Category: Matthew Chapter 16

In order to see the connection of these verses we must remember the mistaken impressions of our Lord’s disciples as to the purpose of His coming into the world. Like Peter they could not bear the idea of the crucifixion. They thought that Jesus had come to set up an earthly kingdom; they did not see that He must needs suffer and die. They dreamed of worldly honours and temporal rewards in their Master’s service; they did not understand that true Christians, like Christ, must be made “perfect through suffering.” Our Lord corrects these misapprehensions in words of peculiar solemnity, which we shall do well to lay up in our hearts.

Let us learn in the first place from these verses, that men must make up their minds to trouble and self-denial if they follow Christ.

In the beginning of these verses we find our Lord revealing to His disciples a great and startling truth. That truth was His approaching death upon the cross. For the first time He places before their minds the astounding announcement that “He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer… and be killed”. He had not come on earth to take a kingdom, but to die. He had not come to reign and be ministered to; but to shed His blood as a sacrifice, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

It is almost impossible for us to conceive how strange and incomprehensible these tidings must have seemed to His disciples. Like most of the Jews, they could form no idea of a suffering Messiah. They did not understand that Isaiah 53 must be fulfilled literally; they did not see that the sacrifices of the law were all meant to point them to the death of the true Lamb of God. They thought of nothing but the second glorious coming of Messiah, which is yet to take place at the end of the world. They thought so much of Messiah’s crown, that they lost sight of His cross. We shall do well to remember this: a right understanding of this matter throws strong light on the lessons which this passage contains.

There are words in this passage which have led to painful differences and divisions among Christians. Men have striven and contended about their meaning till they have lost sight of all charity, and yet have failed to carry conviction to one another’s minds. Let it suffice us to glance briefly at the controverted words, and then pass on to more practical lessons.

What then are we to understand, when we read that remarkable saying of our Lord’s, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church?” Does it mean that the apostle Peter himself was to be the foundation on which Christ’s church was to be built? Such an interpretation, to say the least, appears exceedingly improbable.

In these verses we find our Lord assailed by the untiring enmity of the Pharisees and Sadducees. As a general rule these two sects were at enmity between themselves; in persecuting Christ, however, they made common cause. Truly it was an unholy alliance! Yet how often we see the same thing in the present day. Men of the most opposite opinions and habits will agree in disliking the Gospel, and will work together to oppose its progress. “There is no new thing under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9).

The first point in this passage which deserves special notice, is the repetition which our Lord makes of words used by Him on a former occasion. He says, “a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonah.” If we turn to the twelfth chapter of this gospel and the thirty-ninth verse, we shall find that He had said the very same thing once before.