'When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Phllippi,
He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I
the Son of Man am? 14. And they said, Some say that
thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others,
Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15. He saith unto
them, But whom say ye that I am? 16. And Simon Peter
answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God. 17. And Jesus answered and said unto him,
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is
in heaven. 18. And I say also unto thee, That thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19. And
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall
be hound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on
earth shall be loosed in heaven. 20. Then charged He
His disciples that they should tell no man that He was
Jesus the Christ. 21. From that time forth began Jesus
to shew unto His disciples, how that He must go unto
Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and
chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised
again the third day. 22. Then Peter took Him, and began
to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this
shall not be unto Thee. 23. But He turned, and said
unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art an
offence unto Me: for thou savourest not the things that
be of God, but those that be of men. 24. Then said
Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after
Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow Me. 25. For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake
shall find it. 26. For what is a man profited, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 27. For
the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father
with His angels; and then He shall reward every man
according to his works. 28. Verily I say unto you,
There be some standing here, which shall not taste of
death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His
kingdom.'--MATT. xvi. 13-28.
This section is embarrassing from its fulness of material. We can
but lightly touch points on which volumes might be, and indeed have
been, written.
I. The first section (vs. 13-20) gives us Peter's great confession
in the name of the disciples, and Christ's answer to it. The centre
of this section is the eager avowal of the impetuous apostle, always
foremost for good or evil. We note the preparation for it, its
contents, and its results. As to the preparation,--our Lord is
entering on a new era in His work, and desires to bring clearly into
His followers' consciousness the sum of His past self-revelation.
The excitement, which He had checked after the first miraculous
feeding, had died down. The fickle crowd had gone away from Him, and
the shadows of the cross were darkening. Amid the seclusion of the
woods, fountains, and rocks of Caesarea, far away from distracting
influences, He puts these two momentous questions. Following the
Revised Version reading, we have a double contrast between the first
and second. 'Men' answers to 'ye,' and 'the Son of Man' to 'I.' The
first question is as to the partial and conflicting opinions among
the multitudes who had heard His name for Himself from His own lips;
the second, in its use of the 'I,' hints at the fuller unveiling of
the depths of His gracious personality, which the disciples had
experienced, and implies, 'Surely you, who have been beside Me, and
known Me so closely, have reached a deeper understanding.' It has a
tone of the same wistfulness and wonder as that other question of
His, 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known
Me?' For their sakes, He seeks to draw out their partly unconscious
faith, that had been smouldering, fed by their daily experience of
His beauty and tenderness. Half-recognised convictions float in many
a heart, which need but a pointed question to crystallise into
master-truths, to which, henceforward, the whole being is subject.
Great are the dangers of articulate creeds; but great is the power
of putting our shadowy beliefs into plain words. 'With the mouth
confession is made unto salvation.'
Why should this great question have been preceded by the other?
Probably to make the disciples feel more distinctly the chaotic
contradictions of the popular judgment, and their own isolation by
their possession of the clearer light. He wishes them to see the
gulf opening between them and their fellows, and so to bind them
more closely to Himself. This is the question the answer to which
settles everything for a man. It has an intensely sharp point. We
cannot take refuge from it in the general opinion. Nor does any
other man's judgment about Him matter one whit to us. This Christ
has a strange power, after nineteen hundred years, of coming to each
of us, with the same persistent interrogation on His lips. And to-day,
as then, all depends on the answer which we give. Many answer by
exalted estimates of Him, like these varying replies which ascribed
to Him prophetic authority, but they have not understood His own name
for Himself, nor drunk in the meaning of His self-revelation, unless
they can reply with the full-toned confession of the apostle, which
sets Him far above and apart from the highest and holiest.
