What did Jesus say about failure?
Jesus put the man who publicly denied knowing him in charge. That is the clearest thing he ever said about failure, and he said it with an action rather than a sentence. Failure in the gospels is repeatedly the beginning of someone's usefulness rather than the end of it, and he seems to prefer working with people who have been undone.
What Jesus said
Peter is the case study. He is confident, loud, and certain he will never abandon Jesus. Jesus tells him in advance that he will deny him three times before morning. He does exactly that, and then goes outside and weeps.
What happens next is the part worth sitting with. In John 21, over breakfast on a beach, Jesus asks him three times whether he loves him, and three times gives him something to do. Feed my sheep. The failure is not ignored and it is not held over him. It is absorbed into the assignment.
The same pattern shows up in who he calls in the first place. Not the credentialed, not the impressive. Fishermen, a tax collector working for the occupying power, a zealot who would ordinarily have wanted that tax collector dead.
And in the parable of the son who takes his inheritance and wastes it, the father is not waiting with conditions. He is watching the road, and he runs, which was undignified for a man his age. The son has a speech prepared. He does not get to finish it.
The hard part
Jesus does tell Peter, in the same breath as the restoration, that following him will eventually cost his life. Being restored after failure in the gospels is not a return to safety. It comes with a job, and the job is harder than the thing he failed at the first time.
What this looks like today
- •Say what actually happened, plainly, once. Peter wept, and then he ate breakfast. Neither denial nor endless self punishment.
- •Accept the next assignment rather than waiting until you feel qualified again. Jesus reinstated Peter by giving him work.
- •Watch who you write off. He built the whole thing out of people with public failures on their record.
Luke 22:54-62, John 21:15-19, Luke 15:11-32, Mark 2:13-17
Go deeper: this comes up in the 40 days