<p>8:29 <i>And he asked them: But who do you say that I am?- </i>The effort required in interpreting Jesus is, it seems to me, designed by God, whose word it is which we are discussing. The intention is to make us think about Jesus, struggle with the issue of His identity and nature, in order that we should understand Him better, and thereby love and serve Him the more intently. Perhaps that is why so little is recorded of Jesus- all the speeches and actions of Jesus found in the Gospels would've occupied only three weeks or so of real time. The rest of His life, words and actions we are left to imagine, given what we do know of Him. He wants us to reflect, as He did the disciples, &quot;Whom do&nbsp;<i>you</i>&nbsp;think I am?&quot; (Mk. 8:29). Perhaps that is why at least in Mark's Gospel there is the theme of Jesus not wanting men to be told in point blank terms that He was Messiah.</p><p>&quot;Say&quot;,&nbsp;<i>lego</i>, means to talk out loud, and is the same word used in :28. The Lord may have been asking whom they talked about Him as.&nbsp;<i>Lego&nbsp;</i>means specifically to talk about; the Lord chose not to use words like 'understand' or 'believe'. Maybe He is alluding to His principle that words express inner thoughts and beliefs. And so instead of asking them whom they&nbsp;<i>believed&nbsp;</i>or<i> thought&nbsp;</i>Him to be (although that is the essence of His question), He asks them whom they talk about Him as. Because spoken words do ultimately reflect inner faith and understanding.</p><p><i>Peter answered and said to him- </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;&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, it seems that only the disciples really grasped his essential message about Jesus. See on Mt. 16:14. 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) etc. are all examples of this.</p><p>Twice in Mark, Jesus is addressed as &quot;Messiah&quot; but He replies by calling Himself &quot;the Son of man&quot; (Mk. 8:29-31; 14:61,62). If this was His preferred self-perception, should it not be how we perceive Him?</p>