Malchus Comes to Mind

Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”

And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”

“I told you that I am he,” Jesus answered. “If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high
priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear.
(The servant’s name was Malchus.)

Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not
drink the cup the Father has given me?”

—John 18:7-11

I’ve often wondered why some non-Christians are so militantly anti-Christian, uncompromising and unreasonable in their hostility toward those of us who follow Jesus. Bashing believers seems to be their reason for being. It’s an obsession that colors and controls all they think or say.

But the unbelievers who most touch my heart are those who’ve been wounded by well-meaning but witless believers who have hurt them with careless words or ways. Malchus comes to mind.

Malchus was in the band of soldiers who came to capture Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane—the one, in fact, whom Peter attacked. He was probably in the vanguard, showing particular zeal, for Peter would hardly have singled him out without reason. Peter took an awkward swing at his head and lopped off his ear, but Jesus at once stepped in, put an end to the conflict, calmed the crowd, and healed Malchus’s bloody wound.

I’ve always wondered about Malchus. Did the two—he and Peter — know each other before this event in the garden? In those early days Peter was not an easy man to deal with. Had Peter, at some point, inflicted a much deeper wound, which Malchus would not let Jesus heal?

Later in the evening a servant related to Malchus lured Peter into his second denial (John 18:26–27), and I’ve often wondered (though I do not know) whether Malchus fingered the big fisherman. Perhaps Malchus took his hostility toward Jesus and His followers with him to the grave.

At a university where I used to serve, I recall a young atheist who fought with me on philosophical grounds for his unbelief—until in an unguarded moment he exposed the root of his resistance. When he was a child, he often thought about God and eagerly sought Him. One day a neighbor invited him to Sunday school, where the boy thought he’d surely meet his unknown God. Unfortunately his neighbor forgot that he had offered the invitation and left the boy sitting on his front curb, scrubbed and eagerly “waiting for Godot,” who never showed up. The man did not call to apologize. Nor did he invite the boy again.

The boy’s disappointment turned to bitterness toward a God who was disinclined to meet little boys, and so he turned his heart away. The young philosopher’s antagonism came not from his head but from his heart. As Pascal observed a long time ago, the heart has reasons that reason doesn’t have.

One proud lordly word, one needless contention . . . may blast the fruit of all you are doing. —Richard Baxter

Taken from Seeing God, ©2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.