The Twelve Apostles

139:2.1When Si­mon joined the apos­tles, he was thirty years of age. He was mar­ried, had three chil­dren, and lived at Beth­saida, near Ca­per­naum. His brother, An­drew, and his wife’s mother lived with him. Both Pe­ter and An­drew were fisher part­ners of the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

139:2.2The Mas­ter had known Si­mon for some time be­fore An­drew pre­sented him as the sec­ond of the apos­tles. When Je­sus gave Si­mon the name Pe­ter, he did it with a smile; it was to be a sort of nick­name. Si­mon was well known to all his friends as an er­ratic and im­pul­sive fel­low. True, later on, Je­sus did at­tach a new and sig­nif­i­cant im­port to this lightly be­stowed nick­name.

139:2.3Si­mon Pe­ter was a man of im­pulse, an op­ti­mist. He had grown up per­mit­ting him­self freely to in­dulge strong feel­ings; he was con­stantly get­ting into dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause he per­sisted in speak­ing with­out think­ing. This sort of thought­less­ness also made in­ces­sant trou­ble for all of his friends and as­so­ciates and was the cause of his re­ceiv­ing many mild re­bukes from his Mas­ter. The only rea­son Pe­ter did not get into more trou­ble be­cause of his thought­less speak­ing was that he very early learned to talk over many of his plans and schemes with his brother, An­drew, be­fore he ven­tured to make pub­lic pro­pos­als.

139:2.4Pe­ter was a flu­ent speaker, elo­quent and dra­matic. He was also a nat­u­ral and in­spi­ra­tional leader of men, a quick thinker but not a deep rea­soner. He asked many ques­tions, more than all the apos­tles put to­gether, and while the ma­jor­ity of these ques­tions were good and rel­e­vant, many of them were thought­less and fool­ish. Pe­ter did not have a deep mind, but he knew his mind fairly well. He was there­fore a man of quick de­ci­sion and sud­den ac­tion. While oth­ers talked in their as­ton­ish­ment at see­ing Je­sus on the beach, Pe­ter jumped in and swam ashore to meet the Mas­ter.

139:2.5The one trait which Pe­ter most ad­mired in Je­sus was his su­per­nal ten­der­ness. Pe­ter never grew weary of con­tem­plat­ing Je­sus’ for­bear­ance. He never for­got the les­son about for­giv­ing the wrong­doer, not only seven times but sev­enty times and seven. He thought much about these im­pres­sions of the Mas­ter’s for­giv­ing char­ac­ter dur­ing those dark and dis­mal days im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing his thought­less and un­in­tended de­nial of Je­sus in the high priest’s court­yard.

139:2.6Si­mon Pe­ter was dis­tress­ingly vac­il­lat­ing; he would sud­denly swing from one ex­treme to the other. First he re­fused to let Je­sus wash his feet and then, on hear­ing the Mas­ter’s re­ply, begged to be washed all over. But, af­ter all, Je­sus knew that Pe­ter’s faults were of the head and not of the heart. He was one of the most in­ex­pli­ca­ble com­bi­na­tions of cour­age and cow­ardice that ever lived on earth. His great strength of char­ac­ter was loy­alty, friend­ship. Pe­ter re­ally and truly loved Je­sus. And yet de­spite this tow­er­ing strength of de­vo­tion he was so un­sta­ble and in­con­stant that he per­mit­ted a ser­vant girl to tease him into deny­ing his Lord and Mas­ter. Pe­ter could with­stand per­se­cu­tion and any other form of di­rect as­sault, but he with­ered and shrank be­fore ridicule. He was a brave sol­dier when fac­ing a frontal at­tack, but he was a fear-cring­ing cow­ard when sur­prised with an as­sault from the rear.

