THE GOSPEL OF MARK
The Great Galilean Ministry
When we come to Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, we come to the first major turning-point and first climax in the Gospel of Mark. Many NT scholars label Peter's confession the "watershed" event of the Gospel. A watershed is a point at which several streams come together to form one roaring river. Up to this point in the Gospel, we've seen different streams in Jesus' ministry: performing miracles, teaching His disciples, and confronting the demons in human and spiritual form. But just who is the One who is performing miracles, teaching, and exorcising? (Part of that answer was given in Mark 6 when Jesus declared Himself to be "I Am"; however, the disciples did not understand the significance of Jesus' declaration.) Well, all this activity is going on without answering the most important question: "Who is this Jesus?" Here Jesus nails down once and for all for His disciples who He is—the Messiah. After this point, He will help His disciples understand what kind of Messiah He is going to be.
I said that this was a turning point because up to this time Jesus has focused on healing, teaching, etc.; from now on, Jesus will focus on helping His disciples understand what kind of Messiah He is and how that affects the kind of disciples they are supposed to be. From this point on, Jesus will emphasize His suffering and death, and how that should affect them if they are truly His followers.
"YOU ARE THE CHRIST (8:27-30)
As early as Mark 6 we saw Jesus trying to escape the crowds in order to spend some time alone with His disciples. One of the reasons Jesus wished to withdraw from the crowds was that He wished to spend some time training His disciples more intensively. At this point, Jesus has taken His disciples to the uttermost north-eastern part of the Holy Land, near the foot of Mt. Hermon, in the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi. It is most interesting that Jesus would choose this city as the site where His disciples would make one of the most important confessions about Him in the entire NT. Caesarea Philippi had originally been a grotto dedicated to the worship of the Greek god Pan (half man and half goat). Later Herod Philip (hence the name "Philippi") had developed the site into a city dedicated to the worship Caesar Augustus (hence the name "Caesarea"). This city dedicated to the worship of the mythological god Pan and the all too-human Caesar was the site where Jesus is declared to be the Messiah, God's Son.
Jesus introduces the topic of who He is by asking the disciples who the crowd believed He was. The disciples say that the Jewish crowd thinks of Jesus as John the Baptist raised from the dead (this was Herod's thought too); others thought that He was Elijah; whereas others thought of Him as one of the OT prophets who had returned from the dead. (Matthew informs us that still others thought that Jesus was Jeremiah the prophet.)
A common thread runs through all these answers. The Jews in Jesus' day believed that all these figures were forerunners of the Messiah, Israel's king. John the Baptist had come to prepare the way for the Messiah; Malachi 4:5 had predicted that Elijah would return before the coming of the day of the Lord; Jewish tradition had taught that Jeremiah, who supposedly had hidden the Temple vessels before the Babylonians had destroyed the Temple in 586 BC, would return in order to return the Temple vessels to Israel before the Messiah came. These all were great men to be sure, but only forerunners of the Messiah, and not the Messiah himself.
These beliefs not only tell us what the Jews believed about Jesus but also point to the character of Jesus Himself. We've seen pictures of Jesus which portray Him as being meek and mild. Yet Jesus resembled these other prophets to such an extent that the Jews identified Him with them. John the Baptist—rugged, living in the wilderness, preaching a fiery message of repentance; Elijah—another wilderness prophet, not only preaching fire but also bringing it down from heaven upon the sacrifice at Mt. Carmel; Jeremiah—a prophet, despised, persecuted who nevertheless wept constantly over Israel's spiritual condition. Any portrait of Jesus must include these attributes.
Jesus at this moment was not concerned with what the crowds believed about Him; there was ample time after He ascended for His followers to correct their false views. What the disciples believed about Him though did concern Him. They were the ones who were to carry on His ministry after His ascension, and the ultimate success of that ministry hinged on them. So Jesus asks them: "But you—especially you, whom do you say that I am?" To which Peter replies: "You are the Christ."
This is the first climax of the Gospel of Mark because it is the first time that anybody connected Jesus with the tile of Messiah, the Christ. Mark introduced his Gospel by declaring that Jesus was the Christ; however, this is the first time in the course of Jesus' ministry that anybody has actually made this connection. Peter saw in Jesus the fulfillment of all that the OT promises about the coming of a Messiah who would one day deliver Israel from her enemies, One who would usher in the kingdom of God in which not only would the Jews participate but even the Gentiles themselves. Righteousness would reign throughout the land; salvation would be extended to all who lived in this kingdom; and the land itself would be transformed to the extent that even the desert itself would blossom. All of Israel's hopes and dreams promoted in the OT were wrapped up in Jesus according to Peter's confession.
