YOU HAVE
YOUR MIND ON THE THINGS OF MEN
31And he began
to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by
the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three
days rise again.
32And he said
this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning
and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said,
“Get behind me,
Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the
things of man.”
MARK
8:31-33
COMMENTARY
When Lord JESUS
started warning his disciples about his future passion, death and resurrection;
he told them this not only to give them confidence for when that time came, but
also to give them joy by telling them of his resurrection.
We do not know
how the apostles and other disciples took this, or how much they believed in
his words (Mark 16:13); but Peter loved Jesus, and it seems that even though he
had been previously blessed for declaring openly that Jesus was the Messiah and
the Son of God (Compare Matthew 16:13-20 with Mark 8:27-30), he still did not
have the spiritual maturity of an apostolic witness, because ignoring the words
about his resurrection, he tried to dissuade Jesus from giving himself to
death.
Peter did not do
this out of lack of faith. He must have believed that Jesus could come back to
life.
He did not try
to stop Jesus from dying because he wanted Jesus to fail in his mission. He did
it out of naïve ignorance and lack of spiritual discernment.
Peter did not understand the need of Jesus’s atoning death for the redemption of humanity. He just thought about the terrible death that Jesus was about to give himself to and wanted to spare him the suffering, even probably to the cost of humanity’s salvation.
Lord Jesus
understood this, but he called Peter an ‘opposer’ (Satan), because he wanted to
give all the present a lesson (v.33).
The disciples had
lived with Jesus daily for probably three years by then, and they should have
been aware of the purpose of Jesus’s ministry, but they were not. They still
needed spiritual maturity.
When Jesus
rebuked Peter, he meant what he said for everyone listening that may have still
had their minds set on human feelings and views. He called Peter an ‘opposer’ for by putting
his mind on human reasons, he was becoming an obstacle in the way of God’s
redemptive plan.
Jesus’s death
was not going to be a defeat, but a triumph. His pain even though terrible, was
not going to be the end of his life, but the doorway to Glory and salvation for
mankind.
Peter and all
the disciples, should have had his eyes set on God’s overall plan, and not in
limited human perception; and thus, be a support to Jesus in his sacred mission,
which transcended all human concerns.
Omar Flores.
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