And he gave to Simon the surname of Peter;
Mark's list of the twelve opens with a renaming. The Lord gives Simon a new name, and that short clause raises real questions: why change a man's name, what does the new one mean, and why does Simon always head the list?
The religious leaders had just decided to destroy Jesus. The naming comes right after, as part of a fresh step in His work.
The Lord withdraws to the sea with His disciples. After this, while He heals many and casts out unclean spirits, He also goes up into a mountain. There He takes a new step. It is one point of change in Mark's Gospel, a step beyond all He had done so far. The Pharisees and the Herodians had planned to destroy Jesus. Following on that, He takes a new measure: the sovereign call and appointment of the twelve, so that He might in due time send them out. He does not merely call them to be with Him. He appoints them in a formal way to the great mission on which they were to be sent out.
The Lord gives His disciples new names. He does not wait to find out what they are like first.
He also gives names to some of His disciples. This is a mark of supreme authority. And He gives them according to the knowledge He had of their character, before He had had any experience of it.
"Peter" is not a title. It is a plain word, and it comes to us in two languages.
Simon, or Symeon (2 Peter 1:1), had the family name Bar, that is, son of Jona or Jonas (Matthew 16:17; John 20:15-17). The Lord gave him the name Kephas (Aramaic) or Petros (Greek) = Stone or Rockman (John 1:43). He confirmed it later in solemn words in Matthew 16:18.
"Stone" was the least likely name for a man like Simon.
When Simon was brought to the Messiah, his new Master thought it necessary to give him a surname. He chose probably the last one we would have thought of: "Peter," a stone. For He sees the things that are not. He could see that this man was impulsive, erratic and inconsistent by nature. He also saw that by divine grace this man would become a solid and substantial defence in the church against every kind of evil and hostility.
A name given by God is not a hopeful label. The same writers point to Abram and Sarai, whose changed names God Himself brought to pass, and read Simon's history the same way — including the second name given in the very next verse, to James and John.
When God gives names to men, His power makes good what His grace bestows. He did this when He changed the names of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah. Jesus is God blessed for ever. When He appointed the twelve and sent them out to preach, He gave Simon the name Peter — a stone — and He gave James and John the name Boanerges — the sons of thunder... Every Gospel tells of Simon's weakness, even his denial of his Lord. Yet we know that by grace he became His boldest and most uncompromising witness.
Every list of the twelve opens with him. Commentators explain why — and what it does not mean.
Here again (Mark 3:16) Simon's new name stands out, and it is so in all the Gospels. His name always comes first on the list (see Matt. 10:2; Mark 3:16; Luke 6:14; John 21:2). This does not mean that he had authority over his brothers, or that he held the place of a chief, as Rome would have us believe. It was his natural eagerness, and his warm-hearted, impulsive earnestness, that always put him in the front rank. If there is a question, Peter usually asks it; if there is a confession of who the Lord is, Peter is the spokesman.
- Authority. Giving a name is a mark of supreme authority. The Lord names His disciples knowing their character in advance, not after testing it.
- Name. Kephas in Aramaic, Petros in Greek, both meaning "stone" — a name the Lord confirmed to him later (Matthew 16:18).
- Grace. No one would have chosen "stone" for an impulsive, inconsistent man. It described what grace would make of him.
- Power. What God's grace gives in a name, His power makes good. It was so with Abram and Sarai. It was so with the man who denied his Lord and became His boldest witness.
- Order. Peter heads every list because of his eagerness, not his rank. Commentators reject the idea that this made him chief over the rest.
and James the [son] of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, and he gave them the surname of Boanerges, that is, Sons of thunder;
In Mark's list of the twelve, two names change. Simon becomes Peter, and the Lord gives the two sons of Zebedee one shared title: Boanerges. Commentators have long asked what that title means. Is it a picture of their fiery nature, or a promise of what they would become?
The list comes at a turning point. The leaders have set out to destroy Jesus, and He answers with a new step.
The Lord withdraws to the sea with His disciples. After this, while He heals many and casts out unclean spirits, He also goes up into a mountain. There He takes a new step. It is one point of change in Mark's Gospel, a step beyond all He had done up to then. The Pharisees and the Herodians had planned to destroy Jesus. In answer, He takes a new measure: the sovereign call and appointment of the twelve. In due time He would send them out.
Several apostles went by more than one name. Only a few received a name from the Lord Himself.
The brother of James was also chosen to be an apostle. The Lord gave the two sons of Zebedee the surname Boanerges, which means Sons of thunder. Other apostles appear to have had several names. But we are told of only three who received surnames from the Lord: Peter, James and John.
One writer traces this back to the garden, where the first man named the creatures, and forward to a name still to come.
To receive a name from him was as if it had been given by the Lord God Himself. But Adam was only a picture of the One who was to come. So when that One came, He could not do less than give names too. To Simon He gave the name Cephas... Afterwards He surnamed the sons of Zebedee Boanerges (Mark 3:17). In time He will give to each member of His Church a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it (Revelation 2:17).
