The Re-Converted Christian
“When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” — Luke xxii, 32.
Among all the chosen band of our Lord’s disciples, the most picturesque figure is Simon, the son of Jonas. We know him the most thoroughly — both sides of him. So honestly have the four evangelists portrayed him that we understand x)erfectly both the superb qualities and the pitiable infirmities of the man. When we see him leaping out of the fishing-boat to meet his Master o’er the raging waves, or avowing his faith in the divine mission of that Master so promptly, or impetuously drawing his sword to defend Him in Gethsemane, we are charmed with the eager impulsiveness that never stopped to count the consequences. A noted Irish x)reacher has somewhat wittily claimed him as “the Irishman among the apostles.”
There is another side of this brawny, impetuous, warm-hearted fisherman that we can never lose sight of; and the lamentable in his career, with which our text is connected, is one that we could not afford to lose. Peter is a man we cannot spare. Standing or falling, he is worthy of our deepest and closest study; and if he once wept bitterly, we also may shed honest tears that we have so often sinned in the same direction.
Our text, if torn ont of its close connection, would puzzle us. When read as a part of a remarkable declaration and as revealing a part of a very remarkable character, it becomes perfectly clear and full also of weighty and wholesome instruction. Just before His scene of agony in the garden, and probably when on His way thither, our Lord turned to Peter and tenderly addressed him in these solemn words, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has asked to have you that he might sift you as wheat; but I have made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren.” I have given you the passage as rendered very accurately in the Revised Version of the New Testament. Now there are three important facts most distinctly visible in this declaration. The first one is that Peter was not at that time an unconverted man, for Christ recognizes that he possessed “faith.” He was a genuine disciple. The second fact is that, while Satan would have liberty to sift poor Peter with a terrible temptation, Jesus Christ had interceded for him that he should not fall away into utter apostasy. The third fact is that after the disgraceful fall which Christ foresaw (though Peternever dreamed of it) there should be a recovery. The word which is rendered “convert” in our Common Version really signified to face about, or to turn around. In this passage, it does not signify to revolve continually, but to take the opposite course as a ship does when it is “put about,” or to turn as a fiower does toward the sun. A fair paraphrase of the passage would be, “When in answer to my prayer for thee, thou hast turned back from the sin into which thou art about to fall, then thou shalt use thy bitter exjierience both to warn and to stablisli thy brethren.”
We do not wonder that the intrepid apostle was shocked by this startling announcement. There is no one in this world of whom we are oft-times so utterly ignorant as of the person who walks in our own shoes; and the things which we least anticipate are our own pitiful falls into sin. With hot indignation Peter repels the insinuation of his Master. “Lord, 1 am ready to go with Thee both into prison and to death.” Matthew’s narrative of the scene makes him to say also: “Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet loill not /.” Was this the bluster of a braggart or the sad self-ignorance of a loyal man? The Master knew — not we — and like a dart He drove through Peter’s soul the prediction, ‘’ Yerily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” Stung with horror at these terrible words, Peter cries out: “Though I shoukl die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee!” Never was a blind man nearer to a precipice than was the boastful apostle when he thus “gave the lie” to his Master. Judas had already gone over the precipice; and now shall Peter follow suit? Wait a little while and see. The pivot-hour in his life is just at hand.