As to the contents of the confession, it includes both the human and
the divine sides of Christ's nature. He is the Messiah, but He is
more than what a Jew meant by that name; He is 'the Son of the
living God,' by which we cannot indeed suppose that Peter meant all
that he afterwards learned it contained, or all that the Church has
now been taught of its meaning, but which, nevertheless, is not to
be watered down as if it did not declare His unique filial relation
to the Father, and so His divine nature. Nathanael had burst into
rapturous adoration of Jesus as 'the Son of God' at the very
beginning; and the disciples' glad confidence, which cast out the
fear of the dim form striding across the sea, had echoed the
confession; all had heard His words, 'No man knoweth the Father but
the Son.' So we need not hesitate to interpret this confession as in
essence and germ containing the whole future doctrine of our Lord's
divinity. True, the speaker did not know all which lay in His words.
Do we? Do we not see here an illustration of the method of Christian
progress in doctrine, which consists not in the winning of new
truths, but in the penetrating further into the meaning of old and
initial truths? The conviction which made and makes a Christian, is
this of Peter's; and Christian growth is into, not away from, it.
As to the results, they are set forth in our Lord's answer, which
breathes of delight, and we may almost say gratitude. His manhood
knew the thrill of satisfaction at having some hearts which
understood though partially, and loved even better than they knew.
The solemn address to the apostle by his ancestral name, gives
emphasis to the contrast between his natural weakness and his divine
illumination and consequent privilege. The name of Peter is not here
bestowed, but interpreted. Christ does not say 'Thou shalt be,' but
'Thou art,' and so presupposes the former conferring of the name.
Unquestionably, the apostle is the rock on which the Church is
built. The efforts to avoid that conclusion would never have been
heard of, but for the Roman Catholic controversy; but they are as
unnecessary as unsuccessful. Is it credible that in the course of an
address which is wholly occupied with conferring prerogatives on the
apostle, a clause should come in, which is concerned about an
altogether different subject from the 'thou' of the preceding and
the 'thee' of the following clauses, and which yet should take the
very name of the apostle, slightly modified, for that other subject?
We do not interpret other books in that fashion. But it was not the
'flesh and blood' Peter, but Peter as the recipient and faithful
utterer of the divine inspiration in his confession, who received
these privileges. Therefore they are not his exclusive property, but
belong to his faith, which grasped and confessed the divine-human
Lord; and wherever that faith is, there are these gifts, which are
its results. They are the 'natural' consequences of the true faith
in Christ, in that higher region where the supernatural is the
natural. Peter's grasp of Christ's nature wrought upon his
character, as pressure does upon sand, and solidified his shifting
impetuosity into rock-like firmness. So the same faith will tend to
do in any man. It made him the chief instrument in the establishment
of the early Church. On souls steadied and made solid by like faith,
and only on such, can Christ build His Church. Of course, the
metaphor here regards Jesus, not as the foundation, as the Scripture
generally does, but as the founder. The names of the twelve apostles
of the Lamb are on the foundations of the heavenly city; and, in
historical fact, the name of this apostle is graven on the deepest
and first laid. In like subordinate sense, all who share that heroic
faith and proclaim it are used by the Master-builder in the
foundations of His Church; and Peter himself is eager to share his
name among his brethren, when he says 'Ye also, as living stones.'
Built on men who hold by that confession, the Church is immortal;
and the armies who pour out of the gates of the pale kingdoms of the
unseen world shall not be able to destroy it. Peter, as confessor of
his Lord's human-divine nature, wields the keys of the kingdom of
heaven, like a steward of a great house; and that too was fulfilled
in his apostolic activity in his admitting Jews at Pentecost, and
Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. But the same power attends all
who share his faith and avowal, for the preaching of that faith is
the opening of heaven's door to men. He receives the power of
binding and loosing, by which is not meant that of forgiving or
retaining sins, but that of prohibiting or allowing actions, or, in
other words, of laying down the law of Christian conduct. This
meaning of the metaphors is made certain by the common Jewish use of
them. Despotic legislative power is not here committed to the
apostle, but the great principle is taught that the morality of
Christianity flows directly from its theology, and that whosoever,
like Peter, grasps firmly the cardinal truth of Christ's nature, and
all which flows therefrom, will have his insight so cleared that his
judgments on what is permitted or forbidden to a Christian man will
correspond with the decisions of heaven, in the measure of his hold
upon the truth which underlies all religion and all morality,
namely, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' These are
gifts to Peter indeed, but only as possessor of that faith, and are
much more truly understood as belonging to all who 'possess like
precious faith' (as Peter says), than as the prerogative of any
individual or class.
