<p>14:54 <i>And Peter had followed him at a distance- </i>This following of Peter is recorded in the same words by all three Synoptics. It impressed them all as perhaps typical of so much of their &lsquo;following&rsquo; the Lord; it was a following, but far off from Him. His challenge to Peter had been to not just physically follow Him, but to pick up His cross and walk behind Him on His way to His cross (Mt. 16:24 s.w.). Following Jesus in the shadows and avoiding identification with Him was hardly the kind of following which He intended. Yet Peter recognized this, because his appeal for repentance describes his audience as likewise &ldquo;afar off&rdquo; (Acts 2:39 s.w.); he is asking them to make the conversion which he did, and he thereby considers his &lsquo;following afar off&rsquo; as not really following at all, and being in a &lsquo;far off from Christ&rsquo; position from which he repented and thereby &lsquo;came near&rsquo; to Christ in conversion. The Greek words for &lsquo;followed&rsquo; and &lsquo;afar off&rsquo; are also used about how the few remaining disciples stood &lsquo;afar off&rsquo; from Christ on the cross. The sense is perhaps that the Gospel writers recognized how far they were from co-crucifixion with Christ, and this sense is one we can identify with. And we are those likewise described in Ephesians as &ldquo;far off&rdquo; as Peter was, but are now likewise reconciled.</p><p><i>Right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire</i>- &quot;Into&quot; is the same word used by the Lord in warning Peter not to &quot;enter into&quot; temptation (Lk. 22:46). And it is used again of how Satan entered into Judas (Jn. 13:27), again drawing a parallel between the path of both Peter and Judas- the difference finally being simply that Peter believed in the Lord's grace whereas Judas could not.</p><p>Mt. <i>&quot;</i>and sat with the officers&quot;. The presence of the definite article suggests that &quot;the servants&quot; the Greek also means &quot;officers&quot; are a group which has already been mentioned, and surely they are the &quot;servants&quot; who comprised the crowd of armed men who arrested Jesus in the Garden. The same word is used three times about them in Jn. 18:3,12,18. The risk Peter was taking was considerable, seeing he had visibly been with the Lord in the Garden and had tried to kill one of the servants. We must give due weight to this- his devotion to his Lord was incomplete but all the same must be recognized for what it was as far as it was. So often those who aim higher than others in their spiritual devotions are those who fall the most publicly, and yet their devotion to their Lord should not be forgotten- for it is higher than the mass of other disciples.</p>