Matthew 16:21-28
21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” [i]
Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, we have seen the Lord Jesus has been looking at reality in a vastly unique way than everyone else around him, an upside-down kind of way. He has been teaching these strange paradoxes: those who thirst, mourn, and are persecuted are blessed. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The greatest is the most humble, and so on. And here he teaches that to save one’s life one must lose it and that the son of man, who will come in glory, must first suffer, and die, that Messiah (the King) must die. These are all very upside-down ways of looking at things, or so it seems.
One way to study scripture is to ask yourself what you would not know about God, Jesus, this world, us, or even reality itself unless God revealed it to us in his Word. Here, in 16:21-28, with this upside-down mentality in mind, we will see three surprising ideas that we never would have come to see unless God showed us his ways (the way things really work in this world). If we want to reach heaven, if we want to receive a crown of glory upon our heads, we must first be dressed in self-denial and suffering.
CHRIST CRUCIFIED
The first surprising idea is Christ crucified. He would suffer and die in Jerusalem at the hands of the Jewish religious leaders: “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (16:21). The context of verses 13-20 tells us that Jesus is the King. “You are the Christ” (16:16). That was Peter’s great confession we heard last week. Right. We all got it. What’s next? Well, here’s what’s next: Christ betrayed, arrested, humiliated, crucified. But wait, that just doesn’t sound right at all. The Messiah should be conquering. Now that we have the King, how do we get the Kingdom?
It’s time to take over. Let’s all sit down and figure out our strategy. How do we get rid of the present political powers, the ruling religious authorities? How shall we crusade against the infidels and retake the Holy Land? Now that we have a little help from God in the form of Messiah, there is no end to what we can accomplish. With a little of God’s power and our maximum effort, we can turn this place into the new Garden of Eden.
How do we win all the crowd over to our side? Picture Jesus trotting into Jerusalem on a white horse, with the scribes and elders laying palm branches down before him, and Pilot and Herod striding just a bit behind on smaller, darker horses. Let’s add to that picture the high priest, who has led the parade, leading a chant that spreads throughout the crowd: “Hosanna, Hosanna. Hosanna to God in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the Son of David, the King.” Christ crucified? No! God forbid. But Christ conquering, yes! Christ marching into Jerusalem for a holy war and the holy victory. Amen and Amen.
But Jesus says, “The Christ is to be crucified.” Here is God’s plan. It is not simply a prediction, like making a weather forecast based on observation of previous trends and existing conditions. It is the predetermined, definite divine plan. “[I]t was the will of the LORD to crush him” (Isaiah 53:10a), and “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6)—that is how Isaiah puts it. Here’s how Jesus puts it: “I must go,” not “I will go.” “[I] must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified” (Luke 24:7). “I must go to Jerusalem, that city where all those millions of atoning sacrifices have been offered, to sacrifice myself, once and for all, for millions, for the sins of my people. I must go to Jerusalem, not to gather its leaders to my side, but to watch them pierce my side and crown my head with thorns and mock me, spit on me, and cry out to me, ‘If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross’” (Matthew 27:40).[ii]
To human wisdom Christ crucified is nonsense! Jerusalem would never understand such a thing. And they did not. Christ crucified, the first disciples didn’t get it either. They are right-side-up when they need to be upside-down. The idea of Messiah being put to death as a public menace, as a religious and political traitor, it’s just too shocking, too surprising for them to be able to understand.
We will get to what Peter thinks of all this shortly. It’s so importantly wrong that it deserves its own separate point. For now let’s see if we can just get it into our heads that from that day to our day almost nothing has changed in the minds of men. While the edge of the idea of Christ crucified has been dulled by the countless crosses atop church steeples or the massive number of crosses hung around our necks, the concept is still crazy to the spiritually sane and is still anti-academic to the intelligentsia.
Paul explained it this way:
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. [iii]
Strangely enough, Christ and him crucified is what the religious leaders of our day oppose. These are not just religious leaders in general, but those who gladly check the box for “Christian” when filling out religious surveys. I don’t simply mean liberal Protestants who deny the deity of Christ, his perfect righteousness and his substitutionary death, his bodily resurrection, and the exclusivity of salvation (that there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ). Yes, certainly them. But also evangelicals who have declawed the lion of Judah and pulled the bloody cross away from the Lamb of God.
Christians do well at writing lots of books. Some even make best seller lists. But find a best-selling Christian book in the past 10 years that is exclusively about the cross of Christ. Better yet, find 10 books in the top 100 best-selling Christian books that mention the cross of Christ. We want books about how to improve ourselves. We like stories written by nice people that tell us all how to be nicer. Plenty of evangelical churches will tell you they are Christ-centered. But how many are actually cross-centered?
