Today’s chapter is Mark 8

Tom writes:

Peter’s confession of Jesus as Christ is often referred to as the turning point of the gospel. But is this correct? What was Peter confessing? Peter was expressing faith that Jesus was the divinely-appointed king of Israel who was going to bring about the end of Israel’s exile and the re-establishment of David’s Kingdom. Peter is seeing something, but it looks like a tree walking around. Peter was still misunderstanding Jesus in two crucial ways. Jesus was bringing two fundamental twists to the prevailing understanding of “Messiah”. Firstly, Jesus’ rule wasn’t going to be quite like David’s rule. David crushed the head of Goliath and Jesus would indeed crush the head of Satan, but the glorious enthronement of David would not be for Jesus… yet. Instead, Jesus’ Christ-ship at this age in history was to be defined by suffering and rejection and death. Jesus would bring in his Kingdom not through human victory but through human failure. Which is a bit weird. Secondly, Jesus was not just bringing God’s promises to those who had been trusting in them, but to lots of people who hadn’t heard about them or who didn’t seem to care. Which is even weirder. Jesus wasn’t just bringing in Israel’s Kingdom to the faithful in Israel but through seeming suffering and failure was populating the kingdom with whoever he chose, no matter what their history. This must have blown the disciples’ minds. They had recognised the Messiah, but the Messiah was muddling them up and not doing what they expected. I wonder how often this still happens today? So many of us think confessing Jesus as Saviour will give a boost to our life goals and a loving ear to listen to our laments. Jesus, our Messiah, will certainly do both of those things.

But this Saviour is also the Suffering Servant, and he bids us to become suffering servants with him so that we can seek and save the lost. After salvation Jesus demands that we let him awaken us to his plans and his methods - or else he calls us a Satan who tries to impose on our faith a human way of thinking, rather than the way of our God. There isn’t time to thrash this all through right here, so perhaps the easiest question to ask ourselves is this; will we allow Jesus to reshape our views of success and satisfaction and a life that is truly significant? So often we want to impose a neat turning point onto our lives; we’ve come to faith in Jesus and so the only way is up. But our confession of Jesus as Lord is only the beginning - after this there are still many subsequent awakenings where he helps us realise the yeast of the pharisees still needs to be removed and the eyes that we thought were opened need to be opened some more.

Question for reflection

How has your vision of “a good life” changed since you first came to faith?

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Mark 8 - Thursday 11th April