When Failure Isn't Final

Transcribed Extract: TRUSTING HIS AUTHORITY IN OUR LIVES
There’s an emphasis here on the power and authority of Jesus. When he says, “If it be my will…” he’s not speaking in vague potential language. “Just supposing it was my will that he should remain…” But rather he is saying, “I have something in mind for his life. I have willed what’s going to happen to this man.” Jesus’ will and God’s will are co-extensive. We see a change, by the way, in the way Jesus speaks to his disciples, post-resurrection, from the way in which he speaks to them before. Now there is almost no hint of the humanity element. Now in his glorified body, it’s as if the humanity and his deity are so fully glorified together that he does not hesitate to speak as God. And here he speaks as God and with God’s will. No longer the humble servant, now the Lord of Glory. And even in his humanity, emphasizing that he is the one who has planned out the lives of his people. He says it without apology, without explanation, without amplification. He says it as if they should know by now, after these weeks they have spent with him in his resurrection state, that he is God and that he is the Lord. “My Lord and my God,” as Thomas had said. He knows the end from the beginning, because he planned the end from the beginning. And so what he does to Peter is, he rebukes Peter’s futile speculation, as to the will of God. Yes, he had told Peter that he would die, in order to prove to us that his will is the will of God. He doesn’t tell John what’s going to happen to him, and he doesn’t tell us what’s going to happen to us in order that we might trust him.