5  Offending Christ  (16:21-23)

From that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s. (16:21-23)

Throughout its pages the Bible contrasts God’s view of things with man’s. Perhaps the strongest and best-known declaration of that contrast is found in Isaiah: “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8-9). “There is a way which seems right to a man,” Solomon tells us, “but its end is the way of death” (Prov. 14:12). The psalmist wrote, “How great are Thy works, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep. A senseless man has no knowledge; nor does a stupid man understand this” (Ps. 92:5-6).

When the Lord refused David the privilege of building the Temple because he was a military man, a man of blood, He nevertheless promised David an eternal heritage of the throne of Israel, on which the Messiah Himself would some day sit and reign. In awe and deep gratitude David exclaimed, “Thou art great, O Lord God; for there is none like Thee, and there is no God besides Thee. . . . Thou art God, and Thy words are truth” (2 Sam. 7:22, 28).

When Peter rebuked Jesus for declaring that He must be crucified in Jerusalem by the Jewish leaders there, he either forgot or ignored that great truth. Peter had just proclaimed Jesus as being “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16); yet when Jesus made a statement that did not fit Peter’s ideas about the Messiah, the apostle held to his way above the Lord’s and found himself contradicting the Son of God he had just confessed.

By this time Peter had been a believer for some while, so that the lessons drawn from this passage are therefore primarily for believers. Not even Christians can know and understand God’s ways except through a proper understanding of and submission to His Word and the illumination of His Spirit. When believers insist on their own way above God’s, then, like Peter, they become an offense and a stumbling block.

It is likely that both in his confession and his rebuke of Christ, Peter also reflected the perspective of the other eleven. They shared Peter’s belief that Jesus was the divine Messiah and they likely shared his confidence that the Messiah could hardly be rejected by His own people, much less put to death by them. Jesus had just assured them that He Himself was building His church, which not even death could overcome, and that through the divine Scripture they had heavenly authority to declare what is acceptable and not acceptable to Him (vv. 18-19). Jesus then “warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ” (v. 20), not only because the Jewish people and their leaders had false notions about the Messiah but because the Twelve still shared many of those false notions. The idea of the Messiah suffering on a cross was anathema to Jews and a massive stumbling block to their faith in Jesus (1 Cor. 1:23).

From that time seems to be a transition phrase Matthew used to indicate a significant change in Jesus’ ministry. He used the same phrase in 4:17 to mark the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry to Israel. He now uses it to mark the beginning of His private ministry to the Twelve. The first phase was primarily public, with some occasional private instruction. The second was primarily private, with some occasional public instruction.

THE PLAN OF GOD

Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. (16:21)

At this time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples some deeper and more difficult truths about His divine plan and work. It was not that He had said nothing previously about His rejection and crucifixion. In veiled ways He had spoken of His impending death, saying that “the Son of Man [would] be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40) and had declared to the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). He would continue to speak of His burial (John 12:7) and to explain that the Son of Man would rise from the dead after He had suffered at the hands of His enemies (see, e.g., 17:9, 12, 22-23).

The must of which Jesus spoke was not that of human devotion to a great ideal but a divine imperative and absolute necessity. God had no backup or alternate plan. This must came thundering out of eternity. It was the essential, unalterable plan of God set in motion before the foundation of the world.

Four things made that plan necessary. First was human sin, for which the Messiah had to give His life as the penalty in man’s stead, as “a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). Second was the divine requirement that, “without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22). Third was the divine decree of God’s sovereign foreknowledge (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4-5), and fourth was the prophetic promise that the Messiah must die (see Pss. 16; 22; Isa. 53). God’s plan is not subject to change. It can only be believed or rejected, never altered.

In verse 21 Jesus mentions four stages or phases of that divine plan which He had come to fulfill, four things that He must do before it would be completed.

The first must was for Him to go to Jerusalem. Had Jesus chosen any road but the one to Jerusalem, He could not have become the Savior of mankind, no matter how many more people He healed or how much more truth He taught. He had to go to the city of sacrifices and become the Passover Lamb, offering Himself “once for all” (Heb. 7:27).

When Jesus spoke of going to Jerusalem, He was in Caesarea Philippi, as far from Jerusalem as He could be and still remain in Palestine. After a brief stay in that remote northern city, He and the disciples would move down again through Galilee and Samaria to Jerusalem, where the Twelve began to fear that death by stoning at the hands of the hostile Jewish leaders awaited Jesus and probably them as well (John 11:16). At that point the disciples saw such a possibility not as the fulfilling of the plan of God but as the hindrance or even destruction of it.

