Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter.
Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band. He skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal.
Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward. In the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things.
Peter was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion.
Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honored names in the church and in the world.
Judas is a villain, Peter is a saint. Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.
Thanks to Eugene Petersen and Tim Kimmel
My Commentary:
Among the apostles, the world would have picked the wrong hero.
By every outward measure, Judas Iscariot looked like a success story. He understood money. He knew how power worked. He maneuvered himself into influence and control. These are the very traits our culture still admires — competence, leverage, and the ability to shape outcomes to one’s advantage.
Saint Peter, on the other hand, embodied the kind of failure we fear most. He spoke when he should have been silent. He folded under pressure. When courage was required, he denied even knowing Jesus. He was awkward, impulsive, and unreliable — the last person we would choose in a crisis.
Yet time reveals what appearances conceal. Judas’s “success” hollowed him out and ended in despair. Peter’s failure, honestly faced and forgiven, became the soil of transformation. What mattered most was not competence but repentance, not strength but humility, not control but love.
The tragedy is that the world still runs after Judas’s version of success while trying desperately to avoid Peter’s kind of failure. But in the economy of God, failure that leads to grace is far more fruitful than success that leads to betrayal.
Of the people with power today, who will turn out to be Judas 100 years from today?
Of the people without power today, who will turn out to be St. Peter 100 years from today?
God does not redeem polish and power.
God redeems broken hearts that are willing to begin again.
Whom do YOU recognize to be the Judas’s and the Peters in our world today?
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