<p>16:16&nbsp;<i>And Simon Peter answered and said</i>- Peter is set up as our example and pattern. The records portray him in such a way that we see so clearly the similarities between him and us. The good intentions, the flashes of zeal, the miserable failures, the essential loyalty to the Man who was better than he. The Gospels also portray Peter as the representative of the group of disciples. It is Peter who answers when the Lord asks a question of them all (Mk. 8:29 cp. the other accounts). The way Jesus looks upon all the disciples as He speaks to Peter makes Peter some kind of representative of them all in the Lord&rsquo;s eyes (Mk. 8:33). In Mt. 16:17 Peter is commended for having had the Father reveal Jesus to Him. Yet Mt. 11:27 says that the Father reveals the identity of His Son to&nbsp;<i>all</i>&nbsp;who truly come to Him. Thus Peter is representative of all who have truly perceived the Son&rsquo;s identity in Jesus of Nazareth. In one Gospel, all the disciples ask a question, while in the parallel passage Peter is stated to have asked it (Mk. 7:17 cp. Mt. 15:15 and Mt. 21:20 cp. Mk. 11:21). Even outsiders considered Peter to be representative of all the disciples (Mt. 17:24). &ldquo;Peter and those with him&rdquo; is how the group is described (Mk. 1:36; Lk. 8:45 Gk.; 9:32). Peter&rsquo;s crucial confession that he believed that Jesus was the Son of God is repeated almost verbatim by all the disciples, sometime later (Jn. 6:69; 16:30). He is truly the representative disciple.&nbsp;</p>
<p><i>You are the Christ</i>- The confession of Messiahship and this incident of trying to stop the Lord dying are also juxtaposed in Mark&rsquo;s Gospel, which seems to be Mark&rsquo;s transcript of the Gospel account Peter usually preached [note, e.g., how Peter defines the termini of the Lord&rsquo;s life in Acts 1:21,22; 10:36-42- just as Mark does in his gospel].&nbsp; Surely Peter is saying that yes, he had grasped the theory that Jesus of Nazareth was Messiah; but the import of Messiahship was totally lost upon him. For he had utterly failed to see the connection between Messianic kingship and suffering the death of the cross. He knew Jesus was Messiah, but strongly rejected the suggestion Messiah must suffer. And yet the Lord warmly and positively grasped hold of Peter&rsquo;s positive understanding, such as it was. The Lord&rsquo;s comment &lsquo;Get behind me&rsquo; was exactly the same phrase He had earlier used to the &lsquo;satan&rsquo; in the wilderness when the same temptation to take the Kingdom without the cross had been suggested. It could even be that Peter was the &lsquo;satan&rsquo; of the wilderness conversations; or at least, in essence he was united with that satan. Hence the Lord told him that he was a satan. And interestingly, only Mark [aka Peter] describes the Lord as being tempted in the wilderness of<i> Satan</i>&nbsp;[rather than the&nbsp;<i>devil</i>]. And he records how&nbsp;<i>he</i>&nbsp;was a satan to the Lord later on. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Peter&rsquo;s proclamation of Jesus as Messiah half way through Matthew and Mark&rsquo;s records of the Gospel (Mk. 8:29) is presented by them as a climax of understanding. And yet according to Jn. 1:41, Andrew and Peter had known this right from the start. The implication is surely that they, as simple working men, probably illiterate, had merely repeated in awe words and phrases like &ldquo;Messiah&rdquo; and &ldquo;Son of God&rdquo; with no real sense of their import. Yet again, the Lord gently bore with their misunderstandings, and Peter of his own initiative, 18 months later, came to gleefully blurt out the same basic ideas but with now far deeper insight- although he still incorrectly perceived the Messiah as one who would not suffer but provide instant glorification. Thus the spiritual growth of the disciples is revealed.</p>
<p>Rarely in the Gospels does someone actually declare Jesus to be the Christ, the anointed one, Messiah. This of course was the thrust of John's teaching, denying that he was the Christ but saying that he was heralding Him. Despite all the surface level response to John, with so many baptized that he was known as &quot;the Baptist&quot; very soon after His death (:14), it seems that only the disciples really grasped his essential message about Jesus. See on :14. Peter had made the same confession of faith in the same words (&quot;You are the Christ, the Son of the living God&quot;) some time previously, after the feeding of the 5000 (Jn. 6:69). It would seem that &quot;the Christ, the Son of God&quot; is therefore being presented as a formula for confession of faith. Martha likewise confesses faith in Jesus as &quot;the Christ, the Son of God&quot; (Jn. 11:27). The connection between the words &quot;Christ&quot; and &quot;Son of God&quot; is found elsewhere. Mark's Gospel is a proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God (Mk. 1:1); Luke begins his Gospel predicting that Messiah would be &quot;called... Son of God&quot; (Lk. 1:32,35), not by being named &quot;Son of God&quot; by Mary (He was named 'Jesus'), but called on as Son of God by those believing in Him. Indeed it was the whole intention of John's Gospel to bring people to faith in &quot;the Christ the Son of God&quot; (Jn. 20:31). Therefore the Eunuch's confession before baptism that he believed