In Peter’s unique experience we find a model for facing our deepest failures. His example teaches us that we ought not to run from or ignore our collapses, since they are actually opportunities to repent of self-sufficiency and to depend on God’s grace—to show that we are weak but that He is strong.

From a literary perspective, one of the unique aspects of the New Testament is its frank portrayal of the phenomenal failures of many of its authors and main subjects. This is nowhere more apparent than in the lives of the twelve disciples, and one of the clearest examples is in Peter’s denials of Jesus.
The Bible is not a touched-up document designed to make its human authors look good—and that’s because God is its true Author, its ultimate Subject. And God has a purpose in telling the story the way He did: to reveal Himself as a God of grace. Scripture tells us of the failures of the saints to encourage us—because we will surely fail too. It reminds us that even in our failures, God forgives, and God restores.
As we consider Peter’s failure as recorded in the Gospel accounts, we ought to face our own failures that haven’t yet been dealt with and take the opportunity to bring them before God. If we acknowledge them and repent, God will sanctify us through them and draw us nearer to Him in deeper dependence. There, we’ll have opportunity to realize that if dependence is God’s goal, then weakness is to our advantage.
Peter Follows
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. (Luke 22:54–55)
In the Gospels, we often see Peter bouncing between faith and failure. He is the type to take one bold step forward and then two steps back. Earlier on, he had stepped onto the waves with Jesus, but then he had sunk when he’d seen the wind (Matt. 14:28–31). He had confessed that Jesus was the Christ (Matt. 16:15–16), but then he had received a severe rebuke for audaciously resisting God’s plan (Matt 16:21–23). It was Peter who had defended Jesus with a sword in the garden of Gethsemane—before Jesus had commanded him to stop (John 18:10–11). Now, though all the other disciples had “left him and fled” (Mark 14:50), Peter stepped forward, setting himself apart from the others by “following at a distance.”
There was a measure of bravery and bravado in this. Peter had told Jesus, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death” (Luke 22:33). Now he was making his effort to do so. Perhaps he was motivated by a measure of curiosity—a need to “see the end” (Matt. 26:58) to which His Master would come. There was likely also a measure of loyalty, as Peter had expressed before: “Even though they all fall away, I will not” (Mark 14:29). And there was almost certainly a measure of love. Peter couldn’t leave Jesus now. He couldn’t desert Him absolutely. He loved Jesus so much that he put himself in a place of considerable risk. He seemed to be the bravest of all of them in that evening hour.
And yet, nevertheless, it is at this point that Peter crumbled.
Peter Fails
Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:56–62)
Confronted in the courtyard, Peter denied Jesus—not just once but three times. Jesus had predicted this would happen, and Peter had assured the Lord he would never do such a thing (Luke 22:34). How are we to explain such a collapse?
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Setting an appointment with our pastor, Bob, she limped into his office on her mangled right foot (while her damaged left leg bore the brunt.) As she sat quietly in his study, he stated, “Gracie, this room is off-limits to every other voice telling you what to do. My job is to help quieten the noise so you can hear your own thoughts – and God’s leading.”

