1

but

28. And they answered, 1 John the Baptist: some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29. And he saith unto them, But whom say ye I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, 2 Thou art the Christ.

that

am? And they told him, say- 28

ing, John the Baptist and others, Elijah; but others, One of the prophets. And he 29 asked them, But who say ye

that I am? Peter answereth

and saith unto him, Thou art

1 Matt. 14:2. 2 Matt. 16: 16. John 6:69; 11: 27.

the way for the next. Godet. It was a time of at least seeming failure and partial desertion. "From that time," St. John relates (6: 66-70), "many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." He had turned to the twelve, and asked in tones of touching sadness," Will ye also go away?" and had received from Peter the re-assuring answer, "Lord, to whom shall we go? But in the mean time there had been signs of wavering. It was time, if we may so speak, that they should be put to a crucial test, and the alternative of faith, or want of faith, pressed home upon their consciences. — Ellicott.

28. John the Baptist. Who had been killed by Herod a few months before, now restored to life. That was one popular notion regarding him, circulating, no doubt, chiefly among those who had never seen him. Herod Antipas entertained it (chap. 6:16). Elias. The great ideal of a prophet and spiritual reformer. It was very generally expected that he was to return to the earth in connection with the Messiah's advent (Mal. 4: 5). · Morison. One of the prophets. The Jews believed that at the coming of the Messiah the prophets were to rise again. The nearer still the "kingdom of heaven" came, by so much the more did they dream of the resurrection of the prophets.-Lightfoot. The Jews of our Lord's time might have found out, if they had been honest inquirers, that Jesus of Nazareth was neither John the Baptist, nor Elias, nor an old prophet, but the Christ of God. The speculative Christian of our own day might easily satisfy himself on every point which is needful to salvation, if he would really, candidly, and humbly seek the teaching of the Spirit. Ryle. They did not declare their belief in him as the Messiah himself, doubtless for this reason, that the whole ministry of Christ appeared to them to stand in contradiction to their Messianic expectations. Olshausen.

29. Whom say ye that I am? Twice does Jesus put this question, in order to impress upon them the importance of entertaining a right opinion concerning him. Of all religious ideas, none are so important as the right idea of Christ.- Genius of the Gospel. He had never openly spoken of his Messiahship. It was his will that the revelation should dawn gradually on the minds of his children; that it should spring more from the truths he spake, and the life he lived, than from the wonders which he wrought. It was in the Son of man that they were to recognize the Son of God.-Farrar. The time was come when it was of the greatest moment that they should have a settled conception of his real character and mission. Morison. As for the disciples, they needed a religious confession thus deeply rooted in their convictions, to enable them to confront the trying future on which they were about to enter. -Meyer. This was the decisive moment in which the separation of the New Testament from the Old Testament theocracy was to be made. The hour had come for the utterance of a distinct Christian confession. - Lange. And Peter answered. With that honest readiness and impulsiveness which were so characteristic of his nature, and which fitted him for being a leader of the little circle.-Morison. Thou art the Christ; Matthew adds, the Son of the living God. This confession not only sees in Jesus the promised Messiah, but in the Messiah recognizes the divine nature. - Cambridge Bible. The confession of Peter is the first fundamental Christian confession of faith, and the germ of the Apostles' Creed. — Lange. It was a decisive answer,

and given as out of a higher inspiration. The Lord himself, as we learn from Matt. 16: 17, traced the thought to its divine source. And yet it was, no doubt, founded on evidence which the disciple had diligently studied, and logically construed to his own inner satisfaction. It was evidence which, when impartially weighed in the balance of judicial reason, warranted the conclusion. Morison. It was, indeed, an amazing utterance. The twelve had been the daily witnesses of the human simplicity and poverty of his life, his homelessness, his weary wanderings afoot, and all the circumstances of his constant humiliation. Yet they had broken through the hereditary national prejudice of their race, and had seen in their lowly rejected Master the true Lord of the new kingdom of God. Nor is the fact less wonderful that the life and words of Jesus, seen thus closely, should have created such a lofty and holy conception of his spiritual greatness, amid all the counteractions of outward fact and daily familiarity. In spite of all, he was the King-Messiah to those who had known him best. Geikie.

Matthew says (16: 17-19) that immediately after this confession Jesus called Peter the rock, and declared that on the rock Peter, or the rock of the truth he had confessed, he would

30. And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.

31. And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and killed, and after three days rise again.

be

32. And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.

1 Matt. 16: 20. 2 Matt. 16:21; 17: 22.

the Christ. And he charged 30 them that they should tell no man of him. And he began 31 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.

And he spake the saying 32

openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But 33

Luke 9: 22.

build the Church; and gave to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. All this naturally follows from a reception of the great central truth of Christianity; and all who really receive it and live on it are rocks on which Christ builds his Church, and by that truth unlock the kingdom of heaven to the souls of others. - P.