that &quot;Jesus Christ is the Son of God&quot; (Acts 8:37) can be seen as a triumph of the Gospel- Philip likewise preached towards the same end as John did through his Gospel. Paul likewise preached the &quot;Christ... is the Son of God&quot; (Acts 9:20). A 'Christ' was simply an 'anointed one', someone anointed or commissioned for a specific task- and there had been many people anointed in this way. The uniqueness about Jesus the Christ was that this Christ was the uniquely begotten Son of God. This explains why there is such a strong emphasis upon believing that Jesus was the Christ who was Son of God. And to this day, it is this uniqueness which differentiates the real Christ from a mere understanding that He was a good man who did indeed historically exist and die. The question is how much more, if anything, was required from people in terms of understanding before a person was considered to have believed 'in Christ'. The evidence of Acts and the Gospels would appear to indicate that 'belief in Christ' meant simply believing that He was Son of God and identifying with Him. The centurion (Mt. 27:54), healed persons (Mk. 3:11)</p>
<p><i>The Son of the living God</i>- We naturally enquire as to the significance of &quot;the&nbsp;<i>living</i>&nbsp;God&quot;. In Mt. 22:32 the Lord seems to connect this with resurrection; He says there that God is still the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because He will ultimately resurrect and immortalize them, seeing He is 'not the dead God but the living God' (Gk.; see Lk. 20:38). His 'living' becomes ours in that He will give us life; &quot;living water&quot; refers to water which gives life (Jn. 7:38), and &quot;the living God&quot; likewise (see another hint of resurrection by &quot;the living God&quot; in Rom. 9:26). &quot;The living&nbsp;<i>bread</i>&quot; meant 'the bread which gives life', and this is paralleled by the Lord with &quot;the living&nbsp;<i>Father</i>&quot; who also gives life (Jn. 6:51,57). Having taught that, Peter had gone on to state that Jesus was indeed &quot;that Christ, the son of the living God&quot; (Jn. 6:69). This would suggest to me that Peter perceived this connection with resurrection, and when here in Mt. 16:16 he uses the same phrase again, we may be justified in seeing within it an understanding of how the Lord would not only be resurrected but would be the source of life to others. The phrase &quot;living God&quot; was used in Judaism, e.g. the High Priest adjures the Lord Jesus &quot;by the living God&quot; (Mt. 26:63)- but more in the sense that the living God sees and knows all things. Again, we note that it was John the Baptist who preached (AV &quot;bare record&quot;) that Jesus was the Son of God (Jn. 1:34). Yet after his death, it was only Peter, the disciples and a few others who accepted this- for :14 has made it clear that most people considered Jesus to be some reincarnation of a previous prophet, but not &quot;Son of God&quot;. In commenting upon the end of Matthew 12 and the meaning of the parables about poor response to the word in Matthew 13, I suggested that the Lord recognized at that point that the Jews had been unresponsive to John apart from the circle of disciples- and He switched focus at that point onto them. See on 16:18&nbsp;<i>gates of hell</i>.</p>
<p>Even before this the disciples on Galilee had confessed: &ldquo;Of a truth thou art the Son of God!&rdquo;. Peter&rsquo;s confession was evidently of an altogether higher level. The titles we apply to God and Jesus come to have more meaning to us over time. But straight after his confession, he showed his complete misunderstanding of the Lord&rsquo;s death, and the whole message of following Him to that same end. He was rebuked: &ldquo;Thou savourest not the things of God&rdquo;, straight after having been told that his understanding of Jesus&rsquo; Sonship was given to him of God. If he savoured that knowledge, he would have understood the message of the cross which his Lord so insistently preached. But he wasn&rsquo;t yet at that level. He had to be told at the transfiguration: &ldquo;This&nbsp;<i>is</i>&nbsp;my beloved Son&hellip; hear ye him&rdquo; (Mt. 17:5). It was as if the Father was emphasizing the imperative which lay in the fact that Jesus really is Son of God: if that is truly comprehended, we must hear Him. The implication is surely that Peter had almost painlessly confessed the Divine Sonship of Jesus. Perhaps the Father had in mind the way Peter, for all his acceptance of that Sonship, would later forget the Son&rsquo;s words and mindlessly deny Him. Straight after this incident, Peter says that his Master pays taxes, as if this is something the Lord just had to do. But the Lord seems to rebuke Peter, by reminding him that if He is truly Son of God and Lord of all, then it is quite inappropriate for Him to have to pay such taxes; for the Father&rsquo;s children are free (Mt. 17:24-27). This evidence all indicates that there are different levels in knowing that Jesus of Nazareth is Son of God. 1 Jn. 5:13 says as much: those who believe on the name of the Son of God must come to believe (i.e. on a higher level) on the name of the Son of God. We must ask ourselves of our own degree of appreciation. For every member of the ecclesia is built up on the foundation of faith that Christ is the Son of God.&nbsp;</p>