FROM THE DAWGHOUSE…
Peter: The Reason We’re Christians Today
This morning at Forge, speaker Zach made a comment that stopped me in my tracks: “Peter is the reason everyone is a Christian today.”
I’ll be honest, I’ve never thought of Peter that way.
To me, Peter was the guy who was always blurting things out, making mistakes, and letting fear get the better of him. He sank in the waves. He denied Jesus three times. He hid when things got tough. Compared to Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, planted churches all over the world, and stood firm in persecution, Peter often seemed like the junior varsity apostle.
But when you stop and think about it, Peter’s role was absolutely foundational.
It was Peter who first confessed Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). On that confession, Jesus declared He would build His church. It was Peter who stood up in Jerusalem at Pentecost, preached the risen Christ, and saw three thousand people baptized in a single day (Acts 2). It was Peter who first brought the gospel outside Jewish boundaries, welcoming the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household into the family of faith (Acts 10).
Peter was the bridge.
He was the one who carried the good news from Jesus’ inner circle into the wide world. He took the first steps so that Paul could later run with the mission to the nations. Without Peter’s bold, Spirit-filled leadership in those early days, the church may never have gotten off the ground.
And maybe that’s the point. Peter wasn’t perfect. Far from it. He stumbled, he doubted, he feared. But he kept getting back up. He kept turning back to Jesus. He kept letting the Spirit reshape him from fisherman into shepherd. And in the end, Jesus used that kind of man – weak, flawed, human – to lay the foundation for His unstoppable church.
It’s easy to put Paul on a pedestal. He’s brilliant, courageous, the theological giant. But the church doesn’t begin with Paul. It begins with Peter, a man who knew failure, who knew forgiveness, and who knew what it meant to be restored by grace.
So maybe that’s why this struck me so deeply. If Peter is the reason we’re Christians today, it means the whole movement of the gospel was entrusted to a broken man who was made whole by Christ. That’s good news for every one of us who feel like we’re too weak, too flawed, too ordinary.
Because in the end, the story of Peter tells us this…
Jesus doesn’t build His church on perfect people. He builds it on forgiven people.
And that’s why we’re here.
Joe Bouch
