Chapter VI

Ungilded

The shine falls off when you read.

2 min · They Did Not Believe Him

Preachers gild the Apostles. The shine falls off when you read. The men in the text are not stained glass. They are the first case study in how close a person can stand to the living God and still not believe what He says about Himself.

He was glad they confessed He came from God. He was not impressed that they believed He would become who He already is. There is a faith that grants Him origin and withholds His present tense. You are from God, they said. As if the hard part were the past. The hard part was the hour in front of them. The hard part was that the One from God was already the King, and the King was about to be handled by soldiers.

Now we know that You know all things and do not need anyone to question You; this is why we believe that You came from God. Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave Me alone.

John 16:30–32

He was not impressed that they believed He would become who He already is.

Do you now believe? It is not a compliment. It is a verdict with a clock on it. The confession is still in the air and He tells them what their belief is worth in an hour. They will be scattered. Each to his own. The own is always ready. The own is the house, the trade, the name, the skin. Faith that cannot survive the own is not the faith He asked for.

After the threefold denial He does not rewrite the man. He asks three times, Do you love Me, and ties each answer to a charge: feed My sheep. Then He tells Peter that when Peter is old another will gird him and carry him where he does not wish. The death is not chosen as a man chooses a throne. It is assigned. That is the opposite of a legend of instant perfect faith. He restores Peter to care for the flock. He does not pretend the denial never measured the man.

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.

John 21:18

The gilding is a pastoral industry. It needs heroes who were always essentially right, only briefly afraid. The text will not sell that. The text says they did not believe the rising, did not stay for the dying, did not speak for the accused, and had to be talked out of calling the risen Lord a ghost. Mercy found them later. Mercy is not a rewrite. It is a second birth after the record has already been taken.

Read them without the gold. You will find less to admire and more to recognize. That is the use of the Apostles in this book. Not as a ceiling. As a mirror.