And Peter taking him to [him] began to rebuke him, saying, [God] be favourable to thee, Lord; this shall in no wise be unto thee.
Moments earlier Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, and Jesus called him blessed. Now the Lord announces His coming death, and Peter pulls Him aside to tell Him it must never happen.
The words carry more than a polite protest. One writer sets out how the phrase has been rendered, and what lay under Peter's good intentions:
The Revised Version goes too far in its margin, where it renders the apostle's first words "God have mercy upon You." Darby gives it literally: "Be favourable to Yourself, Lord." Peter certainly meant well. He could not bear to think of suffering and shame for his beloved Master and Lord. But Satan often uses a kind nature to turn God's witnesses aside from the path of faithfulness.
Read that way, his request turns back on itself. He asks God to spare the One who came to be the propitiation — the one through whom God's favour reaches others:
Satan too would gladly have spared Him the cross that He foresaw, for all the counsels of God hung on it. Peter is praying God to be favourable to the One who was Himself to be the one propitiation for others. He is asking God to spare Him the very thing by which propitiation could alone be made. So human wisdom may mistake its way, and human affection set itself against the path of divine love.
Peter's expectations left no room for this announcement. It tore up the hopes he had carried:
Here the solemn truth begins to break through the clouds. But Simon Peter is not prepared for it. It withered up all his Jewish hopes and earthly expectations. What! The Son of the living God must die! How could it be? The glorious Messiah nailed to a cross!
Peter clearly cared for Jesus. That is what makes the moment so unsettling. Warm feeling on its own steered him wrong:
Peter had real affection for the Lord; but this affection could not preserve him from the gravest of falls. He lacked what he could not do without — knowledge... When he said, "Far be it from You, Lord! This shall never happen to You," it was his affection which spoke. Yet at that very moment Peter was a Satan. Because he did not know the heart of Christ, he dared to think that the God of love would agree to save Himself.
Notice the posture, not just the sentence. Peter takes Jesus aside, uninvited, and begins to correct Him:
The Lord had not asked him what he thought of His statement. He speaks on impulse, out of the flesh, as a natural man... He acts with astonishing forwardness. He takes his Lord aside and then began to rebuke Him. The Lord, who rebuked the winds and the sea, rebuked by His creature! What ignorance of the person of the Lord, and what failure, this action of Peter reveals.
How can the same man confess the Son of the living God and then oppose His cross? The gap lies between what a person believes and what shapes his daily life:
You can be convinced of the highest truths, and even enjoy them sincerely as truths. That is still not the same as having your heart shaped to the feelings, and to the daily walk here, that match those truths. What is missing is not sincere enjoyment of the truth. What is missing is the flesh, self, put to death — being dead to the world.
The Lord reacted strongly, because Peter's instinct is everyone's instinct:
What was it that so roused our Lord? The very snare to which we are all so exposed — the desire of saving self, the preference of an easy path to the cross. Is it not true that we naturally want to escape trial, shame, and rejection? We shrink from the suffering that doing God's will must always bring in a world like this.
The same choice stands before anyone who follows Him:
If we are going to follow Christ, we must accept His pathway of shame and sorrow here. If we refuse the cross, we shall not have the crown.
- Words — Peter's plea means "be favourable to Yourself, Lord." He asks God to spare the One who came to make propitiation. Sparing Him would remove the one thing that could bring God's favour to others.
- Motive — his affection was genuine. What he lacked was knowledge of Christ's heart, so love spoke and got it wrong.
- Root — his hopes for a reigning Messiah left no place for a dying one, and the announcement withered them.
- Diagnosis — sincerely believing a great truth is not the same as having self put to death. That is why blessing and rebuke followed each other so fast.
- Warning — we feel the same pull Peter felt, to spare ourselves shame and suffering. Refuse the cross, and we lose the crown.
But turning round, he said to Peter, Get away behind me, Satan; thou art an offence to me, for thy mind is not on the things that are of God, but on the things that are of men.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.