30. Tell no man of him. There is, it must be remembered, "a time to keep silence," as well as 66 a time to speak" (Eccles. 3:7). And the state of society throughout Palestine was such that direct public, or even private, promulgation, on the part of the disciples, of our Lord's Messiah-hood, would, at that particular time, have done much injury and little or no good. - Morison. Christ's Messianic life had to be actually completed before his disciples were to testify of him as the Christ.-Lange. Men would have suspected that he was affecting the Jewish throne, and cherishing designs at variance with the rule of the Herods and the supremacy of the Cesars. - Cardinal Cajetan.

The

III. The True Idea of the Messiah. - Vers. 31-33. 31. And he began to teach them. From this time the teaching of Jesus to his disciples, and also to the world at large, assumed a new character. — Andrews. He began to instruct the disciples; for their minds, like the minds of most of their compeers in the nation, were full of fancies in reference to the Messiah. -Morison. Gradually, as they were able to bear it, he showed them how the great purpose of God in the Messiah must be effected through his death. — Andrews. The Son of man. This title was in itself, to Jewish ears, a clear assertion of Messiahship. In consequence of the prophecy in Dan. 7:13, the Son of man became a popular and official title of the Messiah. As the Son of man, our Lord was the Messiah, a true member of the human race, its pattern and representative. - Liddon's Bampton Lectures. Must suffer many things. In this strange way carrying out the true idea of the Messiah (Isa. 53). Rejected of the elders, chief priests, and scribes. three constituents of the Sanhedrim. The elders (leading men) would be chosen because of their material and political influence; the high priests, because of their elevated ecclesiastical position; the scribes, because of their literary and rabbinical qualifications. — Morison. Now, for the first time, the disciples received full and clear information of the sufferings and death of Christ. The full confession of faith being made and accepted, it was important that the true, specific character of the Messiah should be set forth as it had been revealed by the greatest of prophets, in contradistinction from the notions then popularly entertained and still shared by the disciples. — Cook. And be killed. The atoning sacrífice for the sins of the world, the fulfilment of all the sacrifices of the temple. He foresaw it all, and yet went steadily onward to the consummation of his mediatorial career! -Morison. After three days. Long enough to make the fact of his death certain. Cook. Rise again. Some grand mediatorial purpose was to be subserved by the death; but the state of death was to be only temporary, and for an exceedingly brief period. The Saviour of men must be alive for evermore. There were indeed grand purposes which could not be realized unless he lived. - Morison.

32. And he spake that saying openly. Without reserve, publicly. The previous statements respecting this subject, made by our Lord, were expressed in figurative language. Godwin. And Peter began to rebuke him. The same Peter who but just now had made so noble and spiritual a confession, and received so high a blessing, now shows the weak and carnal side of his character. The expression of spiritual faith may, and frequently does, precede the betraying of carnal weakness; and never is this more probable than when the mind has just been uplifted, as Peter's was, by commendation and lofty promise. - Alford. Peter, elated with his own spiritual insight, and the blessing pronounced upon himself, with the impetuosity of his nature attempted to take his Lord to account for apparently contradicting that confession by announcing his sufferings and death.-J. P. Thompson. It arose also from his love for his Master, and desire that he should not suffer so, or leave them.-P. This world has many Peters, who wish to be wiser than Christ, and to prescribe to him what it is needful to do. — Hofmeister. No

on

33. But when he had turned about and looked his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

- Baxter. It is

wonder if novices now think themselves wiser than their wisest teachers. worthy of note, that the faults of Peter are most openly acknowledged by Mark, whose Gospel is the record of Peter's own preaching, and was probably dictated by Peter himself. 33. Turned about and looked on his disciples. A sudden movement is indicated. Looking at all, he singles out Peter for special warning. Cook. Rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan. Christ saw, with the lightning glance of his spirit, in the words of Peter a suggestion not so much of his as of Satan's. Trench. The very words which he had used to the Tempter in the wilderness (Matt. 4:10); for in truth the apostle was adopting the very argument which the great enemy had adopted there. - Maclear. Satan is most busy to seduce us when we are most highly exalted and favored by Christ. Lange. In turning from Peter our Lord was really putting "behind" him the evil being who was tempting him through Peter. For thou savorest not the things of God, but the things of men. The Saviour, in these words, speaks home to the personality of Peter. He pays no further heed, as it were, to the darker presence behind. Peter, under the influence of that presence, was suffering the eye of his intelligence to be eclipsed; and hence he was allowing his interests to gather clusteringly around what would be immediately agreeable to merely human feelings, instead of what would be agreeable to the mind and heart of God. - Morison.