For you and me, Jesus being the Messiah means that He is the One who ultimately fulfills all our hopes and dreams. Many Christians unfortunately either live life in a state of denial or else have yet to meet life head on. When John describes the new heaven and the new earth, he first tells us what is NOT going to be there: "there shall no longer be any death, there shall no longer be any mourning or crying or pain—the first things have passed away!" (Rev. 21:4). The main characteristics of this present age are death, mourning, crying, and pain. How many have been frustrated in marriage, in their relationships with their parents, or their children? You do the right thing with your children and they still mess up horribly. How many thought that if they studied hard at school and really busted their tail on the job that they would succeed in business? How many thought that if we promoted correct political ideas that emphasized morality that the state and nation would go along? Life by itself can really frustrate. But do you know what? Jesus never fails. In an ultimate sense that is what the NT means when it calls Jesus the Messiah. When most of His disciples abandoned Him because they did not like the claims He was making on their lives, Jesus asked Peter why he did not leave Him also. Peter answered:
"Lord, to whom shall we go? YOU have words of eternal life (John 6:68).
Although Jesus accepts Peter's confession, He nevertheless instructs Peter not to share this with anyone other than the disciples. Whereas many of Peter's views about the Messiah were correct, they were only partially correct. Peter's views about the Messiah centered on Jesus being a deliverer and conqueror only; more was involved though. Just before this story Mark gives us the miracle of the healing of the blind man. After Jesus touched the man's eyes, the man claimed that he could see men walking about but only dimly—in fact they were like trees walking. Only after Jesus had touched him the second time could the blind man see clearly. Mark places this miracle before the story of Peter's confession to tell us that right now the disciples see Jesus "dimly"—they don't understand fully; only after Jesus has touched them again by His death and resurrection will they be able to see clearly who Jesus really is. Until they clearly see Jesus, they are to remain silent.
THE NATURE OF JESUS' MESSIAHSHIP (8:31-33)>B>
From this point on, Jesus will speak openly about the nature of His Messiahship. He informs His disciples and the crowds following them that the Son of Man had to suffer many things, be rejected by chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees (that is, the Sanhedrin—the supreme court of the Jews), be killed, and then after 3 days rise again.
Note several things about Jesus' statement. First, Jesus claimed that He HAD to suffer. Why did He have to suffer? One, because this was God's will. Although the Sanhedrin on that Friday afternoon thought that they had gotten the upper hand in their struggle against Jesus by nailing Him to the cross, the truth is that everything was happening according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God (see Acts 2:23). Jesus ultimately went to the cross because the Father had willed it. Two, Jesus' death was the logical outcome of all of God's dealings with His people, the Jews. Stephen in his defense before the Sanhedrin outlines the treatment of God's messengers by the Jews beginning with Joseph. In each instance, the Jews not only rejected God's messengers but in many cases persecuted and even killed them. If Jesus was truly God's ultimate messenger, then He had to suffer the same treatment the rest of God's messengers suffered.
Second, Jesus claims that He will have to suffer many things at the hands of the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees. At this point, Jesus does not specify what He means by "suffering many things." The "many things" will eventually include mocking, scourging, and crucifixion, but at this point Jesus does not stress out the disciples with gory details. Furthermore, Jesus states that this mistreatment will come from the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees—the 3 elements of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme court. The chief priests were members of the chief priest's family, some of them in fact had been chief priests at an earlier date but had been forced to resign by the Romans because the Romans forbid the concentration of all this power in the hands of just one person. The scribes were originally copyists who transcribed the OT. As years went on, because they copied the OT, their knowledge of the OT increased to such an extent that they eventually became experts on the OT and its Law. The third element was the party of the Pharisee, a group of legalistic, religiously conservative men who enjoyed great favor with the people. These 3 groups of men are the best religious men that the world can produce; they were intellectually superior to most; they were the social elite of their day. They represent the best the world can produce, and yet when they encountered God the Son, they sought to kill Him. It was not a gang of hoodlums who wanted Jesus dead; it was the world's best.
