| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 30 |
Page 6 |
“When thou art converted,” said the Master to Peter – “when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” His meaning was that a new power of personal helpfulness was to come to him through his sad experience which he should use in strengthening others to meet temptation. Then, when he has passed through that terrible night, when he had been lifted up again, when he had crept back to the feet of his risen Lord and had been forgiven and reinstated, he had double cause for gratitude – that he himself had been saved from hopeless wreck and restored, and still more, that he was now a better man, prepared, in a higher sense than before, to be an apostle and a patient, helpful friend to others in similar trial.
Then take the still more wonderful experience of our Lord’s own temptation. He certainly endured for his own sake that he might become Conqueror and Lord of all, that he might be “made perfect through suffering,” but that which the Scriptures love to linger upon as the chief reason why he was called to pass through temptation was that he might thereby be fitted, by his own experiences, to be to his people a sympathizing and helpful Friend and Saviour.
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