In Mark 8:31-33, Jesus is telling His disciples how He must suffer many things, die, and then rise back to life after three days. Just think about this for a moment. The disciples have been following Jesus on a daily basis. They've seen what He can do. Their lives are consumed by following Jesus. They've even began to experience the power to do some of the things He's been doing. Then, He tells them He must suffer and die.
While we don't know how all of the disciples reacted, we do know how Peter reacted: He freaked out. So much so that Mark says Peter "Took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him." Seriously! Peter is now rebuking Jesus. Peter has actually just went way beyond freak out. He's now correcting the plan and will of God in Jesus' life. Nevertheless, Jesus responds by calling Peter "Satan" and putting him back in his place.
Okay, so we look at Peter and realize he had a freak out moment and overreacted, but let me ask all of us this question... Why did Peter freak out? Maybe in that moment Peter realized that...
- Jesus would no longer be there for him to physically depend on.
- If Jesus had to suffer and die, perhaps he would to
- Everything was about to get very intense and serious
I don't know exactly why Peter freaked out, but immediately after this exchange between Jesus and Peter, Jesus turns to the crowd and says, "If anyone wants to follow Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." I think it's safe to assume Peter knew that in order to truly follow Christ, he'd have to experience to some degree the same thing that Jesus was about to endure.
For us today, I think this freak out moment of realizing
that we can't have things our way and still follow Jesus must happen in order
for us to experience salvation. Again, I'm just going off what Jesus
says. The call to follow Jesus is to surrender to a lifestyle
that continually responds to His Lordship; this includes dying to everything we
are. Jesus had to die because through His death He was able to bring life for
us. The same principal plays out with us... Unless we are willing to truly die
to ourselves, we'll never start to live for Him!
This is scary. Surrender is so difficult, yet it's so
freeing at the same time. I can understand why Peter had a freak out
moment. Any true follower of Jesus must face this same reality check of
surrender. What I can't understand is how so many people can profess to follow
Jesus but show no evidence of dying to themselves and living under
the Lordship of Jesus. Maybe it's because we focus way to much on
"avoiding Hell" in our comfortable Christian American culture by
simply praying a prayer to "get out of Hell." Regardless of what
we've heard taught from the pulpits on Sundays, this conversation between Jesus
and Peter reminds us that we can't afford to continue presenting and
believing a half-gospel that focuses primarily on life after death instead of
dying to self and living surrendered to Christ on a daily basis.
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