ACC ~ Matthew 16 v21 - 28

OVERVIEW:

When Peter objects to Christ’s talk of future suffering, Jesus explains that if Peter had listened to his teachings rightly, he would know that this, of all things, is most fitting to him. Now it becomes ever more clear how correct Jesus was in forbidding them not to declare his identity publicly. For if it so confounded the disciples, who knows what the response of others might have been (CHRYSOSTOM)? After Jesus had warned of the cross to be borne, the soul to be ruined and eternal life to be exchanged for the loss of the world, he turned toward his disciples and said that some would not taste death until they beheld the Son of man in the glory of his own kingdom (HILARY OF POITIERS). When Peter confessed Christ, Christ praised him. But when he was irrationally terrified, Christ rebuked him (THEODORE OF HERACLEA).

16:21-22 | Suffering Many Things

THIS SHALL NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU

CHRYSOSTOM: Peter was examining the issue by human and earthly reasoning. He thought it disgraceful to Jesus as something unworthy of him. Jesus responded sharply, in effect saying, “My suffering is not an unseemly matter. You are making this judgment with a carnal mind. If you had listened to my teachings in a godly way, tearing yourself away from carnal understanding, you would know that this of all things most becomes me. You seem to suppose that to suffer is unworthy of me. But I say to you that for me not to suffer is of the devil’s mind.” So he repressed Peter’s alarm by contrary arguments.

Remember that John, accounting it unworthy of Christ to be baptized by him, was persuaded by Christ to baptize him, saying, “Let it be so now.” [1] So we find Peter as well, forbidding Christ to wash his feet. He is met by the words, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” Here too Jesus restrained him by the mention of the opposite, and by the severity of the reproof he repressed his fear of suffering. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 54.6. [2]

[1] Mt 3:15.

[2] PG 58:537; NPNF 1 10:335.

16:23 | A Hindrance to Me

JESUS FORBIDS MAKING HIS IDENTITY PUBLIC

ORIGEN: What he intended when he forbade them to publicly declare him Christ is clarified in part by “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples how he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders” and the following thoughts. At the right time and in the right way, he proclaimed to those who knew that Jesus was Christ, Son of the living God (the Father had revealed this to them), that rather than believing in Jesus Christ already crucified, they should believe in Jesus Christ soon to be crucified. So also, instead of believing in Jesus Christ already risen from the dead, they should believe in “Jesus Christ soon to be raised from the dead.”

“Having put off from himself the principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in the cross.” [1] If anyone is ashamed of the cross of Christ, he is ashamed of the agency by which these powers were defeated. The one who both believes and is assured of these things should, more appropriately, glory in the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Through that cross, when Christ was crucified, the principalities (among them, I think, was also the prince of this world) were publicly humiliated and paraded before the eyes of the believing world. COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 12.18. [2]

[1] Col 2:15.

[2] GCS 40:110-11; ANF 9:461.

GET BEHIND ME, SATAN! CHRYSOSTOM: Therefore, the rest being troubled and in perplexity, Peter again in his ardor alone ventures to discuss these things. And he does not discuss them openly but only when he had taken him aside. Having separated himself from the rest of the disciples, he says, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” What is happening here? The very one who had obtained a revelation, who had been blessed, has now so soon fallen away, so as now to fear the Passion of the Lord, and thereby his faith has been overthrown. It is remarkable that Peter, who had not yet been fully instructed in the course of revelation, should come up with these responses. The larger picture had not yet been revealed to Peter, and he was confused and overwhelmed. Peter had learned that Christ is the Son of God. But he had not learned of the mystery of the cross and the resurrection. It was as yet not manifested to him. It remained hidden. Do you see how correct Jesus was in forbidding them not to declare his identity publicly? For if it so confounded the disciples, who were being made aware of it, who knows what the response of others might have been.

This is why he rebuked Peter and called him Satan: to signify that he is coming to his future suffering voluntarily. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 54.5-6. [1]

[1] PG 58:536; NPNF 1 10:335.

