What I can't convey to someone who hasn't been there is the deep and abiding sense of failure that comes from this. "Sharing Christ" is the end all be all of Evangelical existence. I have literally been told that this is the only reason why God doesn't kill Christians as soon as they are spiritually born. Which, to me, always came across as, "You are such a failure that you should be dead." It is actually worse than that though. From the very mouth of Christ comes my complete condemnation,
"Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven." Matthew 10
Can it be any worse than that? My destiny is literally in my epicly unreliable hands. There can't be any evasions, any excuses, nothing can mitigate the stark condemnation offered to all who fail to confess Christ. There can be little doubt that Christ will deny me before His Father, just like He did Peter.
Peter said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble, yet I will not be.” Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” But he spoke more vehemently, “If I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” Mark 14
The story of Peter's denial of Christ is too well known to need me to go through it in detail. Now, some might say that Peter only denied Christ in a time of great testing and later confessed Christ and that that wiped out his failure. I don't think that that is the way Scripture works but it doesn't matter, because at the end of His career we see the dog returning to his vomit.
Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, Galatians 2
Peter was playing the hypocrite and "not being straightforward about the truth of the gospel", exactly what I do. He denied the Gospel, which is the denial of Christ and quite possibly the unforgivable sin, not once but as Paul makes clear, he had a pattern of denial.
Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. John 17
But, and this is a big but, the words above were unquestionably said about Simon Peter. The New Testament is literally brimming with proof that the "Rock" on which the Church is built was not denied by Christ. Do we try and minimize the force of Christ's words about denying Him? If we are stuck with the notion that everything preached by Christ or His Apostles is the Gospel then the contradiction is unsolvable. But wait, we know that not everything Christ preaches is the Gospel. We know that the Father only interacts with the creation through the Son, the Word. And that means that every time the Law has been declared it came straight from Christ. We know that He does not change, so if He ever preaches the Law, He always preaches the Law.(which also means that if He ever preaches the Gospel, He always preaches the Gospel) The Law and the Gospel then are not sequential phases in God's plan. They can't be if He is eternal and unchanging. What then is the relationship between Law and Gospel? Let's contrast them a little to see.
The Law is the way of Sacrifice. It is the way of trading up, of giving something up to get something better. It is giving up a goat to get God's favor. It is giving up lusting after other women to get my wife's favor. It is giving up the temporal to gain the eternal, giving up the world to gain your soul. It is just good sense. We do this in everything not just spiritual things. The Law is good business, and tons of preachers make a good living off of it. The Law makes sense. The Law works. If you do it you will live. If you do it not, well it won't be good. And this is almost literally what Christ says in Matthew 10. All we have done is replace "works of the Law" with "confessing Christ". The whole structure is the same just a different paint job.
The Gospel on the other hand is foolish. It is the way of trading down, of giving something up to get something worth far less. It is giving up the God on the Cross, the only God worth worshipping, for my white trash ass. It is giving up the Eternal to gain what? An opportunity to pour out grace on garbage. Pretty exciting stuff. It doesn't make any sense at all. There has never been a business run on grace. Free is just a word used to make a sale. If you really start giving things away you will be shutting up shop in short order. And every one who has ever preached it has been a joke, a clown, a fool, generally a poor fool-the worst kind, and if he preached it very much it cost him everything he had. You can't live by the Gospel. It is only for those who are already doomed. It is for the Unfaithful Steward who has already lost his job so he figures he might as well go out in style, gracious style. The whole Law can be summed up by saying that Peter denied Christ. The whole Gospel can be summed up by saying that Christ didn't deny Peter. Law and Gospel then live side by side, especially in our heads. The one condemns us for our actions, the other blesses us because of Christ's actions. So we finally have some Good News that is actually good.
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