A, Post-Pentecost 13 Proper 16 - Matthew 16:13-20 "Son of the Living God"
Living post-resurrection, we lose the enormity of Peter’s confession
that Jesus of Nazareth is both the Son of God and the Christ. In our ears we hear Jesus, Christ, and Son of
God as a synonymous confession of the same man, and rightly so!
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 Gospel 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 made21` 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.
Sermon Summary
This sermon reflects on Peter’s confession
that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” and shows how remarkable
that confession was before the resurrection. It traces the titles “Son of Man”
and “Son of God” through Scripture, showing that Jesus is both truly human and
truly divine: the promised Son of Man who serves, suffers, and fulfils God’s
saving purposes, and the Son of God who overcomes temptation, sin, death, and
the devil.
Peter’s confession is not produced by human
insight but revealed by the Father. In the same way, Christian faith and
service do not arise from our own strength. Because Jesus humbled himself as
the servant Son of Man and was raised as the living Son of God, believers are
made sons of God through him and are freed to live as servants of others,
offering themselves as living sacrifices through the work of the Holy Spirit.
1. Reflection Questions
- Why is Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” so significant in its original context?
- How does understanding Jesus as both Son of Man and Son of God deepen your understanding of his saving work?
- What does Jesus’ resistance to the devil’s temptations reveal about his identity and mission?
- In what ways does Jesus fulfil the Old Testament hopes connected with the “son of man”?
- How does Jesus’ humility and servanthood in Philippians 2 shape the way we understand Christian service?
- Peter’s confession was revealed by the Father rather than discovered by human wisdom. How does this encourage humility in faith?
- What does it mean for you to present your body as a living sacrifice, anchored in Christ’s living sacrifice?
- Where might the Holy Spirit be calling you to put aside your sinful nature and trust Jesus despite the cost?
- How can being made a son or daughter of God through Christ free you to serve others with forgiveness?
- What confession of Christ do your words and actions make before others?