PETER REBUKED

THEODORE OF HERACLEA: When, contrary to what he had hoped, Peter heard this, he was troubled. For the revelation had exhibited Christ as Son of God and the living God, on the one hand. Yet on the other hand, he was found to be preparing for the dreadful events of the Passion. In rebuking Peter, Christ brings to light his own righteous judgment. When Peter confessed Christ, Christ praised him. But when he was irrationally terrified, Christ rebuked him, acting without respect of persons. FRAGMENT 102. [1]

[1] MKGK 85.

PETER AS SATAN

ORIGEN: Responding to Peter’s ignorance as one opposing God, Jesus said, “Satan,” which is Hebrew for opponent. If he had not spoken to him from ignorance nor of the living God when he said, “Never, Lord! This must never happen to you!” then he would not have said to him “Get behind me,” as if speaking to someone who had given up being behind him and following him. Neither would he have called him “Satan.” Satan had overpowered the one following Jesus in order to turn him aside from following him and from being behind the Son of God, to make him, because of ignorant words, worthy of being called “Satan” and a scandal to the Son of God, “not thinking in the ways of God but of humans.” COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 12.21. [1]

[1] GCS 40:117; ANF 9:462-63.

16:24 | Denying Oneself

LET HIM TAKE UP HIS CROSS

CHRYSOSTOM: When did he teach this? When Peter said, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” And when Peter was told, “Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus did not merely rebuke Peter. He was willing to teach him more fully of the benefit of his Passion and about the exceeding confusion in what Peter had said. So he responds in effect: “Your word to me is that this shall never happen to me, but my word to you is ‘Not only is this hurtful to you, and destructive, to hinder me and be displeased at my Passion.’ But more so it will be impossible for you even to be saved, unless you yourself are continually prepared for death.”

So, lest anyone should imagine that his suffering was unworthy of him, he teaches them what great gain will come from it. This applies not only to his former afflictions but also to those yet to come. Later he will teach in John’s Gospel that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” [1] So he now begins discussing more fully the outworkings of the future, not only with respect to his own suffering and death but with theirs as well. Unwillingness to die is grievous, but to be ready for death is good and of great profit.

Jesus makes this clear by what follows, but for the present he works it out on one side only. Note that he does not say, “You must suffer whether you will it or not.” Rather, he says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is as if to say: “I force no one, I compel no one, but each one I make lord of his own choice. So I say, ‘If any one will.’ ” THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 55.1. [2]

[1] Jn 12:24.

[2] PG 58:539-41; NPNF 1 10:338-39.

16:25 | Losing One’s Life for Jesus’ Sake

WHOEVER WOULD SAVE HIS LIFE WILL LOSE IT

CHRYSOSTOM: Then, because he had said, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” Jesus makes a strict distinction between salvation and destruction. This was to prevent anyone from imagining the one destruction and the other salvation to be all the same thing in the last instance. The distance is infinite between destruction and salvation. Then he makes this inference once for all to establish these points: “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

Do you see how the wrongful preservation of life amounts to destruction and is worse than all destruction, as being even past remedy from the want of anything more to redeem it? THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 55.4 [1]

[1] PG 58:543; NPNF 1 10:340-41.

16:26 | Forfeiting One’s Soul

WHERE IS THE PROFIT?

ORIGEN: The first statement is ambiguous. At first it could be taken this way: Someone who loves being alive and thinks the present life is good manages his own life in order to live well according to the flesh, fearing death since by death he loses life. In this way, wanting to save his own life, he will lose it, having removed it beyond the boundaries of blessedness. Yet someone despising the present life because of my teaching and convinced of eternal life, even facing death for the sake of the truth may, because of piety, lose his own life in death. Yet the same one who lost his life because of me will instead save and keep it.

We could interpret the saying, however, in another way. If anyone knows what salvation is and wants to save his own life, after bidding farewell to his life, denying himself and taking up his cross and following me, he will, in terms of the world, have lost his life. But, having lost his life for me and my teaching, he will gain in the end this kind of loss, salvation. COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 12.26. [1]

[1] GCS 40:127-28; ANF 9:464.

WHAT IS A LIFE WORTH?