Even when He was in Galilee, it was the Jewish leaders from Jerusalem who gave Jesus the most opposition (see Matt. 15:1-2). The hypocritical, self-righteous Judaism that flourished in Jerusalem could not stand Jesus, because He exposed their wickedness and ungodliness and rejected their cherished, man-made traditions (see vv. 3-9). But the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem would not have to seek Him out or hunt Him down like a fugitive. He would go there entirely of His own volition and in His own time. “I lay down My life that I may take it again,” He declared. “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17-18). He told Pilate, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11).

The name Jerusalem means “foundation of peace,” although at few times in its long history has that description been fitting. The city is located 33 miles east of the Mediterranean Sea and 14 miles west of the Dead Sea, elevated on a plateau some 2,500 feet above sea level. When first mentioned in Scripture it was known as Salem, whose king was Melchizedek, “a priest of God Most High” (Gen. 14:18) and a picture of Christ, who was “designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 5:10). It was on Mount Moriah, which was near Salem, that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice to the Lord (Gen. 22:2). At the time David was made king, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites, and one of the first acts of the new monarch was to conquer the city and name it after himself (2 Sam. 5:5-9). Three months later he brought the Ark of the Covenant there and Jerusalem became the city where the Lord Himself symbolically dwelled. It was in Jerusalem that David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple, and the city therefore became the central place for Jewish worship.

Jerusalem was alternately lost and recaptured by the Jews, but it never lost its identity in their minds and hearts as the city of God. When they were led into captivity to Babylon, the psalmist cried, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Ps. 137:5-6).

But when Jesus came to earth, Jerusalem was far from living up to its title of the city of God. During the first Passover of His ministry, Jesus took a whip and cleansed the Temple of the defiling money changers and merchants of sacrificial animals (John 2:13-16). During the next Passover, He violated the revered Sabbath traditions that the rabbis had devised, and the Jewish leaders tried to kill Him for it (5:16-18). During the third Passover, He deliberately stayed away because of the hatred of Him there. Later, when He attended the Feast of Booths, the Jewish leaders again tried to arrest Him and have Him put to death (7:1-19, 44-45; cf. 8:59).

Because of its rejection of Jesus, Jerusalem was given a new and pagan name, “the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified” (Rev. 11:8). In A.D. 70 God used the Roman army to destroy the city, which would not again be under Jewish control until 1,900 years later, when the modern state of Israel came into being in 1948. One day the city will deserve the name Jerusalem, because “it will come about in that day that living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, . . . [it] will rise and remain on its site from Benjamin’s Gate as far as the place of the First Gate to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s wine presses. And people will live in it, and there will be no more curse, for Jerusalem will dwell in security” (Zech. 14:8, 10-11).

It was in the divine plan that Messiah should die in Jerusalem, the divinely ordained place of sacrifice, and therefore, Jesus said, “I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33).

The second must in God’s great plan was that His Son, the Messiah, would suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes. Those three groups of religious leaders comprised the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high council, whose headquarters was in Jerusalem. The elders were primarily the leaders of the various tribes scattered throughout Israel. The chief priests were largely Sadducees, and the scribes were largely Pharisees. Because of their unbelief and rejection, as well as their political power, Jesus would suffer many things at the hands of those men.

The third must in God’s plan was that Jesus be killed. The Greek word behind killed was not used of legal executions, and in this context the meaning is that of murder. Jesus was not legally tried or proved guilty of any wrongdoing but was sentenced to death on the false and vindictive charges of the Jewish leaders, who were determined to be rid of Him at any cost. It was in God’s plan that at the hand of man He was to be murdered (Acts 2:22-23).

The fourth and last must was that Jesus would be raised up on the third day. But because of their great distress at hearing the first three imperatives, it is likely the disciples failed to hear this one at all. Yet it was this truth that made the others bearable. This was the truth of victory that would conquer those seeming defeats. This was the must of triumph and glory.

Peter’s reply (v. 22) makes clear that he and his fellow disciples had not really heard Jesus’ words about His being raised up on the third day, any more than they had really heard Him say that “the gates of Hades,” that is, death, would not overcome His church (v. 18). They had seen Him raise the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain. But if He Himself were to die, they probably reasoned, who would raise Him? How could a dead Messiah deliver and rule His people?

