The Man Who Kissed Jesus and the Man Who Cussed His Way Out

We Christians love to compare. It’s almost instinctive.

We glance across the church aisle, see someone whose flaws are more obvious than ours, and think, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as that guy.” We measure our walk with Jesus against the lowest common denominator in the room and come out feeling like heroes.

It’s ironic because as author John Maxwell once said, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” The same is true spiritually: if you’ve crowned yourself the holiest in the circle you measure yourself by, you’re not in the right circle. The standard is never the Christian sitting next to you. The standard is Christ.

That’s why the story of Peter and Judas (Jesus’ disciples) is so haunting. Both men were handpicked disciples. Both walked with Jesus, heard His teaching, saw His miracles. Both messed up spectacularly on the very same night. But their stories remind us that the real question isn’t whether we’ll fail Jesus. We will. The question is what we do after the failure.

The night Jesus was arrested was a night of unraveling. The disciples, who had walked with Him for three years, who had seen storms calmed, demons cast out, and dead men raised, suddenly found themselves collapsing under the weight of fear. Two of them, Peter and Judas, stand out as mirror images of each other. Both failed Jesus. Both denied Him in their own way. Yet their endings could not be more different.

Judas: The Goodnight Kiss That Killed

Judas was the trusted treasurer of the group, the one who held the money bag. On the surface, he looked like a man of responsibility, the kind you’d want on your church board’s finance committee. But beneath the appearance of loyalty was a heart quietly leaking out to greed, disappointment, and disillusionment. Judas followed Jesus, yes, but he followed Him with conditions.

Some scholars even suggest Judas leaned toward a Zealot mindset. He wanted a Messiah who would rise up, overthrow Rome, and lead a revolution. But when Jesus insisted on talking about suffering, serving, and dying, Judas’ expectations shattered. He stayed close, but his devotion was hollow. He showed up to the same meetings, ate the same bread, listened to the same sermons, but inwardly, his allegiance was elsewhere because He never surrendered.

His disloyalty culminated on that night in Gethsemane when he arrived with soldiers and religious officials, lanterns in hand. His signal of betrayal was almost too cruel to imagine: a kiss. Of all the gesture he could have picked, he chose a gesture of intimacy as the dagger of treachery.

Incidentally, Jesus’ response was still loaded with compassion. He looked at Judas and said, “Friend, do what you came to do” (Matthew 26:50). Even in betrayal, Jesus called him “friend.” It’s a word that still rings with both tragic irony and haunting mercy. Judas chose thirty silver coins over the Son of God, and though he later regretted it bitterly, his regret never blossomed into repentance.

Rather than allowing his sorrow to lead him to a cross where he would find forgiveness, it led him to a noose where he sealed his own doom. Outward discipleship without inward surrender had hollowed him out, and in the end, despair swallowed him whole.

Peter: The Cussing Before the Crow

Peter, on the other hand, was all passion and bravado.

He had promised loudly, “Even if everyone else falls away, I never will!” (Matthew 26:33). Hours later, he was swinging a sword in the garden at the high priest’s servant. The scene was ridiculous if you stop to think about it: a full detachment of armed guards: dozens, maybe even hundreds, showed up with lanterns, clubs, and swords, and Peter apparently thought he could take them all on. I’m not entirely sure what his plan was here. Maybe he thought he could systematically fight his way through them one by one, lopping off heads until the kingdom came. Instead, all he managed was a single chopped ear, most likely because he was aiming for Malchus’ head and missed.

Poor Peter. His zeal was genuine, but his strategy was laughable, and Jesus had to tell him to put away his sword.

Then unfortunately came the courtyard. While Jesus was inside standing trial, Peter was outside standing trial of his own. Not before governors or priests, but before a servant girl, a bystander, and the watching firelight. Three simple confrontations. Three catastrophic denials.

The first was almost pitiful in its smallness. A servant girl, the least threatening person imaginable in that culture, looked at him closely and said, “You also were with Jesus of Galilee.” Peter brushed her off quickly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was a dodge, a coward’s deflection.

The second cut deeper. Another servant girl saw him again, this time in front of others, and said, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Now the pressure mounted, and Peter doubled down. He swore an oath, calling God as his witness, that he did not know the man (Matthew 26:72). Imagine that: swearing by the God of Israel that you’ve never even met His Son.

The third was the ugliest of all. A group of bystanders confronted him, recognizing his Galilean accent. “Surely you are one of them; your speech gives you away.” At that, Peter unleashed a barrage. Matthew says he “began to call down curses, and swore to them, ‘I don’t know the man!’” (26:74). In effect, Peter was swearing in the strongest terms possible that he had no relationship with Jesus. He was invoking curses upon himself if he was lying—essentially saying, “May God damn me if I know Him.” It wasn’t just denial; it was profanity, desperation, and an all-out attempt to distance himself from the very One he had once sworn to die for. And then, as the last syllable of profanity slipped from his lips, the sound of a rooster’s crow cut through the night like a verdict. Luke tells us, “The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter” (Luke 22:61). That look broke him. He ran out and wept bitterly.

Two Men. Two Outcomes.

Both men betrayed Jesus. One with a kiss, one with a curse. Both buckled under pressure. Both felt the sting of remorse. But their responses, and their endings, could not have been more different.

Judas’ remorse was saturated in self-condemnation. Instead of running to Jesus, he ran from Him. He took his own life still clinging to his sin, essentially rejecting the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. His betrayal was the fruit of a life never surrendered in the first place. Outward discipleship without inward surrender always leads to destruction.

Peter also broke under pressure, and afterward he did what many of us do when we think we’ve failed God beyond repair: he went back to his old life, back to fishing. He didn’t find his way back to Jesus, Jesus found His way back to him. On the other side of resurrection, Jesus stood on the shore of Galilee, cooked him breakfast, and asked him three times: “Do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). Each answer rewrote a denial.

That was the difference. Judas ended his story in despair, while Peter lived long enough for grace to find him. Judas’ end was final because he closed the door on mercy. Peter’s failure, as awful as it was, became the doorway to surrender, and the man who cursed that he never knew Jesus became the rock on which Jesus built His church.

The Lesson for Us

It is possible to sit in church week after week, carry the offering money bag, sing the songs, teach the classes, even preach the sermons, and still never surrender our hearts to Christ. Judas proves that outward discipleship can mask an unsurrendered soul. He reminds us that proximity to Jesus is not the same thing as intimacy with Jesus. You can walk with Him for years and still walk away empty if your heart never bows in surrender.

Peter shows us the other side. He failed loudly, dramatically, and publicly. Yet, when the rooster crowed and Jesus’ eyes met his, something cracked open inside him. His bravado collapsed, but his love remained. While Judas ran to despair, Peter’s tears left him alive long enough for grace to find him, feed him breakfast, and rewrite his story.

The tale of two betrayals is really the tale of two endings: one man clung to regret and lost himself; the other collapsed into mercy and found redemption. Both remind us that the real issue is not if we’ll fail Jesus, we will. The issue is what happens next. Will we cling to pride and drown in regret? Or will we throw ourselves into the arms of the only One whose grace is stronger than our betrayal?

In the end, Judas’ kiss and Peter’s curse both echo a warning, but Peter’s story offers an additional promise: failure is not final when Jesus is still writing the ending.

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