Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 8-9.

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After Peter declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, Jesus began teaching them that He would suffer, be killed, then, after three days, rise again.  When Peter heard him say this, he took Jesus aside and rebuked Him for being negative.  I am convinced that Peter thought that Jesus was feeling like He was going to fail when He started saying those things.  Peter was convinced that the Christ would win a mighty battle over His enemies and never suffer.  In this situation, Jesus called Peter “Satan”, which means “Adversary”, because what Peter was saying was similar to the temptations which He experienced in the wilderness right after His baptism by John.  Peter was telling Jesus that He did not need to suffer, that Jesus instead should use His power to force people to honor Him.  Once again I find myself knowing in my head what I want to say, but failing to put it into words.  I want to note that just before rebuking Peter for this, Jesus turned and saw that His disciples were watching, and, I believe, offering their support to Peter as their spokesperson.  So, Jesus’ rebuke was meant for all of them.  Jesus was telling them that their understanding of what the Christ would be was incomplete and mistaken.  In the same way, we need to recognize that God does not always work the way we expect.  It was immediately after this that Jesus taught that whoever wanted to follow Him must deny their own wants, take up their cross and follow Him.  The crowd would have understood taking up their cross to mean heading towards suffering and death.  Are we willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.