THE PRESUMPTION OF PETER

And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” (16:22)

Because what Jesus had just said was so utterly contrary to what he himself strongly believed, Peter brashly took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.

Yet it was more than brashness that caused Peter to do such a thing. What he did also gave testimony to Jesus’ humanness. Had He been a mystical and demanding Lord of the kind the Jews expected the Messiah to be, Peter would never have dared address Him as he did here and on many other occasions. Despite Peter’s arrogant presumption, it is comforting to realize that Jesus was his close friend as well as his Lord. Peter showed no fear in speaking this rebuke to Jesus, demonstrating the reality of their intimate relationship as men.

Christians who are quick to rebuke Peter for such incredible presumption should be honest in recognizing that they, too, have in effect contradicted the Lord at times. The believer who complains about his sufferings and trials and asks, “Why me, Lord?” shares in Peter’s presumption. It is easy to accept God’s blessings, but not His testings. It is easy to accept prosperity and health as part of God’s plan for us, but not hardship and sickness. When joy comes to us, that seems to be our proper lot as a child of God, but when sorrow comes we are inclined to doubt our heavenly Father’s wisdom and love.

Rebuke translates the same word (epitima) Matthew used of Jesus’ warning the disciples to tell no one He was the Christ (v. 20). The word carried the idea of authoritative judgment, normally used by an official or leader against someone under his jurisdiction. The present infinitive form suggests that Peter made the rebuke repeatedly.

Perhaps Peter’s presumption came out of the officiousness that sometimes comes with age, or out of his being the acknowledged leader of the apostles. It was to him that Jesus had just declared the Father had given special revelation (v. 17), and Peter may now have considered himself a spokesman for God. Or perhaps the response was simply typical of Peter’s self-confident personality. Certainly his deep love for and dependence on the Savior made the thought of His death a fearful prospect, so that both love and fear entered into Peter’s response. In any case, his sinful pride led him to place his own understanding above Christ’s.

God forbid it translates a Hebrew colloquialism that literally meant, “gracious to you” or “merciful to you” and was understood to mean something such as “God be gracious to you” or “May God in His mercy spare you this.” In the context of Peter’s rebuke, the phrase is here translated in its most negative connotation, God forbid it. Consequently, Peter’s addressing Jesus as Lord rings hollow, because Peter was placing his own human will above the divine will of Christ.

To reinforce his rebuke, Peter said, “This shall never happen to You,” completely contradicting what Jesus had just declared was necessary. Because he could not understand or accept the idea of a humiliated, abused, and crucified Messiah, Peter rejected God’s plan for redemption. The wisdom of the best of men is typically antagonistic to the wisdom of God.

THE PROTEST OF CHRIST

But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; (16:23a)

It would be hard to imagine anything that would have shocked Peter more than those words of Jesus. On the surface, Peter’s intention not only seems honorable but loving and compassionate. He did not want his Lord and Friend to die. He could not even bear the idea of Jesus suffering. Even Peter’s more selfish motives are understandable. For several years he and the rest of the Twelve had become completely dependent on Jesus, not only for teaching and guidance but for food, tax money, and virtually everything else. Without Him, they would be a ship with no rudder.

As one commentator has observed, Peter “could hardly have understood that by his attempt to dissuade Jesus from the cross he was placing arrows in the bow of Satan to be shot at his beloved Savior.”

But when Peter rebuked Him for even considering the idea of going to His death, the Lord must have looked the disciple straight in the eye as He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan.” It was a stinging, devastating response that must have shaken Peter to the core of his being. Before Peter had a chance to finish his objections, Jesus abruptly cut him off and accused him of being the mouthpiece for His adversary, Satan.

Jesus had spoken almost the same words to Satan himself after the temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4:10). And although Satan left, we learn from Luke’s parallel account that “he departed from Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). He continued to tempt Jesus throughout His ministry in every way he could. Now he put into Peter’s mind the same idea He had tried to put into Jesus’: “God’s plan is too difficult and demanding. Give Your allegiance to me and your life will be immeasurably better. My way is superior to God’s.”

That is basically what Peter was saying to Jesus: “My way is better than Yours and the Father’s.” The same apostle who had just confessed Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God (v. 16) now contradicted Him. The one whom the Father had just inspired to give that confession (v. 17) was now “inspired” by Satan.