139:2.7Pe­ter was the first of Je­sus’ apos­tles to come for­ward to de­fend the work of Philip among the Samar­i­tans and Paul among the gen­tiles; yet later on at An­ti­och he re­versed him­self when con­fronted by ridi­cul­ing Ju­daiz­ers, tem­porar­ily with­draw­ing from the gen­tiles only to bring down upon his head the fear­less de­nun­ci­a­tion of Paul.

139:2.8He was the first one of the apos­tles to make whole­hearted con­fes­sion of Je­sus’ com­bined hu­man­ity and di­vin­ity and the first—save Ju­das—to deny him. Pe­ter was not so much of a dreamer, but he dis­liked to de­scend from the clouds of ec­stasy and the en­thu­si­asm of dra­matic in­dul­gence to the plain and mat­ter-of-fact world of re­al­ity.

139:2.9In fol­low­ing Je­sus, lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively, he was ei­ther lead­ing the pro­ces­sion or else trail­ing be­hind—“fol­low­ing afar off.” But he was the out­stand­ing preacher of the twelve; he did more than any other one man, aside from Paul, to es­tab­lish the king­dom and send its mes­sen­gers to the four cor­ners of the earth in one gen­er­a­tion.

139:2.10Af­ter his rash de­nials of the Mas­ter he found him­self, and with An­drew’s sym­pa­thetic and un­der­stand­ing guid­ance he again led the way back to the fish nets while the apos­tles tar­ried to find out what was to hap­pen af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. When he was fully as­sured that Je­sus had for­given him and knew he had been re­ceived back into the Mas­ter’s fold, the fires of the king­dom burned so brightly within his soul that he be­came a great and sav­ing light to thou­sands who sat in dark­ness.

139:2.11Af­ter leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem and be­fore Paul be­came the lead­ing spirit among the gen­tile Chris­tian churches, Pe­ter trav­eled ex­ten­sively, vis­it­ing all the churches from Baby­lon to Corinth. He even vis­ited and min­is­tered to many of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Al­though Pe­ter and Paul dif­fered much in tem­per­a­ment and ed­u­ca­tion, even in the­ol­ogy, they worked to­gether har­mo­niously for the up­build­ing of the churches dur­ing their later years.

139:2.12Some­thing of Pe­ter’s style and teach­ing is shown in the ser­mons par­tially re­corded by Luke and in the Gospel of Mark. His vig­or­ous style was bet­ter shown in his let­ter known as the First Epis­tle of Pe­ter; at least this was true be­fore it was sub­se­quently al­tered by a dis­ci­ple of Paul.

139:2.13But Pe­ter per­sisted in mak­ing the mis­take of try­ing to con­vince the Jews that Je­sus was, af­ter all, re­ally and truly the Jew­ish Mes­siah. Right up to the day of his death, Si­mon Pe­ter con­tin­ued to suf­fer con­fu­sion in his mind be­tween the con­cepts of Je­sus as the Jew­ish Mes­siah, Christ as the world’s re­deemer, and the Son of Man as the rev­e­la­tion of God, the lov­ing Fa­ther of all man­kind.

139:2.14Pe­ter’s wife was a very able woman. For years she la­bored ac­cept­ably as a mem­ber of the women’s corps, and when Pe­ter was driven out of Je­ru­sa­lem, she ac­com­pa­nied him upon all his jour­neys to the churches as well as on all his mis­sion­ary ex­cur­sions. And the day her il­lus­tri­ous hus­band yielded up his life, she was thrown to the wild beasts in the arena at Rome.

139:2.15And so this man Pe­ter, an in­ti­mate of Je­sus, one of the in­ner cir­cle, went forth from Je­ru­sa­lem pro­claim­ing the glad tid­ings of the king­dom with power and glory un­til the full­ness of his min­istry had been ac­com­plished; and he re­garded him­self as the re­cip­i­ent of high hon­ors when his cap­tors in­formed him that he must die as his Mas­ter had died—on the cross. And thus was Si­mon Pe­ter cru­ci­fied in Rome.