“We’ve done everything possible to save this leg, all that’s left is amputation. When you’re ready, we’ll have that conversation.”
Those words came from my wife’s surgeon, following numerous operations to save her right leg – crushed and disfigured in her 1983 car accident. Everyone in Gracie’s life, including me, had an opinion about this – and Gracie understandably struggled mightily during this time.
The clamor of opinions combined with our self-doubts and fears created a “wall of noise” that felt like a stack of Marshall amps at a Van Halen concert – and, sadly, Gracie found herself amid a storm of speculation by family and friends. At twenty-five, with a toddler, her young heart felt the awful dread of having to look her surgeon in the eye and instruct him to amputate her right leg.
Setting an appointment with our pastor, Bob, she limped into his office on her mangled right foot (while her damaged left leg bore the brunt.) As she sat quietly in his study, he stated, “Gracie, this room is off-limits to every other voice telling you what to do. My job is to help quieten the noise so you can hear your own thoughts – and God’s leading.”
Gracie pondered for over an hour while Pastor Bob sat at his desk – no words passed between them. Finally, Gracie looked up with tear-filled eyes and said, “I’m terrified of doing this,” she whispered. Gaining strength, she continued, “But I can’t live this way any longer – it’s got to come off.”
Nodding somberly, he assured Gracie he’d be with her through the ordeal and kept his word.
Sometimes, the greatest gift we can give to others struggling with heartbreaking decisions is to clear the room, quieten the noise, and sit with them. Scripture reveals God’s explanations are rare, but His presence is constant. Pastor Bob allowed Gracie the stillness and time to be alone with her thoughts, but God assures us that even in our lonely hearts, He is always with us.
More than one hundred years ago, Pastor Cleland McAfee felt rocked when both his nieces died in the same week from diphtheria. Pastor McAfee labored over how to address this terrible grief that washed over the entire community. Working on his sermon, he wrote what would become one of the most beloved hymns in the world. On Saturday evening, the choir assembled and gathered outside his brother’s home and quietly sang the hymn to the distressed family.
There is a place of quiet restNear to the heart of GodA place where sin cannot molestNear to the heart of God. 
Pastor Bob modeled what that hymn affirms.
Gracie later stated, “I didn’t know what was on the other side of that operating room door – but I knew who waited for me there.”
That confidence came from her sitting quietly – near to the heart of God.
Gracie repeated the scenario four years later when she relinquished her remaining leg. I watched nurses push her from recovery to the ICU when she awoke. Lying on the gurney, she lifted her hands and sang the Doxology.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;Praise Him, all creatures here below;Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
The responsibility – and privilege – of pastors is to help quieten the room for others with terrible challenges and heartache. It’s in those quiet places, near the heart of God, that we gain the strength and resolve to trust Him with the anguish – while praising Him in the unimaginable.
Peter Rosenberger hosts the nationally syndicated radio program, Hope for the Caregiver. He’s served as his wife’s caregiver for nearly forty years. His newest book is A Minute For Caregivers.

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Do you struggle with guilt? Do you sometimes wonder how God could possibly love such a wretched sinner as you? Do you ever get depressed because you feel as though you don’t “measure up”?
Many Christians wrestle with these feelings, even though they started their spiritual journey by acknowledging that all their sins are forgiven through Jesus’ sacrificial death. We learn this key truth from such passages as 1 Peter 2:24 (“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”) and from Isaiah 53:

But he was pierced for our transgressions;he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,and with his wounds we are healed. (Isa. 53:5)

While these verses explain how can we be reconciled to God even though we are sinners who fail to keep his law, how does God remove the burden of depressing guilt over our sin?
Believers are declared righteous in Christ.
The answer is that rather than making us holy and sinless persons, God declares us righteous based not on our works but instead on what Christ did for us. In other words, it is not our works that remove our guilt and save us. Instead, it is what Christ did—that is, the work he did for us in both his life and death. Our receiving and benefiting from the work of Jesus for our salvation is often referred to by the term “imputation,” a word that describes the act of assigning or attributing something to someone else.
Understanding the word imputation is essential to resting in Christ.
We find three areas of imputation in the Bible, and understanding each of them helps us not to worry about whether we have enough righteousness for God to be pleased with us or whether we are truly saved.

Imputation #1: Adam’s first sin is imputed (credited or counted) to all his posterity—as described at length in Romans 5: We “all sinned” when Adam did, and thus, “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (vv. 12-19). The theologian John Murray is helpful here, explaining how the Greek word for “made” (kathestemi) is better translated as “constituted,” meaning that we “were placed in the category of sinners.” [1]

Imputation #2: In this case, our sins are imputed to Christ, and he suffers the penalty due for sin in our place. Thus, the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,” fulfilling Isaiah’s earlier words: “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). Since Christ has been “offered once to bear the sins of many” (Heb. 9:28), we no longer need to fear God’s wrath for our failures and transgressions.

Imputation #3: Jesus’ perfect obedience and righteousness are imputed to all believers in Christ, so that we stand before the Father, not merely forgiven for our sins, but also bearing the spotless perfection of Christ’s lifelong obedience—as though we ourselves had also lived that flawless and exemplary life (Rom. 5:17-19; 3:21-24; 10:5-13).

This crucial third imputation listed above regarding Christ’s righteousness is stressed in several passages of Scripture. In Romans 5:19, right after indicating that we were “made sinners” in Adam, Paul concludes that in the same way, “many will be made righteous” (now placed in the category of the righteous) by “the one man’s obedience.” Similarly, Isaiah 53:11 declares, “By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.” And 2 Corinthians 5:21 links the two imputations in one glorious verse: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Imputation is an important core doctrine of the historical church.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, a summary of Christian doctrine written in the seventeenth-century, stressed the importance of the doctrine of imputation in its chapter on justification.
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