“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
Asking to the world who the Son of Man is will always more or less miss the mark. They may not be entirely wrong, for he was a prophet like John the Baptist, Elijah, or Jeremiah, but he was also much more than that. The best the world could do in explaining Jesus was to put him in an existing category. But no existing category was sufficient for Jesus. The Old Testament had signs, types, and prophecies that pointed forwarded to him. But even those prophets like Isaiah who came the closest to describing his life did not spell out the answer for the disciples.
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The answer of Peter was not something he drew from Scriptures or reasoned out with his intellect. Yet it didn't come completely out of the blue. He reflected on what he knew of Scriptures and the promise of the Messiah as well as on his own experiences following Jesus. But if he had only looked at these from a perspective of flesh and blood he would not have given the answer he did. It was only because he was open to the Spirit and not merely the letter that he received the revelation of the truth about the identity of Jesus.
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
Peter was the first to be open to revelation of the heavenly Father about the identity of Jesus. Jesus wanted his Church to have the assurance of access to this truth as the rock on which it would be built. He didn't want the Church to face all the myriad opinions of the world alone, or be blown about by every wind of doctrine (see Ephesians 4:14). He gave assurance to Peter and his successors that they would always have access to this revelation from the Father in order to keep them free from error when they formally defined the doctrines of the faith.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
This is the Church to which we are privileged to belong. We have access to the true testimony about the identity of Jesus, the meaning of his mission, and the meaning, therefore, of our lives as well. But it is not supposed to be merely the answer of others that we parrot and pretend is our own. It is meant to be a revelation that we receive as Peter did. The Church is not meant simply to be a place where true doctrine is taught. Having true doctrine is part of her role. But the other part is being animated by the Spirit. This means that she can be for us the place of genuine revelation about Jesus Christ. We can move beyond what we have heard and what others have said to what we ourselves have experienced. Jesus is asking us again this morning "But who do you say that I am?" It is not a trick question. The Father stands ready to infuse our hearts with the truth of the answer.
It was precisely an experience of the answer to this question on the road to Damascus that drove everything that Paul did afterward.
Who are you, lord?” Saul asked.
And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! (see Acts 9:5).
Why is important that we too receive this revelation? Why not accept it on the word of others and move on? One reason is that if we don't receive it for ourselves we won't have the strength and the power that it brings to motivate us in the way that it did for Paul and for Peter. It was their experience of Jesus himself that kept them faithful even in difficult circumstances.
The Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the proclamation might be completed
and all the Gentiles might hear it.
If we receive the revelation from the Father telling us who Jesus is we will not believe even a prison, sixteen soldiers, and double chains are absolute in their power over us. If we find ourselves bound we won't read about Peter in prison and assume it was only a nice story about the past. We will assume it is meant to teach us something about the power of the Lord, the potential for his action in our own lives, since we, together with Peter and Paul, follow him who is Christ, the Son of God.
I sought the LORD, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
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