Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today, this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”
Christ’s word is very definite: the time, the sign, and the number of denials are clear. This shows His perfect knowledge of Peter’s coming fall. The Lord does not say this to Peter in order to drive him to despair, but so that after the fall he may remember that the Lord knew from the beginning and, despite that, did not stop loving him. Denying three times shows the depth of the fall, and the rooster’s crow will become a means of awakening the conscience. A person may not know his own heart, but Christ knows it completely.