You cannot be Christ-centered without being cross-centered. Christ crucified is the beating heart of Christianity. The summary symbol of our faith is not a fish or a shepherd or a dove or an anchor or a Shamrock, or a bumper sticker, but a cross – an old rugged cross, so despised by the world that is embarrasses even people who claim to follow Christ.
PETER the STUMBLING STONE
The first surprising thing in our passage is Christ crucified, that Christ must suffer and die, that his passion and death must precede his resurrection and return, that the cross must come before the crown. The second surprise is Simon Peter the stumbling stone. Right after he gives the most important confession in the history of the world (“You are the Christ”) He then opens his mouth in an outpouring of heresy straight from the pit of hell.
Not 20 seconds after Peter had gotten an A+ in his systematic theology class, he blunders badly. “22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’” Peter literally says, “May God be merciful to you, Lord.” We could say Peter was trying to tell Jesus that God loved him and had a wonderful plan for his life, which doesn’t include suffering and death.
23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
What a surprising change. From Peter the rock to Peter the heretic, from rockstar to stumbling stone. An older and more mature Peter will hold up the Old Testament prophets as an example. He wrote that they “had difficulty reconciling the sufferings and glory of the Messiah” (1 Peter 1:10-12). We know Peter eventually got it because he writes in 1 Peter 2:24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt. 2:24). Peter looked at Jesus’ T-shirt and thought it read “Conquering Christ,” but when Peter began to understand the upside-down nature of the gospel, he saw that it really read, “Christ Crucified.”
Peter’s heresy still lives in the modern church. It is the heresy that God loves everyone and wants them all to be happy as they define their own happiness. If I do my best to be good, then I will earn good things. If I do something bad, God is right there to slap my hand when it creeps into the cookie jar. Peter confused God’s law with a reward-point system. Save up your good work green stamps and cash them in for fun prizes at the redemption center. That is utterly opposed to a suffering Christ and his suffering people.
THREE APPLICATIONS
We can draw three applications from this second surprise of Peter’s heresy. First, we are not called to pastor Jesus but to follow him. We kind of have the sense from verses 16 to 21 that Peter is feeling pretty good about himself. Got the answer right. He got the proverbial gold sticker, and he is feeling his oats. It seems to go to his head. Peter begins to think he is Pope Petras I. So he speaks like a Pope ought to, with gentle authority and merciful moral exhortation. “Now Jesus, God’s mercy never means pain!” If he sounds a lot like Job’s friends, that’s because they share the same heresy: God loves everybody and wants them all to be happy as they define happiness. Try to do good things to earn good things.
Jesus answers Peter with all the authority of God speaking from a whirlwind. “Peter, shut up. Your first papal encyclical is entirely fallible. It’s worse than fallible. It’s diabolical!” Peter was acting satanic. Just as Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness in an attempt to keep the Christ from going to the cross, so Pope Peter is doing the same. Peter is tempting Jesus to take the easy road, to skip Gethsemane and Golgotha and go directly to earthly glory. Not only is Peter tempting Jesus, but Peter’s bad theology is completely offensive to Jesus!
The moment we think that we know better than Christ, we have entered the realm of gospel insanity – a common condition for most believers most of the time. We are not thinking according to the upside-down gospel. As Paul writes:
3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.[iv]
So our first application is to be like Peter when he follows Jesus, not like Peter when he tries to pastor Jesus. Now, here is the second application: don’t be satanic. No satanic spirituality allowed in the church! What is satanic spirituality? It is letting the world’s ways (not God’s way) dictate your decisions. It is believing that you can sprinkle some Jesus language on your own wants and desires while still having a functional relationship with your Creator.
Let me give you two examples, and then I will gladly let the Holy Spirit gnaw on you with the examples he wants to bring to your mind. It is satanic if your 21-year-old daughter is called to the mission field in a dangerous part of the world and you oppose that decision, wanting her instead to stay safely at home. You are telling her not to pick up her cross and follow Jesus, but to do the worldly-wise thing and “play it safe.” It is satanic thinking, gospel insanity, to oppose your spouse’s desire to give more to support the work of the church because you are afraid that won’t leave you enough to buy all the stuff that you want. We are to avoid satanic spirituality, gospel insanity, like the plague.
Here’s the third application: God is patient with is ignorant people. Peter was not being insincere. He was not knowingly rejecting Jesus. He just did not yet understand how upside-down the gospel was about to become when Messiah endured the shame of the cross. Peter eventually got that too: “9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”[v]
You might make a foolish denial (“You can’t die like that, God only wants good things for you”) and even devious denials (“I do not know the man”). God is patient with our living like heretics and practical atheists. Fortunately for us, the Holy Spirit works in years, decades, and lifetimes. He is patient. But he is always, always persistent with his people. He has a way of revealing to us that our self-interested pursuits are far less satisfying than we thought they were going to be.
