But Who Do You Say that I Am?

(Matthew 16:13-28)

Loren L. Johns

"But who do you say that I am?" Jesus asks his disciples. The question follows an earlier one: "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" The disciples responded to the earlier question, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

Jesus then refocuses the question, "But who do you say that I am?" Jesus is not aiming to compare his disciples’ hermeneutical sophistication with that of the rest of the people; Jesus is pressing for a personal investment. The question forces Jesus’ disciples to dispense with speculation and take a stand.

"You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God," Simon Peter responds. A bold statement indeed, and Jesus explicitly approves of it. He says,

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the ages of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

(16:18-20)

At this point we come to the close of what many consider the first half of Matthew. In 16:21 we read, "From that time on, Jesus began to ..." It is the same phrase that we read in 4:17: "From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’" Just as the phrase signals the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in 4:17, so the phrase in 16:21 signals Jesus’ intentionality in embracing the cross and the way of the cross. From this point on, the shadow of the cross never lies far from the narrative.

However, before we divide Matthew 1:1-16:20 from 16:21-28:20 too cleanly, let us look at possible connections between 16:13-20 and 16:21-28. What does Jesus begin to do in 16:21? "Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (16:21).

But Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him. Jesus was starting to sound pessimistic, he thought. Perhaps Jesus had had a bad day; after all, the walk to Caesarea Philippi had been long and Jesus had recently had that run-in with the Pharisees and Sadducees. And because Peter wanted to be helpful, he pulled Jesus aside and began to explain to Jesus the power of positive thinking. He said, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!" (16:22).

At this point in the narrative a startling thing occurs. Jesus "turned"—apparently away from Peter and toward the rest of the disciples (cf. Mark 8:33)—and said "to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things’" (16:23).

Remarkable! Wasn’t this the same Peter who had just proclaimed Jesus as messiah? Hadn’t Jesus just blessed Peter and affirmed his confession of faith? Hadn’t Jesus just acknowledged that Peter’s insight into Jesus’ messiahship went beyond common human understanding (16:17)? Now Jesus was sharply rebuking Satan through Peter and warning Peter that he was no longer seeing things from God’s perspective (16:23).

What is going on here? Matthew is carefully setting up a central scene in his Gospel—a scene designed to reveal to the reader the nature of Jesus’ messiahship and its close connection to the nature of his followers’ discipleship. Matthew is preparing his readers for the way of the cross, the way of nonviolence, the way of suffering love.

Let us return to the scene of Peter’s great confession. At the end of the first half of Matthew, Jesus warns his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah (16:20). This feature in the Gospel narrative, sometimes called the "Messianic Secret," is more central to the Gospel of Mark. However, Matthew is aware of it and uses it too.

Why is Jesus’ messiahship a secret? This is a complex question related to the editorial interests of the evangelists themselves, but part of the answers lies in the fact that Jesus had not fulfilled the role of the messiah in the minds of most of the people. Jesus had, in fact, been arrested, humiliated, and executed as a common criminal. This, the messiah?!

But note Matthew’s strategy! Jesus responds to the glorious confession of Peter in three ways. First, confession of Jesus as messiah is what forms the very foundation of the church itself—a church that will ultimately prove victorious over the powers of evil (16:18). Second, this church will be constituted by a communal discerning of God’s will—a discerning process so important that it carries God’s own authority (16:19). Third, the messiahship of Jesus is and must be hidden, misunderstood by those who know nothing of the cross (16:20). Apart from the cross, the messiahship of Jesus is either void or meaningless.

Having closed the first half of his Gospel with the hiddenness of Jesus’ messiahship (16:20), Matthew begins the second half of his Gospel with a revelation (deiknumi) of Jesus’ cross (16:21; cf. Rev. 1:1). The way of the cross was something he "must" take; it was part of the divine necessity in his ministry.

The contrast between Peter the confessor and Peter the rebuker could hardly be greater. First, while confession in Jesus as Messiah is the key to the church’s defeat of the forces of evil (16:18), denial of the way of the cross is the key to evil’s defeat of the church (16:23). Second, Peter’s divine perspective on the messiahship of Jesus (16:17) is contrasted with his merely human perspective on the way of the cross (16:23). Third, while Peter’s recognition of Jesus’ messiahship makes him the "rock" on which Christ builds his church (16:18), his rejection of the way of the cross makes him the "stumbling block" (16:23) over which Christ may stumble. Thus, Peter’s rebuke of Jesus is more than a simple misunderstanding; it represents a fundamental rejection of Jesus’ ministry. Peter’s rebuke was so seriously evil because it represented an invitation for Jesus to abandon his calling, to abandon his commitment to consistent, nonviolent love—a commitment that ended in Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus responds to this invitation in the strongest of terms: "Get behind me, Satan" (16:23). Though the connection is lost on English readers, the word in Greek is upage (go away), the same word Jesus uses to rebuke Satan at the conclusion of his temptations in 4:10. Just as the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness represented three fundamental alternatives to the way of the cross in Jesus’ ministry, so the temptation to avoid the way of the cross proved to be the single most dangerous temptation faced by Jesus throughout his ministry (cf. 4:1-11; 16:21-23; 26:36-47)—a temptation so dangerous that it necessarily elicited Jesus’ strong response.

In case Matthew’s readers have missed the point, Matthew drives home the lesson in the verses that immediately follow: "Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (16:24). So it turns out that the controversy over the nature of Jesus’ messiahship is closely linked to the controversy over what it means to be Jesus’ disciple. It is not the way of glory or of triumphalism; it is the way of consistent, nonviolent love—or what the New Testament calls discipleship, the way of the cross. Attempts to loosen that connection—attempts to deny the fundamentally nonviolent nature of discipleship or the connection between Jesus’ cross and the way of discipleship—have continued in the 2000 years since Peter’s wonderful confession. And wherever that break occurs, we see yet again a denial of God’s perspective and an embrace of what is sometimes termed a more "realistic" human perspective. God help us; it is a rejection of the gospel itself!

So the "divide" in Matthew 16:21 turns out not to be a divide, but a fulcrum, the point on which the whole Gospel of Matthew turns. Who do you say that Jesus is?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loren Johns is Assistant Professor of Religion at Bluffton College, Bluffton, Ohio.