Chambers is wrong?

I disagree with Oswald Chambers. I do this in full recognition that I am flirting with heresy; but I feel I  am right deep down in my soul. Oswald says that after the Lord asked Peter for the third time “Do you love me?”, that Peter was pained because he knew that he loved the Lord. On this we disagree. I believe strongly I am right because I am so like Peter. Peter is performance driven. He believed, as I did, that we are loved for what we do. Further, that if we were truly known, we would not be loved because deep down we are unloveable. Peter had run a pretty good scam. He played the role of the strong and dependable and he played it well.  But his world was shattered on the night of his betrayal when he was shown to be the weak and frightened little boy he was. Jesus knew him and, therefore, Peter knew, he could not be loved.

I recall the moment, not long ago, when this realization struck me: that the God who knows all things, including every sin I have ever committed or will ever commit loves me. In the words of Natalie Grant in Held,

You see for performers like Peter and I the “sacred” is the “secret” of our own sinfulness. When that is revealed, yet your God still loves you and, in fact, holds you like a child, then you know, probably for the first time, what it is to be loved. That’s what I believe Peter experienced when the realization struck him, “He knows me and yet He loves me.”

That’s why I love convicted felons and ministrying to them. They have no sacred secret. Their unloveableness is a matter of public record. So when they are shown Agape love and they realize that in spite of their notorious sinfulness, the creator of the world loves them, they crack like egg shells.

Maybe OC isn’t wrong. Maybe I’m just not there yet.  As part of our new birthright we are given the capacity for agape love, but first we are loved.

So apologies to OC, I know Peter and I know that moment. I am not overcome by the hurt which may come from loving God but by the fact that He loves me. and I

am blessed.

Nick