ORIGEN: But what shall a person give in exchange for his life, would seem, if spoken in answer to a query, to indicate a person who trades his life; a person who, after sin, has given up his substance in order that his property might feed the poor. He would in that way receive salvation. Yet, in a positive light, I think this indicates that there is nothing in a person that he can give in trade for his life that will buy off death. God, however, has ransomed us all with the priceless blood of Jesus [1] so that “we are bought with a price,” [2] “having been purchased not with perishable things like silver and gold but with the priceless blood of the spotless, flawless Lamb,” [3] Christ. COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 12.28. [4]

[1] 1 Pet 1:19. Origen turns the words of Jesus to a more specific and restricted meaning, applying them to the condition of the sinner who, enslaved by sin, cannot pay any price to free his soul. Jesus paid this price freely through his blood, since he was not subject to sin.

[2] 1 Cor 6:20.

[3] 1 Pet 1:18-19.

[4] GCS 40:131; ANF 9:465.

THE DISCIPLES’ HUMAN WEAKNESS

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: Since the disciples had not yet received power from on high, [1] it was perhaps not unnatural that they should fall occasionally into human weaknesses and, thinking something of this sort, say, “How shall someone deny himself? Or how can someone, by losing his own life, save it?” …

Therefore, to lead them away from reasonings of this sort and, so to speak, forge courage anew within them, communicating to them a longing for the glory to come, he says, “There are some standing here,” hinting at Peter and the sons of Zebedee; for these were taken up with him at the transfiguration, [2] which Christ calls “the kingdom,” as demonstrating the ineffability of [his] authority and the immutable nature of [his] kinship with the Father. And in this [saying] he also hints at the importance and the fearfulness of his second coming, showing this coming to be a prelude and, as it were, a confirmation of that. For he will come “in the glory of God, the Father,” not in the humble condition that is commensurate with us. FRAGMENT 195. [3]

[1] Lk 24:49.

[2] The transfiguration immediately follows the prediction of the future coming of the Son of man in his kingly dignity. Hence Origen means that this prediction has come true with the transfiguration itself.

[3] MKGK 216-17.

16:27 | Coming in the Glory of His Father

WITH HIS ANGELS IN THE GLORY OF HIS FATHER

CHRYSOSTOM: Do you see how the glory of the Father and of the Son is all one glory? But if the glory is one, it is quite evident that the substance also is one. For if in one substance there be a difference of glory (“for there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory”; [1] although the substance is one), how may the substance of those differ in which the glory is one? For he did not say, “In glory such as the Father’s,” whereby someone might suppose again some variation between the glory of the Father and the Son. Rather, he implies the entire perfection of the one God: “In that same glory, he will come,” for it to be deemed one and the same.

“Why are you afraid, Peter,” so he speaks, “as you hear of death? Then you will see me in the glory of the Father. If I am in glory, so are you all. Your interests are no way limited to the present life. Another sort of condition will take you up, a better one.” Nevertheless, when he had spoken of the good things to come, he did not neglect to speak also of the fearful things to come. He spoke of the judgment seat, and the inexorable account, and the inflexible sentence and the judgment that cannot be deceived.

Thus Christ’s discourse was not intended only to make people feel dismal, but it was tempered with good hope. … He reminded not only the sinners of punishment but also them that have done well of rewards and crowns. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 55.5. [2]

[1] 1 Cor 15:41.

[2] PG 58:544; NPNF 1 10:341-42.

16:28 | The Son of Man Coming in His Kingdom

SOME STANDING HERE WILL NOT TASTE DEATH

HILARY OF POITIERS: The Lord teaches that both deeds and words, and speech and action, equally furnish the faith of our hope. For it might seem that he had imposed a grievous burden upon human infirmity; namely that, when people had begun to have a sense of life by experiencing it, they should let go its enjoyment which is gratifying to their bodies. He taught that they should deny themselves for the sake of themselves—that is, they should not wish to be that which they had once begun to be. These things which are held close are accompanied by the enticements of gratifying joy, but they may lead to a wavering and uncertain hope. Therefore it was necessary by the authority of a real and manifest example that he teach them of the loss of present things and place these in the context of future gains. All of this might seem contrary to the power and perception of current judgment. After he had warned of the cross to be borne and the soul to be ruined and the eternity of life to be exchanged for the loss of the world, he turned toward his disciples and said that some of them would not taste death until they beheld the Son of man in the glory of his own kingdom. Moreover, Jesus himself tasted death and showed the faithful already a taste of death. And so deeds follow words. ON MATTHEW 17.1. [1]

[1] SC 258:60-62.