II. The second section (vs. 21-23) contains the startling new
revelation of the suffering Messiah, and the disciples' repugnance
to it. The Gospel has two parts: Jesus is the Christ, and the Christ
must suffer and enter into His glory. Our Lord has made sure that
the disciples have learned the first before He leads to the second.
The very conviction of His dignity and divine nature made that
second truth the more bewildering, but still the only road to it was
through the first. Verse 21 covers an indefinite time, during which
Jesus gradually taught His sufferings. Ordinarily we exaggerate the
suddenness, and therefore the depth, of Peter's fall, by supposing
that it took place immediately after his confession; but the
narrative discountenances the idea, and merely says that Jesus then
'began' His new teaching. There had been veiled hints of it (such as
John ii. 19, and Matt. ix. 15, xii. 40), but henceforward it assumed
prominence, and was taught without veil. It was no new thought to
Himself, forced on Him by the growing enmity of the nation. The
cross always cast its shadow on His path. He was no enthusiast,
beginning with the dream of winning a world to His side, and slowly
and heroically making up His mind to die a martyr, but His purpose
in being born was to minister and to die, a ransom for the many. We
have not here to do with a growing consciousness, but simply with an
increasing clearness of utterance. Note the detailed accuracy of His
prevision, which points to Jerusalem as the scene, and to the rulers
of the nation as the instruments, and to death as the climax, and to
resurrection as the issue, of His sufferings; the clear setting
forth of the divine necessity which, as it ruled all His life, ruled
here also, and is expressed in that solemn 'must'; and the perfectly
willing acceptance by Him of that necessity, implied in that 'go,'
and certified by many another word of His. The necessity was no
external compulsion, driving Him to an unwelcome sacrifice, but one
imposed alike by filial obedience and by brotherly love. He
_must_ die because He _would_ save.
How vividly the scene of Peter's rash rejection of the teaching is
described! The apostle, full of eager love, still, as of old, swift
to speak, and driven by unexamined impulse, lays his hand on Christ,
and draws Him a little apart, while he 'begins' to pour out words
which show that he has forgotten his confession. 'Rebuke' must not
be softened down into anything less vehement or more respectful. He
knows better than Jesus what will happen. Perhaps his assurance
'that this shall never be' means 'We will fight first.' But he is
not allowed to finish what he began; for the Master, whom he loved
unwisely but well, turns His back on him, as in horror, and shows by
the terrible severity of His rebuke how deeply moved He is. He
repels the hint in almost the same words as He had used to the
tempter in the wilderness, of whom that Peter, who had so lately
been the recipient and proclaimer of a divine illumination, has
become the mouthpiece. So possible is it to fall from sunny heights
to doleful depths! So little can any divine inspiration be
permanent, if the man turn away from it to think man's thoughts, and
set his affections on the things which men desire! So certainly does
minding these degrade to becoming an organ of Satan! The words are
full of restrained emotion, which reveal how real a temptation Peter
had flung in Christ's path. The rock has become a stone of
stumbling; the man Jesus shrank from the cross with a natural and
innocent shrinking, which never made His will tremulous, but was
none the less real; and such words from loving lips did affect him.
Let us note, on the whole, that the complete truth about Jesus
Christ must include these two parts,--His divine nature and
Messiahship, and His death on the cross; and that neither alone is
the gospel, nor is he a disciple, such as Christ desires, who does
not cleave to both with mind and heart.