Third, Jesus claimed that even though He would be killed, He would rise after 3 days. Neither the Sanhedrin nor death would have the final say as to Jesus' ultimate outcome. He and the Father determined that He should rise on the third day, which according to the Jews means the same as rising after 3 days. (Many claim that Jesus did not rise on the third day, much less AFTER three days. That is because they reckon days according to the American system of counting days and not the Jewish system of which this is a part. Remember that Jesus died and was buried before 6 p.m. on Friday—according to the Jews though this would have been day one since their days ran from 6 p.m. one day to 6 p.m. the following day. So He was buried on Friday afternoon—day 1. Day 2 began at 6 p.m. on Friday which was really the beginning of their Saturday. Jesus remained in the tomb at least until 6 p.m. Saturday, day 2. Jesus rose from the dead some time after 6 p.m. Saturday which would have been on the Jewish Sunday—day 3. Jesus rose from the dead on the 3rd day according to the Jewish system of counting days.)
Peter is appalled at Jesus' explanation of the nature of His Messiahship and takes Jesus aside in order to rebuke Him. Jesus wheels around and instead rebukes Peter, calling him "Satan." (The word translated "rebukes" here is the same word Mark uses when Jesus rebukes the demons. This does not sound good for Peter.) He claims that Peter is not thinking like God but rather like man. This is one of the harshest statements of Jesus in the entire Bile, and He does not make it to one of His enemies but to a disciple of the inner circle of disciples. Making one of the greatest confessions about Jesus in the entire Bible does not preclude a person from falling under Satan’s influence. (Note that man apart from God easily becomes Satan’s tool.) Many Christians who have walked closely with the Lord have unfortunately followed Satan to use them to destroy Christians and churches. Unwittingly Peter has become an agent of Satan who is tempting Jesus to reject the cross as the means of becoming the King in the Kingdom of God.
THE NATURE OF DISCIPLESHIP (8:34-38)
The nature of Jesus' Messiahship has implications not only for Jesus but also for His followers. It would simply be illogical for Jesus the Master to suffer persecution and then for His followers to get off scot-free. Jesus does not claim that suffering for Him is optional; rather He claims that it is the essential qualification for a person to meet if s/he is going to be His disciples. Jesus claims that "if anyone wishes to come after Me [a technical way of saying being Jesus' disciples], let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me" (8:34).
What does Jesus mean when He speaks of taking up a cross and following Him? Those early listeners would have understood it in only one way—martyrdom. Many times we limit Jesus' statement to being nothing more than a metaphor which urges us to suffer hardship for Jesus' sake, to put aside our will and agenda in order to promote Jesus' will and agenda. While these are involved in Jesus' statement, Jesus' statement is much more demanding than that. Just like He was speaking literally when He claimed He would be killed, so here is He speaking literally. The person who is confronted with martyrdom for Jesus' sake must be willing to die for Him.
Acceptance of martyrdom or rejection of martyrdom is not something Jesus' disciples can play with—treat as optional. Accepting martyrdom doesn't make you a good Christian while rejecting martyrdom makes you less of a Christian. Jesus says that the person who rejects martyrdom in order to save his physical life will ultimately lose his life spiritually. On the other hand, the person who accepts martyrdom resulting in loss of physical life will actually gain his life spiritually throughout eternity. There is no grey area in this matter. Reject martyrdom--physical gain but spiritual loss eternally. Accept martyrdom-physical loss but spiritual gain.
Look at what a foolish exchange it is to give up one's eternal spiritual life in order to keep one's physical life. Jesus speaks hyperbolically when He says, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" The truth is that no man has ever gained the whole world when he rejected Jesus. Men have become president, kings, earls, ministers—yet no one has ever gained the whole world. We've gained only a whole lot less. Therefore, if it doesn't profit a person to gain the whole world by rejecting Christ when it results in losing his soul, then we're surely not profited by what we gain in exchange for our souls.
Jesus furthermore warns us that once that spiritual life is lost, it cannot be reclaimed: "For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" The answer is "Nothing!" Once a person has lost his/her soul, that soul is lost forever. Denying Jesus in this life, even at the cost of martyrdom, has an eternal catastrophic impact upon that person. On the last day, Jesus will sit in judgment. Before His Father He will profess a person who has professed Him on earth; on the other hand, before God He will be ashamed of a person who was ashamed of Him on earth by denying Him in order to escape martyrdom. Jesus was radical in His relationship towards the Father. He demands nothing less from us.