparently (but not actually) benign “misunderstanding.”
Chris Schlect,