Two later scenes in the Gospels show the zeal behind the name.
The Lord gave this name, meaning 'sons of thunder,' to James and John the sons of Zebedee, Mark 3:17. Perhaps He gave it because of their urgent zeal. That zeal was clear when, angry at the treatment of their Lord, they asked whether they should call down fire from heaven. Luke 9:54. It was John who told the Lord about a man casting out demons in His name. They had stopped him, because he was not following with them. Mark 9:38. The Lord condemned this action of the apostles.
One writer finds the name hard to square with John's own writings, but plain enough in the other Gospels.
The Lord re-named some of His disciples. The name He gave to James and John was Boanerges, meaning 'Sons of thunder'. This would seem to describe their character. When we read the writings of John we do not think of him as a son of thunder. But some of the other Gospels show how hot-blooded and jealous he was by nature.
Others reject that reading and take the name as looking forward rather than backward.
What our Lord particularly meant to convey by this title is not easily settled. There have been many guesses. Some suppose He gave it because these two brothers had a more furious and determined nature. On this view their temper was fiercer and more fiery than that of the other apostles. But we see no ground for such a guess in the Gospel history. No doubt their zeal went too far on one or two occasions. But that was before they understood the spirit of their calling. More probably our Lord gave them the name as a prophecy. It pointed to their burning zeal in proclaiming the great truths of the gospel openly and boldly, once they knew those truths fully.
Either way, John did not stay the man he was at first.
His brother James and himself were called the sons of thunder. They were marked by a strong sense of God's judgment against sin and rebellion... The Lord also rebuked them both for wanting to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who would not receive Him. "You do not know what manner of spirit you are of," He said to them. But divine grace had its way, and John was shaped and softened, and brought to rest on the bosom of Jesus.
- Timed — The naming comes as the leaders plot to destroy Jesus. He answers by calling and appointing the twelve.
- Named — Only Peter, James and John received a surname from the Lord. Giving a name belongs to the One in authority.
- Known — Their zeal later burst out: fire from heaven, and a ban on an outsider. The Lord knew them before He named them.
- Disputed — Commentators differ. Some read Boanerges as a picture of a fiery temper. Others read it as a prophecy of bold preaching to come.
- Changed — Grace reshaped the man. The son of thunder came to rest on the bosom of Jesus.
and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the [son] of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean,
Mark's list of the twelve runs through eight more names in this verse, most of them men whose story the Gospels barely tell. So why record them at all, and what does a label like "the Zealot" mean?
The religious teachers had already turned against Jesus. One writer sees the calling of the twelve as the Lord's answer to that rejection.
The Pharisees and scribes rejected Him. Was God's work then to fade away for lack of workers? No. So the Lord went on to call the Twelve, both to be with Him, as Mark tells us, and to go out and preach, once He had commissioned them.
The New Testament gives four lists of the apostles. The order of the names is not random.
The names are grouped in three fours... Peter, James, John and Andrew form the first group always, and Peter is always the first, but the other three are not always in the same order. Philip is always the first of the second four, who are always grouped together; while James the son of Alphaeus is always the first of the last four... We ought to take notice of these little things. Matthew and Thomas are always put together, but when Matthew writes he puts Thomas first. There are many little things in his Gospel which bring out his humility.
Bartholomew was not the only name this apostle carried.
This was the apostle's family name, or surname, and it appears in all four lists. Nathanael was, most probably, his personal name, meaning the "gift of God." Before the Lord's public ministry began, he confessed Him as Son of God and King of Israel (John 1:49)... Of him the Lord said, "Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit" (John 1:47).
Matthew had collected taxes for Rome — a job that made a Jewish man an outcast among his own people.
The Jews hated having to pay taxes to the Romans. They thought the men who collected those taxes deserved no respect. That is why people often put "tax collectors and sinners" in the same class. The religious people mocked the Lord for entering their houses. They called Him "a friend of tax collectors and sinners." But God's grace was for all, and Matthew was called from his tax office to be one of the apostles.
Some translations read "Simon the Cananaean" here. That sounds like a place of origin. It is not.
He is distinguished from Simon Peter by Matthew and Mark as the Cananaean, and by Luke as the Zealot. The first term is the Hebrew name, and it does not mean a man from Canaan. The second is the Greek name for a Jewish sect with violent religious and political views, hostile to the Romans. Scripture records nothing else about this apostle.
This apostle appears under more than one name.
From Matthew we learn that Lebbaeus was surnamed Thaddaeus (Matt. 10:3), while Luke, in his Gospel and in the Acts, gives a further name of this apostle: Judas [the son or brother] of James. John records a question of his. John also keeps him separate from the traitor of the same name: "Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" (John 14:22). There is no further reference to him by name in the New Testament.
Silence covers most of this verse. One writer treats that silence as itself instructive.
