For a correct interpretation of the renunciation, it is necessary to take into account everything that precedes it in the synoptic Gospels, and especially those two scenes that prepare and foreshadow it in the most direct way. These are the two main predictions of the Passion, uttered by Jesus himself. For the first time, Peter does not want to hear anything: "God save you from this, Lord! may it not be so with Thee!" (Mt 16:22*) His reaction is in line with that of all the other disciples. In the beginning, the ideology of success cannot but reign in this small group. The disciples argue about the best places in God's kingdom. Students feel mobilized for a good cause. Any community is obsessed with mimetic desire and is therefore blind to the true nature of the Gospel revelation. The disciples see in Jesus, first of all, a miracle worker, a conjurer of the crowd, a political leader.

The faith of the disciples is imbued with triumphant messianism. But this does not make it any less real. Peter demonstrated this clearly, but some part of him still measures his experiences by the standard of worldly success. Is it possible to imagine an enterprise that seeks only defeat, suffering, and death?

In this episode, Peter hears a stern answer: "Get thee behind me, Satan! you are a stumbling block to Me! [literally, 'You are a scandal to me']" (Mt 16:23). And as soon as a mistake is pointed out to Peter, he immediately changes direction and starts running in the other direction at the same speed. Therefore, at the second prediction of the Passion, just a few hours before his arrest, Peter reacts very differently from the first time:

Then Jesus said to them, "All of you will be offended in me [literally: "you will all be scandalized about me", "I will become a scandal to all of you"] this night <... >. Peter answered and said to Him, "If all are offended about You, I will never be offended [literally, "If everyone is scandalized about You, I will never be scandalized"]. Jesus said to him, "Truly I say to you, that this night, before the crows, you will deny me three times." Peter said to Him, "Though it behooves me to die with Thee, I will not deny Thee." All the disciples said the same (Matthew 26:31, 33-35).

Peter's outward determination is the same as the intensity of his mimeticism. His "discourse" has changed to the opposite compared to the first prediction, but the basis has not changed. And the same is true of the rest of the disciples, who always repeat what Peter says, for they are all as mimetic as he is. They imitate Jesus through the mediation of Peter.

Jesus sees that this enthusiasm is fraught with subsequent desertion. He clearly sees that after his arrest his worldly prestige will collapse, and he will cease to provide his students with the type of model that he has provided them with until now. From then on, they will receive all mimetic stimuli from individuals and groups hostile to his personality and his mission. The disciples, and above all Peter, are too subject to the influence of others not to fall under it again. The Gospel text has clearly demonstrated this to us in the passages just examined. The fact that Jesus himself serves as a model does not mean anything in itself, since the disciples imitate him in a mode of victorious greed, always essentially identical with the alienation of desire.

Peter's first change in itself is certainly not blameworthy, but it is not free from mimetic desire, and this is what Jesus evidently observes. He sees here a harbinger of a new change on the part of Peter, which, given the impending catastrophe, will inevitably take the form of renunciation. Thus, Peter's denial is rationally foreseeable. Foreseeing it, Jesus only draws conclusions from his observations for the near future. In short, Jesus does the same analysis that we ourselves have done: he compares Peter's successive reactions to the prediction of the Passion and from this deduces the possibility of betrayal. The proof is that the prophecy of denial is a direct response to Peter's second mimetic speech, and the reader has the same data as Jesus to form his judgment. If we understand mimetic desire, we inevitably come to the same conclusions. Thus, we are forced to conclude that the character named Jesus himself understands this desire in the same sense as we understand it. It is this understanding that reveals the rationality of the connection between all the elements of the chain of episodes formed by the two proclamations of the Passion – the prophecy of renunciation and the renunciation itself.

It is precisely the mimetic desire that is shown from Jesus' point of view, for it is the term for this desire, "scandal," that Jesus uses whenever to describe Peter's reactions, including his denial: "Then Jesus said to them, 'You will all be offended in me [literally, 'You will all be scandalized about me,' 'I will be a scandal to all of you.'" And you will be scandalized all the more surely because you are already victims of a scandal. Your confidence that you are not, your illusion of your invulnerability speak eloquently about your real state and about the upcoming future. The myth of individual difference, which Peter defends here by saying "and I," is itself mimetic. Peter considers himself the most authentic of all the disciples, the most capable of becoming a true competitor of Jesus, the only true owner of his ontological model.

The evil daughters of King Lear, competing in theatrical affection before his eyes, convince their father of their passionate love. The unfortunate man imagines that their rivalry is nourished by pure affection, whereas the opposite is true: pure rivalry excites the phantom of affection. Jesus never falls into cynicism, but he never succumbs to illusions of this kind. Without confusing Peter with Lear's daughter, we must nevertheless recognize in him a puppet of a similar desire, of which he is not conscious of his obsession, because he is obsessed with it; he perceives the truth too late, after renunciation, when he bursts into weeps at the thought of the Master and his prediction.

In this marvellous scene, when Peter and the disciples show a false zeal for participation in the Passion, the Gospels offer us a satire on that particular religious fervor which must be recognized as specifically "Christian." The disciples invent a new religious language, the language of the Passion. They reject the ideology of happiness and success, but they transform suffering and defeat into a very analogous ideology, a new mimetic and social machine that functions just like the old triumphalism.

All types of commitment that people in a group may have for an enterprise have been declared unworthy of Jesus, and these are precisely the attitudes that have followed one another endlessly throughout historical Christianity, especially in our age. The manner of the disciples is reminiscent of the triumphant anti-triumphalism of some modern Christian circles, their invariably clerical anti-clericalism.