A, Post-Pentecost 13 Proper 16 - Matthew 16:13-20 "Son of the Living God"
But to understand the magnitude of what Peter confesses we
need to realise in that in his day Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and son of
God were not perceived as one and the same person. In fact, one claiming someone as the Son of
God was considered as blasphemy! It is
only after the resurrection that confession of Jesus as the Christ and as the
Son of God became one in the Early Church.
Judaism still considers this to be blasphemy.
In Matthew’s Gospel it is the devil who’s recorded as first
addressing Jesus as the Son of God. Twice he temps Jesus, saying, “If you are the Son of God, command these
stones to become loaves of bread.” (Matthew 4:3 ESV)
And second, “If you
are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “ ‘He will
command his angels concerning you,’ and “ ‘On their hands they will bear
you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ”(Matthew 4:6 ESV)
If the devil, who succeeded in tempting the first man,
Adam, into sin, can succeed in tempting the Son of God, born as the Son of Man,
to put right the sin of the first man, then he would have been able to stop
God’s plan of salvation for humanity.
But Jesus who his both Son of Man and Son of God, is not
tempted into sin despite being hungry and humiliated by the devil. “If” Jesus is the Son of God, is not even a
matter for question. Not, “if” he is the
Son of God, rather, Jesus “is” the Son of God, born to be the Son of Man.
Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man. It’s only recorded in John’s Gospel that
Jesus refers to himself as the Son of God.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) very deliberately record
others as confessing him as Son of God.
The title Son of Man is a term from the Old Testament, first
used by Balaam when God gave him his word to respond to Balak. God says, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should
change his mind. Has he said, and will
he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Behold, I received a command to bless: he has
blessed, and I cannot revoke it.” (Numbers 23:19–20 ESV)
Job is told by Bildad the Shuhite, “Dominion and fear are with God; he makes peace in his high heaven. Behold, even the moon is not bright, and the
stars are not pure in his eyes; how much
less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!” (Job 25: 2,5–6 ESV)
In Psalm eight which is taken up in Hebrews chapter two we
hear, “What is man, that you are mindful
of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than
the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honour, putting everything in subjection under his
feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside
his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” (Hebrews 2:6–8 ESV)
In addition to this, Ezekiel is named “son of man” as he is
called to serve both the Israelites and gentiles with prophecy. God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.” And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered
into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. And he said to me, “Son of man, I send you to
the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They
and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day.” (Ezekiel
2:1–3 ESV)
If we ponder the first son of man, we think of Cain. Adam and Eve expected Cain to be the great
successor who would crush the serpent under his heel, but he wasn’t! Instead like Adam, Cain was driven out by God
after he killed Abel.
Interestingly, Cain and Abel are not named as sons, even
though they were sons of Adam and Eve.
But it is only Seth who is named son.
We hear, “Adam knew his wife
again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has
appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” (Genesis 4:25 ESV)
And again, “When Adam
had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image,
and named him Seth.” (Genesis 5:3
ESV)
Seth was the substitute for Cain and Abel, and it is
through him that God would substitute the sin of Adam with the righteousness of
the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth, for us all.
Jesus is the Son of Man as the fulfilment of what Daniel
saw in a vision, “I saw in the night
visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of
man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a
kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his
dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom
one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13–14 ESV)
Jesus came as the Son of Man, to serve man as a son serves
his father and family. For Jesus to do
this he had to put his divinity aside to serve as we are told in Philippians
two, “though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a
servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6–8 ESV)
Jesus’ servanthood is one of peacemaking. At the Sermon on the Mount he says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9
ESV)
As with all the beatitudes they are fulfilled in the
servanthood of Jesus, the Son of Man, who became poor in spirit and was
persecuted for righteousness’ sake so we could have the kingdom of heaven. Who mourned over sin that we could be
comforted, who became meek in order that we inherit a new earth, who hungered
and thirsted for our righteousness, to satisfy God’s requirement of
righteousness. And who made peace being
the servant Son of Man, so we can be called sons of God.
But all this was yet to happen at the cross. Peter and all the other disciples had
witnessed the demons in Legion cry out to Jesus, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the
time?” (Matthew 8:29 ESV)
It took two turbulent trips across the Sea of Galilee,
feeding the five thousand, healings, and being sent out as apostles, for the
disciples to see the unhidden truth and confess Jesus as the Son of God.
But now, in the text for today, Jesus askes the disciples
who the Son of Man is? Peter confesses,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the
living God.” (Matthew 16:16
ESV) He says this after the other
disciples tell Jesus who others think he is.
But Peter has not learnt this from others, nor from within
himself, but from God. Jesus says to
him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah!
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in
heaven.” (Matthew 16:17 ESV)
It is God the Father himself who has led Peter to confess
Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, as the Christ, and as the Son of the living
God. The Living Father brings about a
living confession from Peter, that hidden within Jesus of Nazareth, is the
living Christ and Son of God.
In next week’s reading we hear how Peter’s confession from
God the Father is replaced by his rebuke when the Son of the Living God tells
the disciples he will be the Christ through his death and resurrection.
Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ anointed to serve humanity
as the Son of Man, humiliated as if he was a maggot or the worm of humanity. In this three-fold role he is our living
sacrifice, resurrected from the dead. He
did not lie; he did not change his mind; he fulfilled what he was sent to do on
the cross! Now raised in victory over
his sinless death, “God has highly
exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” (Philippians 2:9 ESV)
Paul says we are to present our bodies as a living
sacrifice, not to be conformed to the world.
How do we do this?
Just as Peter’s confession was not of his own, our service
as living sacrifices is not of our own.
Our work of living as a sacrifice is anchored in Jesus Christ, our Living
Sacrifice. He put his divinity aside and
was carried along by the Holy Spirit who rested on him in his baptism. For us to be living sacrifices for him, we too
need the Holy Spirit, so we can have our sinful nature put aside and
substituted for a new spirit, a spirit that trusts in Jesus despite the cost.
We now live and move and have our being because Jesus of
Nazareth is the resurrected Christ, the living Son of God. Now that we are sons of God through Jesus’
death and resurrection, we have freedom to be servants of humanity, serving
others with forgiveness and confession of, how and what God has forgiven
us. Amen.