In the last watch of that awful night, well on toward daybreak, he finds himself in the arched jmssage, or porch, of the high-priest’s palace. The night air is chilly, and a charcoalfire has been kindled there, beside which Peter stands warming himself. He can see through into the judgment hall, where his Master is undergoing a mockery of judicial trial; but his own trial comes on suddenly. Satan, the sifter, steals in to sift him.” Art not thou one of this man’s disciples?” inquires the garrulous girl who keeps the door. He replies, “I am not! “The wheat is running out fast, and again the sifter shakes the sieve. For yresently another servant-maid, spying the apostle back under the archway, flings at him the same question, and again, with craven cowardice, he stammers out,” I am not.” Pretty soon a kinsman of Malchus assails him, “Did I not see thee in the garden with Him?” and another man badgers him with the taunt, ‘’ Surely thou art also one of them; thy speech (thy brogue) betrayeth thee! “This is too much for the hounded disciple; he can stand it no longer, but with a swaggering oath he hurls back the shameless falsehood, “I know not the man!” Just then the second crowing’of the cock sounds through the early air of dawn. Just then, too, the eye of the Master, who had heard the shocking oath, falls on him and pierces his heart like an arrow. Ah, Peter, methinks that the sifter has found nothing in thee now but chaff and husks! Stop — stop — the sifting is not done with yefc. The difference between a bent tree and a broken tree is that the one springs back to its place when the pi’essure is removed, y)ut the other never rises from the dust. Peter’ s faith is a bent faith, not a broken one: for no sooner does the cock-crow smite upon his ear, and the upbraiding look of his Master pierce his soul, than he hurries off in an honest outgush of blinding tears. Out into the silent street he goes, not to hide his sin, like Judas, with the rope of a suicide, but to “weep bitterly” the tears that burst from a jDenitent heart. Those moments of keen anguish are the crucial moments of the apostle’s life. Those moments of sincere repentance are the answer to Christ’s intercessional prayer for his recreant disciple; the “faith” that shamefully bent did not snap; and out from that awful experience lie issues — a reconverted man! The seeming gravel lias become granite again. Peter’s thrice-repeated denial of his Lord is soon followed by the thrice-repeated assurance, “Lord, thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.” That baptism of bitter tears was the needed baptism for his apostleship; the Holy Spirit was behind it all. A far stronger man to endure persecutions, to sympathize with the tempted and to stablish weak brethren, was Simon Peter after that melancholy fall and that merciful reconversion.
What is the precise signification of this word? Certainly it is not the synonym of regeneration; for they are entirely different processes. Regeneration is the creation of a new life in the soul by the direct agency of the Holy Spirit. Conversion is the change of course, and of conduct which follows this regenerating work. No sinner ever “faces about” and turns back to that God from whom he is wandering except lie be wrought upon by the Almighty Spirit. ‘’Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God; “but the Bible gives no hint of any second, or third, or fourth new birth of the soul. We recognize no such process in our spiritual experience. Reconversion is not a second regeneration. It is simply the return of a backsliding believer to that God from whom he has wandered. Peter’s “faith”
did not depart from him in that sad and shameful hour of his cowardly denial of the Lord. Nor does any genuine Christian lose his religious character entirely during a season of spiritual declension. He is not a healthy man, nor’ a happy man; but he is still alive. As we, who have been rescued from a snowdrift and thoroughly benumbed with cold, will come to again before a fire, so a frozen backslider may thaw out and recover under the warmth of Christ’s restoring grace. It is a terrible process to go through, and a terrible risk to run. Let no member of Christ’s flock tempt his or her Saviour by trying the ierilous step. Peter would j)robably have ended just where Judas ended, had not the one been a genuine Christian and the other an impostor. Jesus prayed for Peter that his “faith might not fail” entirely; and but for that timely intercession of his Master he could not have come out of that disgraceful night a reconverted man.
The x)rocess through which the apostle passed during his recovery was partially similar to the process of his original conversion. There was repentance, deep, pungent, and sincere. There was a faith in Christ exercised anew. The sorrow of his bitter contrition was intensified by the recollection of his former condition as the trusted disciple, and also of his recent ignominious fall. Now, as conversion is made up of repentance, faith, and new obedience to God
SO Peter’s case was, in every sense, a reconversion. It was a turning to Christ; and it differed from a first conversion in two particulars, viz., the point set out from was a different point, and the distance traveledover was vastlyless.
Perhaps there may be before me more than one who is now in a most pitiable condition of backsliding from Christ. Like an apple tree in midwinter, your roots may be still alive under all the biting cold; but there are no fruits of the Spirit now on your bare branches. As you have sinned like Peter, you must repent like Peter, however bitter the tears it may cost you. Dr. J. Addison Alexander has justly said, in one of his masterly discourses, that ^’backsliders often, use palliative remedies, or rest on bygone experiences. What they really need is to be re-converted, to repent afresh, and to do their first works.”