LIBRARY REFERENCES.

Thomas's Genius of the Gospel, pp. 295-321. Smith's Testimony of the Messiah. Geikie's Life of Christ. On Cesarea Philippi, see Tristram's Land of Israel and Rob Roy on the fordan. Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 397, etc. Liddon's Bampton Lectures: Our Lord's Divinity, chap. i. Hawker's Divinity of Christ: "The Testimony of the Apostles."

ILLUSTRATIVE.

I. In the very interesting account which Cheselden has given (Anatomy, p. 301, 1768, London) of the feelings of a child, who, having been blind from his birth, was enabled to see, a curious confirmation of the truthfulness of this narrative occurs : "When he first saw, he knew not the shape of any thing, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude; but, being told what things were, whose forms he before knew from feeling, he would carefully observe that he might know them again."- Trench. II. Our eyes opened. Many persons are like Jonah asleep in a storm. Their eyes do not see the danger around them, nor the storm of God's wrath against sin, or the folly of running away from God. Very much of our growth and progress depends on better seeing, seeing more of the meaning of God's word, seeing God, seeing eternal realities, seeing the significance of life, seeing opportunities of doing good, seeing better ideals and possibilities. Heaven and earth, so full of blessings and truths and opportunities and glories, are often invisible to us, as the chariots and horses defending Elisha were invisible to his servant. Let us all pray for more sight - and insight. "Lord, that our eyes may be opened." - P.

III. Divinity of Christ. "I know men: Jesus is not a man! Jesus is not a philosopher; for his proofs are miracles, and from the first his disciples adored him. Alexander, Cesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but on what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him. I die before my time; and my body will be given back to the earth, to become food for worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and is extending over the whole earth!"— Napoleon Bonaparte.

PRACTICAL.

I. Ver. 22. Let us lead the spiritually blind to Christ.

2. Ver. 24. The progress into the light is often gradual.

3. But by one degree of sight we gain faith for more perfect seeing.

4. One great need of men is that the eyes of their minds be opened.

5.

Ver. 27. Of all ideas, none are so important as the religious. Of all religious ideas, none are so important as the right idea of Christ. Thomas.

6. Ver. 29. Christ's character, works, and kingdom on earth, compel us to believe that he is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

7. On that fact, and the belief in it, has been built the whole kingdom of God in the world.

8. Ver. 32. Many a person thinks himself wiser than the Bible or than God. 9. Note the rapidity with which men pass from a proper to an improper mood. · Thomas. IO. Ver. 32. improper mood.

II.

Ver. 33.

Note the readiness of Christ to acknowledge the proper and rebuke the

Our best friend becomes our worst enemy when he employs his friendship to tempt us to evil. — Abbott.

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS.

The point of this lesson is the answer to the question, WHAT THINK YE of Christ? He is seen first (1) as the giver of sight to the blind, vers. 22-26. There is much need for all of us that our eyes be opened (see Illustrative, II.). Then he uses this miracle as a parable, and proceeds to give spiritual sight to the disciples. For (2) there is spiritual blindness, wrong ideas about Christ (vers. 27, 28); but (3) Christ removes this, and gives spiritual sight, the true ideas about Christ as the Messiah (vers. 29-33), the things of God as distinguished from the hopes and plans that men would use.

FOLLOWING CHRIST. - MARK 8:34-38; 9:1.

GOLDEN TEXT.-Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. - MARK 8:34.

TIME.-Summer of A.D. 29; soon after the close of the last lesson.

PLACE. In the villages of Cesarea Philippi, about thirty miles north-east of Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. It was in the tetrarchy of Herod Philip, brother of Herod Antipas.

RULERS.-Tiberius Cesar, emperor of Rome (16th year). Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea (fourth year); Herod Antipas, of Galilee and Perea (33d year); Herod Philip, of Iturea, etc., including Cesarea Philippi (33d year).

PARALLEL ACCOUNTS. - Matt. 16: 24-28. Luke 9:23-27.

INTRODUCTION.

As the time for Jesus' departure from earth drew near, he impressed upon the minds of his disciples the great truths of his divinity and his atoning death (in our last lesson), and then corrected their notions as to the nature of his kingdom, and what they should expect as members of that kingdom. So that from this time his teachings assume a new character. While he shows them what it will cost to follow him, he also shows how much worse it will be not to follow him, and points out the future triumph and glories of his kingdom, of which they should be partakers. All this is still more deeply inwrought into their minds by the transfiguration which follows a week later.

And he called unto him the 34 multitude with his disciples,

34. And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, 1Whosoever and said unto them, If any

1 Matt. 10: 38; 16:24. Luke 9:23; 14: 27.

EXPLANATORY.