If such a thing could happen to Peter, it can happen to any believer. The same Christian who extols the plan of God can be lured into extolling the plan of Satan. When he follows his own wisdom instead of the Spirit’s, the same one who has strongly taken the side of God can find himself unwittingly taking the side of Satan.

Jesus knew that Satan had as surely put the rebuke in Peter’s mind as the Father had put the confession there. Whether by obsession, oppression, or simply by supernatural influence, Satan managed to prompt Peter to oppose Christ’s way and try to lure Jesus into disobeying God’s will. The text does not explain the means of the temptation, only its source. And because he succumbed, Peter found himself opposing the plan of God in the same way the devil had opposed it in the wilderness. Before he realized what he was doing, he found himself speaking for Satan rather than for God. In trying to defend Christ on the basis of his own understanding, he found himself standing against Christ.

Satan knew that the way of the cross was the way of his own defeat, and he therefore opposed the cross with all his being. And it is because they are spiritual children of the devil (John 8:44) that unbelievers consider the cross of Christ to be a foolish stumbling block (1 Cor. 1:18, 23). Satan knows that the cross is the place of men’s deliverance from his dominion of sin and death, the only path from his kingdom of darkness to God’s kingdom of light. After Christ died on the cross, Satan tried to keep Him dead; but the grave had no power over Him, just as it would have no power over His church (Matt. 16:18), the redeemed fellowship of those who put their trust in Him.

The temptation to avoid the cross was a real temptation to Christ, because He knew the cross meant inconceivable agony to Him. He knew what the agony would be in taking all the consequences of the world’s sin upon Himself and what a horror it would be to be separated from His heavenly Father even for a few hours. That is why in the Garden of Gethsemane He sweat drops of blood and prayed, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me” (Luke 22:42-44).

Because Peter had taken the side of Satan, he became a stumbling block to Christ. Stumbling block is from skandalon, a word originally used of an animal trap, in particular the part where the bait was placed. The term eventually came to be used of luring a person into captivity or destruction. Satan was using Peter to set a trap for Jesus.

THE PRINCIPLES FOR US

for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” (16:23b)

Jesus here gives the reason Peter fell into Satan’s trap and found himself trying to lure his Lord into it as well: he was not setting his mind on God’s interests, but man’s. Because he is fallen and sinful, man’s ways are not the Lord’s, his interests are not God’s.

Because Peter was reasoning from his own finite and sinful mind, he found himself siding with Satan and opposing God. When he trusted in his own perspective, he could no longer see God’s. Because he did not continue to submit to the leading of the Father (see v. 17), he lost the Father’s perspective. In his human wisdom he could not fathom why his Lord, the Messiah, had to “go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed” (v. 21). He was thinking like an unredeemed, fleshly man and found himself becoming “hostile toward God” (Rom. 8:7).

When believers focus on their present pain or potential distress rather than on the Lord who has allowed that pain, they are easy prey for Satan’s traps and can even become his traps for ensnaring others. James therefore says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial,” he goes on to say; “for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (v. 12).

From Peter’s rebuke and Jesus’ counter rebuke, Christians can learn two important lessons. The first is that God’s way of salvation does not correspond to men’s. His kind of Messiah is not man’s kind. Therefore the person who insists on his own kind of Savior and on coming to God on his own terms finds himself opposing God and moving away from Him. Men’s ways never lead to God.

Men cannot have Christ on their own terms. To reject the way of the cross is to reject Christ, no matter how much He may be professed and praised.

Although he failed totally on that occasion in Caesarea Philippi, Peter came to understand and love the way of the cross. That was the way he preached at Pentecost and throughout his ministry. He would one day write with great conviction and joy that Christ “Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24).

The second important lesson is that there is pain in God’s refining process. As Jesus went on to explain in the next verse, He calls His disciples to share His suffering and His cross. They are called to deny themselves and take up their own crosses as they follow Him (Matt. 16:24). Their is no crossless obedience to Christ.

To make spiritual gold of His children, the Father must burn off the sinful dross. Of His redeemed remnant He says, “I will . . . refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are My people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God’” (Zech. 13:9).

Someone has written,

Man judgeth man in ignorance,

he seeth but in part;

Our trust is in our Maker, God,

Who searcheth every heart;

And every wrong and every woe,

when put beneath our feet,

As stepping-stones may help us on

to His high mercy-seat.

Then teach us still to smile, O Lord,

though sharp the stones may be,

Remembering that they bring us near

to Thee, dear Lord, to Thee!