Will You Really Lay Down Your Life for Me?

“Peter is insisting that he's not going to betray Jesus. We know from the parallel passages that Peter keeps on insisting. The next thing Jesus says, after ‘Will you really lay down your life for me?’, is, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.’ We have a chapter break there, and we often assume that that chapter break is in the original, but it's not. It's seamless. Jesus is actually dealing with Peter trying to create an earthly home for himself. That’s where Peter is going with his insistence. It's a perfect example of Jesus not trying to win in his honesty.”

"A lifestyle of forgiveness functions like a check on the amount of honesty that comes out of us. Probably the biggest face of that is forbearance. Peter is almost certainly about to blast someone. He’s forgiven and forgiven and forgiven and he's reached his limit. Jesus is saying there is no limit. There's no point at which you ever stop forgiving and then he goes ahead and tells the parable of the man who owes 10,000 talents."