I. Taking up the Cross. - Ver. 34. 34. And when he had called the people. What he had been speaking was to the disciples alone. Now he wants to instruct the people also, for all needed the lesson he would impart. It was necessary that the disciples

man would come after me, let

will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

his cross, and follow me. For 35

should first know the mysteries of the kingdom, but the great practical truths belonged to all even then, for all could understand them; and thus he prepared them to receive the truths about his Messiahship which he had taught his disciples. With his disciples also. Special knowledge in no degree released them from the great practical duties he would enforce. He said unto them. Jesus would not entrap followers under false pretences. He tells them plainly the difficulties and trials they are sure to meet. He never tries to persuade men to follow him by merely telling them how happy they will be, how many and how delightsome are the joys they will receive; but he always also shows them the thorns in the pathway, the enemies, the dangers, the difficulties, they must encounter.

Why? Because this is the sieve that sifts out false followers. It is the Ithuriel's spear, which tests whether they are disciples in deed and in truth, or only seekers after the loaves and fishes. One who follows Christ only in fair weather, for the sake of the pleasures he bestows, is not a disciple in heart, is not filled with the spirit of heaven, is not fit for heaven. His selfishness has merely taken another form. But he who will serve Christ, and do righteousness, because right and love demand it, though it lead through dens of lions, or martyr's fires, or Gethsemanes and Calvaries, he proves that he is in deed and in truth filled with the love of God, and the spirit of righteousness. — P. Whosoever will come. Will here is not a mere future, but a separate verb: whosoever wills, chooses, determines, to come. Will come after me. Will become my disciple. There was an eagerness among many of the people to "come after him." The wistfulness of a considerable proportion of the northern population had been awakened. They were ruminating anxiously on Old Testament predictions, and filled with vague expectancy. They saw that the rabbi of Nazareth was no common rabbi. He was a wonderful Being. It is not strange, therefore, that they pictured out to themselves all sorts of possibilities in connection with his career. -Morison. Let him deny himself. The word is strong in the original,-let him deny himself off, let him entirely renounce himself. Let him be prepared to say "no to many of the strongest cravings of his nature, in the direction more particularly of earthly ease, comfort, dignity, and glory.-Morison. Our common thoughts of "self-denial," i e., the denial to ourselves of some pleasure or profit, fall far short of the meaning of the Greek. The man is to deny his whole self, all his natural motives and impulses, so far as they come into conflict with the claims of Christ. - Ellicott. Self-denial for the sake of self-denial, as if our pains and troubles were a sweet incense to God, and he were the more pleased the more we suffer, is contrary to Christ's teaching and promises. St. Paul calls such self-denial a doctrine of devils (1 Tim. 4:1-3), because it belies God's goodness, makes men selfrighteous, and keeps them from the true self-denial which Christ requires. What is the self-denial which Christ requires? It is to deny ourselves every thing wrong, no matter how pleasant it may be; it is to do right, and serve Christ, and aid his kingdom, and help our fellow-men, at whatever cost, even though it be death. It is to make Christ first, and every thing else second.-P. Take up his cross. Luke adds, daily; not once, but all the time. The cross is the pain of the self-denial required in the preceding words. The cross is the symbol of doing our duty, even at the cost of the most painful death. Christ obeyed God, and carried out his work for the salvation of men, though it required him to die upon the cross in order to do it. And ever since, the cross has stood as the emblem, not of suffering, but of suffering for the sake of Christ and his gospel; as the highest ideal of obedience to God at any and every cost. — P. Observe, his own cross, not some other man's. Compare Heb. 12: 1, "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Observe, too, on the one hand, that the Christian is not merely to bear the inevitable cross laid upon him, but to take up the cross voluntarily. The connection between this and the preceding verse is clear: Not only must you accept the doctrine of a suffering Messiah, if you are to be my disciple you must possess my spirit of willing self-sacrifice for love's sake. - Abbott. The point of duty for us, as for the Master, is not to seek the cross, but by the cross to seek the glory of the resurrection, which is found in no other path. The cross for the cross, never; but the cross for the Lord, always.-A. Monod. And follow me. To follow Christ is to take him for our master, our teacher, our example; to believe his doctrines, to uphold his cause, to obey his precepts, and to do it though it leads to heaven by the way of the cross. It is not merely to do right, but to do right for his sake, under his leadership, and according to his teaching.-P. "The Christian," says Luther, "is a Crucian." The Saviour pictures to his hearers a procession. He himself takes the lead with his cross. He is the chief Crucian. All his disciples follow. Each has his own particular cross. But

the direction of the procession, when one looks far enough, is toward the kingdom of heavenly glory.-Morison.

ん

attagreoμareNS.

"deny utterly"

same word in Peter, denial

out.26:34.55.

155