Salvation By Grace

• Peter’s declaration in Mark is the last thing you would expect him to say
  • Mark 8:27
  • 27 Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked them, “Who do people say I am? 28 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets.” 29 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.[b]” 30 But Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
  • b: Or the Christ. Messiah (a Hebrew term) and Christ (a Greek term) both mean “the anointed one.”
• Messianic secret
  • Expectations of the people were for overthrow of the Roman empire, power, glory, and to the overall wonders of God’s Kingdom, but Jesus came to suffer and die
  • He came instead to receive rejection, humiliation, and shame
  • from an online resource:
  • Because his being a Messiah is not according to what the apostles and the people know a Messiah should be.
  • Yes, indeed he was the Messiah, but his being a Messiah involved suffering and great hardship.
• It was after Peter’s declaration, that Jesus started to preach about why he came and how it was all going to go down
• Peter says we cannot have you (Jesus) suffer and die and Jesus states that He came to undergo rejection, humiliation, and shame and if we are to be His disciples we should do the same
• Disciples had to wrestle with this question: If God in His love longs to forgive sinners and longs for reconciliation, yet at the same time in His justice he cannot ignore our rebellions and our sins and they have to be punished, how can He display His love and execute His justice?
  • The Great Question has a Great Answer – at the cross of Jesus Christ.
  • At the cross Jesus is an emblem of the Father’s wrath.
  • If He (God) were simply to ignore sin, He would not be true to Himself in the perfection of His Holiness, therefore sin must be punished.
  • But because of His infinite love, God executes His justice on His son so that those who deserve that judgement may find in His son their forgiveness and His love and their life.

This entry was posted on November 28, 2007 at 6:40 pm and is filed under * Favorites, Atonement, Love with tags Jesus, Messianic Secret. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.