“Jesus explained to Peter why and how he would be saved, and this explanation must have been an anchor to his soul that dark Jerusalem night. Peter was saved because Jesus prayed for him.
In other words, Peter’s salvation was guaranteed not by what was done in him but by what Jesus did for him.
There is a message there for all of us: Our security doesn’t lie in ourselves.
It doesn’t even lie in what God has done in us, wonderful though that is.
It lies in Jesus and His intercession for us.
Remember what Hebrews says: “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
Peter was learning a great lesson that we need to learn too.
It’s not by our regeneration that we are preserved.
It’s not even by our faith that we are preserved, though the power of God that keeps us does work through faith.
It’s Christ who saves us- the Christ who died for us, who rose again for us, who is at God’s right hand for us, who makes intercession for us.
That is why nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that is why we can sing the hymn by Charitie Bancroft:
When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see him there,
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the just, is satisfied
To look on him and pardon me.
That is Jesus’ intercession for us. His very presence before God, the Lion-King who became the Lamb who was slain-that is the intercession we need.
Remember that if you’ve stumbled and fallen.
Look to Him, and you will live.”
–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 130-131.
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