A recovery from backsliding — through the tender mercies of a pardoning Saviour — should be followed by a renewed consecration to His service. “When thou hast turned ngnin,” said Jesus to His erring disci ile, “stablisli thy brethren.^’’ The discovered weakness of a Christian — when sincerely repented of — ought to make him not only the stronger, but the strengthener of others. There is not only an increased ability, but there ought to be an increased obligation to perform this salutary office. The man who has once fallen under strong temptation, and has been mercifully lifted up by the divine arm, should not only walk more carefully; he should use his experience for the warning of others. He knows now the danger of relying on his own arm; and knows, also, how “evil and bitter a thing it is to depart from the living God.” He has learned the difficulties of a recovery to the position whence he had slipped away. His experience ought to make him a valuable helper to others — however dearly bought that experience has been to himself. David’s wretched fall into sin called forth that piercing cry, “O God, renew a right spirit within me; restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free spirit! “. That fifty-first Psalm — wrung out of a broken heart — has been of infinite value to God’s iieople; if its beacon light warns against the terrible danger of sin, it also illumines the pathway of penitence and recovery.
A presumptuous Alpine climber — anxious to find a shorter path over one of the ghiciers — quits his guide and his companions, and sallies off to be a guide unto himself. The shout of bravado, which he sends back to his companions, marks his confidence in his own sagacity and pluck. He laughs at their fears — while they are laughing at his folly. A snowdrift lies across his path, soft as eider-down; and with headlong eagerness he plunges into it. In an instant he disapx)ears from view; and the ring of the icicles in the depths of the crevasse is the last sound that strikes upon his ears as he ilunges — senseless, bruised, and mangled — into the ice cavern that yawns to receive him! Slowly, and as from a frightful “dream when one awake th,” he comes to himself. He is alive, and that is all. There is life even in the broken arm that hangs useless at his side. To ascend the perpendicular wall of the crevasse is impossible. If he remains where he is, he will soon freeze into an ice mummy within that awful sepulcher. As he listens for some sound, he faintly hears the musical tinkle of drij)ping water; and as he creeps slowly toward it he hears a running strearii. It is pitch dark; but he gropes his way through the channel of the stream until he discovers a slight gleam on the ice walls of the aperture before him. He hails it as the dawn of ho]3e. It telegraphs to him escape and possible salvation. Onward he struggles, with broken bones, but with unbroken faith, until at last he issues forth at the base of the glacier into sunshine and safety! Although terribly bruised, he is a saved man; and is so saved as to be abler to save others from the presumptions of sin that had well-nigh been his owji destruction. How ready he is to warn others from that treacherous crevasse, and perhaps he puts up a finger-board of caution to turn many other climbers who might be as rashly venturous as himself! How careful he will evermore be to follow only a trusty guide when scaling the dizzy and dangerous heights! Saved himself from the jaws of death, he strives to save others from a course as rash and reckless as that which had cost him so dearly.
This Alpine parable may illustrate for you the peculiar service which every restored backslider may render to his fellows-disciples. To him the places of spiritual danger are distinctly marked, and he may the more readily point them out. To him the sorrow and the suffering of a fall into sin are palpable and painful; and the joy of recovery by the divine grace is like life from the tomb. When my beloved friend Gough warned his fellow-men against the treacherous chasm into which strong drink betrays its victims, it was with the thrilling eloquence of one who had himself been dragged up wounded and mangled from the abyss! Whoso thinketh that he standeth, let him take heed lest he fall. If poor Peter sinned grievously, he most grandly repented, and fought on grandly, too, for his Master, until the crown of a holy martyrdom was worn. His thrice repeated denial in his hour of weakness was followed by the thrice repeated avowal in his hour of renewed strength. “Thou knowest, Lord, that I love thee!” Reconverted himself, he was able to stablish his weaker brethren by his faithful warnings against temptation, and by the granite-like firmness of his owai example. My friend, has divine love stretched out its arm and rescued thee from the horrible pit, and set thy feet upon the rock? Then walk carefully and watch unto prayer. Sympathize with those who, through the weakness of their faith or the strength of the temj)ter’s assaults, have fallen from their first estate; and reconverted thyself, do thy utmost — with God’s help — to stablish thy brethren.
‘’ Man-like is it to fall into sin,
Fiend-like is it to dwell therein,
Saint-like is it for sin to grieve,
Christ-like is it all sin to leave.”