Why would Peter deny Jesus? The easy answer, of course, is that he was afraid, but why? According to the account in John’s gospel, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus:
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)
Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” (John 18:10-12)
Peter was willing to risk his life and fight for his Lord. And yet, shortly after Jesus was arrested, we read:
Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the servant girl on duty there and brought Peter in.
“You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” she asked Peter.
He replied, “I am not.”
(John 18:15-17)
Within no more than a few minutes Peter has gone from risking his life for Christ to denying that he is a disciple at all. The only thing that happened in between was that Jesus surrendered to the soldiers. This was not what the Messiah was supposed to do. Peter had been willing to fight, and if necessary, to die, for Jesus; the discovery that Jesus was not willing to fight for himself must have felt like a betrayal.
Neither Peter nor any of the other disciples understood God’s plan. How could they? “I’m going to let the government kill me, and then I’m going to rise from the dead” is not a plan any sane person would come up with. Jesus’ behavior at this point, and throughout his trial, had to have been utterly inexplicable.
The good news is that Peter’s failure wasn’t final. Jesus forgave him and brought him back into fellowship, and at Pentecost, it was Peter who fearlessly proclaimed Christ’s resurrection to the very same crowd that had called for his crucifixion.
Peter’s faith was strong only as long as he understood what was happening, or thought he did. He trusted the plan, which is to say, his interpretation of the Scriptures about the Messiah, rather than trusting God. When the plan he believed God was following failed, he was lost.
That’s the problem with trusting God’s plan. Whenever I think I’m doing that, what I’m actually doing is trusting my own understanding of God’s plan. But what happens when events don’t unfold the way they’re supposed to? Whether it’s my own future, the role of Middle Eastern nations in Bible prophecy, or anything else, am I trusting what I think is supposed to happen? Or am I trusting God, who sometimes works in surprising and totally unexpected ways, just as he did in this instance?
Mature Christians sometimes warn, in regard to God’s gifts, that we must not seek the gift, but rather the Giver. But I think that we can equally say that we are not to trust the plan, we are to trust the Planner. When everything goes off the rails, when Jesus does not return forty years after Israel declares independence, when the person I expect to spend my life with marries someone else, when the Messiah surrenders to the very soldiers he was supposed to defeat, when what I was firmly convinced was God’s plan turns out not to be his plan at all, will I still trust him? If I’m trusting what I understand of the plan, that plan will always, eventually, fail. The Planner never fails.
You don’t have much choice but to trust God, not His plan. You can’t be entirely sure you know whag the plan is, just what He told you to do.