III. In verses 24-28, the law, which ruled the Master's life, is
extended to the servants. They recoiled from the thought of His
having to suffer. They had to learn that they must suffer too if
they would be His. First, the condition of discipleship is set
before them as being the fellowship of His suffering. 'If any man
will' gives them the option of withdrawal. A new epoch is beginning,
and they will have to enlist again, and to do so with open eyes. He
will have no unwilling soldiers, nor any who have been beguiled into
the ranks. No doubt, some went away, and walked no more with Him.
The terms of service are clear. Discipleship means imitation, and
imitation means self-crucifixion. At that time they would only
partially understand what taking up their cross was, but they would
apprehend that a martyred master must needs have for followers men
ready to be martyrs too. But the requirement goes much deeper than
this. There is no discipleship without self-denial, both in the
easier form of starving passions and desires, and in the harder of
yielding up the will, and letting His will supplant ours. Only so
can we ever come after Him, and of such sacrifice of self the cross
is the eminent example. We cannot think too much of it as the
instrument of our reconciliation and forgiveness, but we may, and
too often do, think too little of it as the pattern of our lives.
When Jesus began to teach His death, He immediately presented it as
His servants' example. Let us not forget that fact.
The ground of the law is next stated in verse 25. The desire to save
life is the loss of life in the highest sense. If that desire guide
us, then farewell to enthusiasm, courage, the martyr spirit, and all
which makes man's life nobler than a beast's. He who is ruled mainly
by the wish to keep a whole skin, loses the best part of what he is
so anxious to keep. In a wider application, regard for self as a
ruling motive is destruction, and selfishness is suicide. On the
other hand, lives hazarded for Christ are therein truly saved, and
if they be not only hazarded, but actually lost, such loss is gain;
and the same law, by which the Master 'must' die and rise again,
will work in the servant. Verse 26 urges the wisdom of such apparent
folly, and enforces the requirement by the plain consideration that
'life' is worth more than anything beside, and that on the two
grounds, that the world itself would be of no use to a dead man, and
that, once lost, 'life' cannot be bought back. Therefore the dictate
of the wisest prudence is that seemingly prodigal flinging away of
the lower 'life' which puts us in possession of the higher. Note
that the appeal is here made to a reasonable regard to personal
advantage, and _that_ in the very act of urging to crucify
self. So little did Christ think, as some people do, that the desire
to save one's soul is selfishness.
Verse 27 confirms all the preceding by the solemn announcement of
the coming of the Son of Man as Judge. Mark the dignity of the
words. He is to come 'in the glory of the Father.' That ineffable
and inaccessible light which rays forth from the Father enwraps the
Son. Their glory is one. The waiting angels are 'His.' He renders to
every man according to his doing (his actions considered as one
whole). Thus He claims for Himself universal sway, and the power of
accurately determining the whole moral character of every life, as
well as that of awarding precisely graduated retribution. They
surely shall then find their lives who have followed Him here.
Verse 28 adds, with His solemn 'verily,' a confirmation of this
announcement of His coming to judge. The question of what event is
referred to may best be answered by noting that it must be one
sufficiently far off from the moment of speaking to allow of the
death of the greater number of His hearers, and sufficiently near to
allow of the survival of some; that it must also be an event, after
which these survivors would go the common road into the grave; that
it is apparently distinguished from His coming 'in the glory of the
Father,' and yet is of such a nature as to afford convincing proof
of the establishment of His kingdom on earth, and to be, in some
sort, a sign of that final act of judgment. All these requirements
(and they are all the fair inferences from the words) meet only in
the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the national life of the chosen
people. That was a crash of which we faintly realise the tremendous
significance. It swept away the last remnant of the hope that Israel
was to be the kingdom of the Messiah; and from out of the dust and
chaos of that fall the Christian Church emerged, manifestly destined
for world-wide extension. It was a 'great and terrible day of the
Lord,' and, as such, was a precursor and a prophecy of the day of
the Lord, when He 'shall come in the glory of the Father,' and
'render unto every man according to his deeds.'