It is remarkable, with only an exception or two, how little we know of this or of them. In the Gospels themselves we much more often have them held up as warnings to us than for our imitation. In the Acts, where we would most expect to find them, only one or two — fewer than in the Gospels — are at all prominent... It is clearly to the Spirit of God that we are directed, and to practise the same complete dependence on Him as they did.
Yet their obscurity on earth is not the last word.
They held a special place of honour and privilege in confessing the name of Jesus... and in the coming day of glory they will receive a special reward... Their names are written, not only in heaven... but also in the foundations of the wall of that figurative city which will be a channel for the light of the glory of God and the Lamb.
- Called — The religious leaders rejected Him. The Lord did not let the work stop, but named twelve to be with Him and later to preach.
- Named — The lists always fall into three groups of four, with Peter, Philip and James the son of Alphaeus each heading a group.
- Known — Bartholomew is likely Nathanael's family name. Thaddaeus is the Judas who is not Iscariot. The Zealot means a member of a Jewish party, not a man from Canaan.
- Reached — Matthew was pulled from a tax booth despised by his nation, because God's grace was for all.
- Kept — Earth remembers almost nothing of most of these men. Yet God has written their names in heaven, and set them in the foundations of the city to come.
and Judas Iscariote, who also delivered him up. And they come to [the] house.
The list of the twelve ends with Judas. Mark ties the betrayal to his name at the very moment he is chosen. Why would the Lord place a traitor among the men He called to be with Him, and what is that warning meant to do to us?
"Iscariot" points to a place, and that place set this apostle apart from the rest.
This name is always placed last of all in the lists of the apostles. Almost every mention of him carries a phrase pointing to his betrayal of Jesus. He is said to have been the son of Simon (John 6:71; John 12:4; John 13:2, 26). He did not come from Galilee, as most of the apostles did. He came from Kerioth, a town in the land of Judah (Joshua 15:25). That is what "Iscariot" implies.
For most of the story he is silent. His real character only came out when events drew it out.
He was one of the twelve. He is always named last in the list. As far as we know, he was the only one of them who came from Judea. Nothing special is told of him until the supper at Bethany, though the Lord had already called him a devil in the sixth chapter of John. Even then He fully knew his character and his terrible treachery. But circumstances had to bring out what was inside him.
If the Lord knew, why appoint him at all? Stuart raises that question and answers it from the Lord's own words.
But why was such a man allowed into the ranks of the apostles? If the Lord could foresee what Judas would do, why was he chosen? Would such a question raise a doubt about the Master in any one of the Eleven? Earlier in His ministry He had made it known that one of them was, as He then called him, a devil (6:70). He now spoke of that same man, still without naming him, and He showed why He had counted him among the Twelve — so that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Fulfilled prophecy does not lessen the guilt. Kelly holds both together without softening either.
It was man's sin, Satan's cunning, God's counsel, and Christ's love. But none of these things changed the wickedness of Judas... God did not make him wicked, but his wickedness was made to take this shape, to fulfil the counsels of God. One of the men chosen to be with Jesus here on earth would prove this dreadful truth. The closer a man is to blessing on the outside, the further he is from it in his soul — if he never takes it into his heart.
Judas stands at the end of the list as a warning meant to be looked at. Wolston turns that warning on the reader.
"He appointed twelve... so that they might be with Him." "Ah, but," you say, "one was a traitor." Well, do not you be a traitor! God help you, and me too, not to be traitors! Judas's history has its lessons for all of us. His history is like a warning light set on a dangerous coast. It keeps the careful sailor off the hidden rocks. It teaches our souls never to be like him.
The danger here is religion on the surface with nothing underneath. Judas preached, yet the gospel never reached him.
Here was an apostle — a preacher of the gospel, a man who made a great show of faith. Yet behind that show lay a heart "trained in greed." It had a wide place for "thirty pieces of silver," but not a corner for Jesus... He preached the gospel, but he never knew it, never believed it, never felt it.
Some translations join the close of this verse to the Lord going indoors again. The training of the twelve begins at once, and the first lesson is not a sermon but a scene.
He had called and chosen the twelve on the mountain. Then He came back to where people lived, and He was in a house. At once the crowds gathered. No one could resist His attraction, and the demands on Him left no time for meals. So when the twelve began to be with Him, the first thing they saw was this strong tide of interest and the apparent popularity of their Master.
- Called — the Lord Himself chose Judas and named him among the twelve who were to be with Him.
- Known — the Lord knew his treachery from the start, and counted him among the twelve so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
- Guilty — God's counsel shaped the outcome, but it never made Judas wicked. Man's sin, Satan's cunning and God's purpose all meet here, and none of them cancels the others.
- Near yet far — a man can stand right beside blessing and never take it in. That leaves him further from it in soul than anyone.
- Warned — his name stands at the end of the list like a light over dangerous rocks. Preaching, position and a loud show of faith saved no one whose heart had a wide place for silver and no corner for Jesus.