We even tend to think that everything finally clicked for Peter once he became an apostle of the resurrected Christ. But we know that is not true because Paul had to openly confront him in Galatians 2:11-14 because Peter yet again went off course in his teaching and practice. Again, the Holy Spirit is perfectly comfortable working in years, decades, and lifetimes. Through his difficulties, we do see Peter slowly moving up, not perfectly sanctified, but steadily sanctified in his theology and his practice.
God was patient with Peter as he is patient with all of us. Let that gracious patience encourage you. Let it encourage you, as Peter writes, to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt. 3:18).
THE CRUCIFORMED LIFE
So we saw our first surprise is the idea of Christ crucified. Our second surprise was Simon Peter the stumbling stone. Finally, we come to the third surprise: the passion pattern. In verses 24-28 is the pattern Jesus clearly teaches that we will follow: cross, then crown.
This pattern is surprising because after Jesus gives the basic content of the gospel (his death and resurrection) he next speaks of what that demands of us. He doesn’t tell us that there is work for us to do in order to save our souls. But he also does not tell us to sit back and just enjoy the finished product. Instead he says for us to get to work. It turns out that we have something to lift and carry.
Isn’t it surprising that Jesus says the work we have to do is cross-work? We naturally think, after all Jesus has done, why do we need a cross? Why don’t we get our crown right now? Suffering? Never! Avoiding suffering is a high priority to us. The pursuit of happiness is a constitutional right. A comfortable lifestyle is a suburban necessity. The idea of no cross, no crown just doesn’t stick to the backs of our new SUV’s or even our old Dodge 18-person homeschooler vans. And yet, Jesus says, “24 …If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Let me ask you: what makes a Christian a Christian or a church a church? What are the marks of the church? What are the characteristics of a Christian? …Frederick Dale Bruner answers that question, based on his study of Matthew 16. He says there are two qualifications: 1. Confessing Jesus as Christ (Christo-centricity) 2. Following Jesus as the suffering Christ (Crucio-christocentricity).[vi] We must follow Christ into whatever suffering he brings our way, however the curse of sin touches us.
What is the cross we must carry? It is enduring suffering, those trials, and tribulations of life (the death of a loved one, economic hardship, poor health, a tyrannical boss, a nagging or lazy spouse, a rebellious child, and so on). For the apostles, it meant death just for preaching the gospel – on top of all the other aches and pains of life. Jesus is not simply talking about preaching the gospel and being persecuted, he is talking about all the suffering that comes to us in life. Job carried as much of a cross as did John banished on the Isle of Patmos or Paul in prison.
Whatever you could argue cross carrying is, it’s clear that it centers on self-denial. Jesus’ statement has a certain poetic symmetry: come after me/deny himself/take up his cross/follow me. To deny yourself means that your wants and wishes are at least second fiddle to Jesus’ demands on your life. You can sprinkle all the Jesus language you want on top of your wants and wishes, God may even remove his hand and let you pursue them and have them. But at some point, when your idols begin to fail you, the Holy Spirit is going to walk up behind you, tap you on the shoulder, and say, “How’s that idol working out for you now?”
John Calvin taught that the summary of the Christian life is self-denial. Is that how you would summarize your Christian life? Well, that is exactly how Jesus summarized it! To come to Christ is to deny self, to admit that we are sinful, that we need a savior. To live for Christ is to deny self, to abide in him, pray to him, walk in his ways by his power. God’s summary of the Christian life is 1 command: deny yourself! Die to your wants, felt needs, and demands. In case you’re wondering, dying to yourself it’s why we refer to the people who need Jesus as, “the last, the lost, the least, the little, and the dead.”
Christian living is not following self-love and self-rules but Jesus as your first love and his rules as the best rules for your life. In fact, we must be willing to risk our life on the dare that Jesus is it. As the IT, he knows the way to glory, that it passes through the city of suffering, down the road of rejection, and up the valley of death. Jesus tells us two things in this invitation: come after me; and follow me. Who is king? You or Jesus? What he promises in return is that those party poopers who held on to their souls and their own version of life will be locked out of the eternal party. But you who trust into him and strive to live in his own power in his own way, will enter the party. The road goes on forever and the party never ends!
[i] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 16:21–28.
[ii] O’Donnell, Douglas Sean. Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth (Preaching the Word) (pp. 456-457). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
[iii] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 1:18–25.
[iv] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 6:3–4.
[v] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Pe 3:9.
[vi] O’Donnell, Douglas Sean. Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth (Preaching the Word) (p. 461). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
