Peter At The Last Supper - The Guilt Of His Betrayal Of His Own Best Self

https://waysofbeingchristian.com/ ^ | 17th April, 2025, American time | Ozguy1945

[Ozguy1945]

Peter, an individual, betrayed Jesus, by denying knowing him three times, and thereby betrayed the group of individuals to which he belonged. His own conscience troubled Peter very deeply.

Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem, is also about betrayal. But it is the betrayal of the human rights of an individual denied his basic right to food by an unjust society.

The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built.

For me the fusion of these two different types of betrayal is very beautiful.

Perhaps a strange universality but it works for me.

But maybe in a world where there are so many more people than were alive 2 millennia ago, there was more individual freedom, and less betrayal of individuals by groups than happens now.

Something to think about.

And thinking is what living in The Word is all about for me.

[Big Red Badger]

Waltzing Matilde...
Having visited the Gold Coast many times the Lyrics escape me.

[cdcdawg]

“Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem” and a 4 chord song!

[Beowulf9]

Well, supposedly this is the interpretation.

https://trishansoz.com/trishansoz/waltzing-matilda/waltz.html

[Zuriel]

**The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built.**

Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. Peter said so himself.

As far as Peter’s denial: all of the Lord’s handpicked disciples said they would never leave him, yet they all skidaddled when Jesus was arrested (fulfilling prophecy). When the Lord told a fiesty Peter to put his sword away, that is when Peter became afraid.

What changed Peter into the fearless servant we read of in Acts: the Holy Ghost infilling.

[Beowulf9]

You know in reading the meaning of that song, Waltzing Matilde, I don’t think the comparison to Peter is a good comparison.

The swagman really broke the law in stealing a sheep to kill and eat. It wasn’t his to do that too. Jesus instructed his disciples to keep Caesars law and that mean follow the laws. This was an example of breaking a law. Peter would not have been a lawbreaker by diligence to the Lord Jesus admonitions. He would not steal a sheep. He would know that was wrong.

I personally don’t see the act of betrayal here either. In the days of Jesus if one was without food the law allowed the ones who had none to glean for themselves in the fields after they had already been gone through by the farmers and so this comparison that he was denied his basic right to food by an unjust society is not accurate.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6704-gleaning-of-the-fields. There was always some left.

Also, the swagman jumped in the water to escape arrest and accidently drowned. He did not commit suicide but he was guilty of the crime of stealing. Peter was no thief.

Peter would never commit suicide because it was thought as killing oneself and a great sin against God who gave the gift of life to one.

Just my personal opinion. The comparison does not work for me.

[Larry Lucido]

Betrayal Of His Own Best Self

Are you Joel Osteen?

[sauropod]

.

[daniel1212]

Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built.

No, the Peter was not the rock upon which the Christian church was built. The "this" in "this Rock" refers to the Divine Son of the Living God whom Peter confessed, under Divine inspiration, by faith in which Rock the church has its members (1Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13) and overcomes the gates of Hell, rescuing sinners. "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1Jn, 5:5; cf (1Jn. 2:13,14,25)

Thus, in contrast to Peter (“petros”), that the LORD Jesus is the Rock (“petra”) or "stone" (“lithos,” and which denotes a large rock in Mk. 16:4) upon which the church is built is one of the most abundantly confirmed doctrines in the Bible (petra: Rm. 9:33; 1Cor. 10:4; 1Pet. 2:8; cf. Lk. 6:48; 1Cor. 3:11; lithos: Mat. 21:42; Mk.12:10-11; Lk. 20:17-18; Act. 4:11; Rm. 9:33; Eph. 2:20; cf. Dt. 32:4, Is. 28:16) including by Peter himself. (1Pt. 2:4-8) Rome's current catechism attempts to have Peter himself as the rock as well, but also affirms: “On the rock of this faith confessed by St Peter, Christ build his Church,” (pt. 1, sec. 2, cp. 2, para. 424) which understanding some of the so-called “church fathers” concur with.)

While men can argue about the significance of the difference between the Greek (the language the Holy Spirit chose to express the New Testament revelation in) words “Petros” (Peter, or stone in Jn. 1:42) and “petra” (rock) in Mt. 16:18, and what the LORD might have said in Aramaic (one can follow an examination here on that), among other things, I see the phrase “this stone” (“touton lithosis”), used to identify the cornerstone which is the foundation of the church, (Mt. 21:42) as only being used of Christ as regarding a person. (Mt. 21:44)

The perpetual Petrine papacy, that Peter was the exalted infallible head whom all the church looked to as the first of a line of infallible popes ruling from Rome, is one of the distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).

[daniel1212]

The comparison does not work for me.

But which is consistent with RCs trying to extrapolate support for distinctive Catholic teachings which they can only wish the NT church taught.

[Big Red Badger]

Exactly...

[metmom]

Matthew 16:18 - http://bible.cc/matthew/16-18.htm

Jesus said that Peter was *petros*(masculine) and that on this *petra*(feminine) He would build His church.

Greek: 4074 Pétros (a masculine noun) – properly, a stone (pebble), such as a small rock found along a pathway. 4074 /Pétros (”small stone”) then stands in contrast to 4073 /pétra (”cliff, boulder,” Abbott-Smith).

“4074 (Pétros) is an isolated rock and 4073 (pétra) is a cliff” (TDNT, 3, 100). “4074 (Pétros) always means a stone . . . such as a man may throw, . . . versus 4073 (pétra), a projecting rock, cliff” (S. Zodhiates, Dict).

4073 pétra (a feminine noun) – “a mass of connected rock,” which is distinct from 4074 (Pétros) which is “a detached stone or boulder” (A-S). 4073 (pétra) is a “solid or native rock, rising up through the earth” (Souter) – a huge mass of rock (a boulder), such as a projecting cliff.

It’s also a strange way to word the sentence that He would call Peter a rock and say that on this I will build my church instead of *on you* as would be grammatically correct in talking to a person.

There is no support from the original Greek that Peter was to be the rock on which Jesus said he would build His church. The nouns are not the same, one being masculine and the other being feminine. They denote different objects.

Also, here, Paul identifies who petra is, and that is Christ. This link takes you to the Greek.

http://biblehub.com/text/1_corinthians/10-4.htm

1 Corinthians 10:1-4 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock (petra) that followed them, and the Rock (petra) was Christ.

http://biblehub.com/text/romans/9-33.htm

Romans 9:30-33 What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written,“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock (petra) of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

http://biblehub.com/text/1_peter/2-8.htm

1 Peter 2:1-8 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”

and

“A stone of stumbling, and a rock (petra) of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

[imardmd1]

Which is why they cannot subscribe to the doctrine of sola Scriptura (the Scriptures without any other authoritative source, is sufficient to guide our beliefs and conduct to lead a life pleasing to God), For centuries the Romanists had to suppress with deadly force any other translation other than a slanted version in a dead language that the unlearned common person could neither read for oneself nor understand, but even then subjugated to a tradition that only a catechized clergy was authorized to explain, under the sentence of death for any unrecanted deviation from it.

So thanks for the detailed account you have taken the time to set down for us, daniel1212.