Blog:"Get behind me, Satan!"
I love this line from Scripture -- and it's rather useful at times, a magnificent rebuke, "Get behind me, Satan!"
Here for the full passage:
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
We don't know how Peter reacted to it, as it was in no way said in jest. Think about it: the Lord called him "Satan" (and as a proper noun)!
What's going on here?
God's plan, not Peter's
Nearing the time of the Passover festival, Jesus had prepared the disciples for his coming Passion. My NAB Bible gives this passage the title, The First Prediction of the Passion.
Who wouldn't react like Peter to being told,
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.
No, Lord, no!
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
Jesus tells Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
We do know that whatever he made of it, Peter didn't understand. Not long after, at the arrest of Jesus in the Garden, Peter again brashly tries to defend Jesus, this time not with braggadocio but true bravery, wielding a sword. He truly didn’t get it, didn't get the logic of God’s plan. (And had he not slept through Jesus’ prayer in the Garden, perhaps he would have finally understood).
Peter kinda missed that "and... on the third day be raised," business. Naturally, he was shocked that Jesus said he would be betrayed and killed, the purpose of which the Peter and the disciples failed to understand. The rebuke, then, is plainly that Paul was thinking this life not the next, thinking like a human and not like God.
We’re worse than Peter though— God's plan has been fully revealed to us and we are still stuck “thinking… as human beings do.”
So how does "God think"?
The passage follows Simon's appointment as head of the Church, the rock, "Peter," which itself follow's Peter's declaration that Jesus is "the Messiah, the son of the living God." John, as usual, gives us some different passages, including the seven "I am" statements of Jesus, with the most direct one in Jesus' challenge to the Pharisees:
So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (Jn 8:57-8:x)
His listeners react violently to the claim and try to stone him. But the Messiah will be "lifted up" not knocked down, so Jesus miraculously escapes.
Even if they understood him to be the Messiah, as did Peter (albeit by divine inspiration; see Mt 16:17), none of them had any notion of the Messiah's actual mission. Here's where men don't think like God. Instead they understood that the Son of David would free Israel from foreign enslavement, as did Moses for them out of Egypt, and then restore the kingdom. This is why Jesus (and John the Baptist) says, repeatedly, "The Kingdom of God is at hand" -- to clarify that the "kingdom" is not of man (a "son of David") and thereby not of this world.[1]
Not only do they not comprehend the role of the Messiah, their confirmation bias is so strong that they completely mistake Jesus' miracles for demonstrations of power, not mercy, and his teachings of repentance for expiation of Israel and not for personal salvation. As such, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of acting through Satan (Mt 12:25), and when he slaps that accusation down, they still demand "a sign" (Mt 12:38). Only, the sign they wanted was Caesar's head, not a cured leper. They were simply enraged by it all, and their frustration grows palpable in the constant questioning of Jesus about it: if you're the Messiah, save us already!
Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he said in reply, “The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.”
It's a sublime response that, thinking like humans and not God, they cannot accept, and not accepting it their contempt grows, even to mock him as he is dying on the Cross:
Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also kept abusing him. (Mt 15:32)
It's not in any sense ironic that forty years later the Romans ended up destroying Jerusalem, killing hundreds of thousands of people through starvation, warfare, and, again, no irony, crucifixion of thousands[2]. It's logical for the Jews to have expected that God would once again save his chosen people: he brought them from Egypt; he saved them from the Babylonians and Assyrians; and he gave them victory over the Seleucids (Greeks) who had profaned the Temple. Along with the element of thanksgiving, the Jewish system of sacrifice was for expiation of the sins of Israel and the ongoing restoration of its kingdom, so for the Israelites, the lesson was always that God punishes infidelity and rewards faith, lessons that backfired horrifically when God wasn't there for them in 70 AD. All good logic, but a complete failure of what's called "normalcy bias" -- expecting things to be the same, just because. Instead, reason failed them when seeing the plain miracles of Christ they saw misdemeanor Sabbath violations instead.
It is ironic, however, that the only person in the Gospel not guided by the Holy Spirit who realizes before Jesus' death what was actually going on was the "good thief," who after mocking Jesus for not saving himself (Mt 27:44), repents, telling Jesus,
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Lk 23:42)
There you go: the kingdom is not here and now, and had Jesus not died, which Peter wanted to stop, there would be no divine coronation. It was at his own death and upon watching Jesus die that the good thief was able to see what the rest could not, and that Jesus had been saying so plainly all along: the Messiah will restore not the temporal throne of Israel, but lead her people -- and the rest, as God had promised Abraham -- to the Kingdom of God. Indeed, one of my favorite lines from Jesus comes after Peter slashes at the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus. After the famous "live by the sword, die by the sword" comment, Jesus tells Peter,
“Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels? (Mt 26:53)
That's what the pharisees and the disciples and all the Jews wanted from their Messiah. Jesus could have at any time ordered down "twelve legions of angels" and thrown the Romans out of Palestine. He could have climbed down from the Cross and cracked open a bottle of champaign, saying "Just kidding! Let's kick some Roman butt now!"
But that's how men think, not God.
Jesus rebuked Peter for trying to be an obstacle to the Cross. Jesus knew he had to die, that were he not to die Satan would prevail. But Jesus would not allow, it, thus he commands that Satan stand aside, get out of the way.
It was a bit of a learning curve, but Peter eventually got it and could thereby preach the Good News that the Messiah had not only arrived but arose to his fullest glory:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen sojourners of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, in the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification by the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ: may grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you
who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith, to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time. (1Pet 1:1-5)
Before we scoff at the Apostles and disbelieving Jews, It'd all be rather remarkable if people in our own day were so plainly blind to simple truths that don't conform to their world view, their temporal satisfactions, and, most importantly, to their pride.
We humans think temporally. God thinks eternally.
Today's discussion is less on my ramblings about the Kingdom of God (read it though!) and more on Jesus' warning to Peter that he, Jesus, must die, and to deny that death would be the devil's work. Death was introduced to man through Satan, and only the Christ can defeat it and restore eternal life -- by dying. It's unclear that Jesus was speaking to Satan as well as to Peter, for Jesus knew that Satan would instill hatred in Judas (Jn 13:27) and betray him, so why give him this warning? Either way, what matters here is that Jesus was preparing the disciples for his death. As Jesus told the disciples on the Road to Emmaus (Lk 24:26):
Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”
The rebuke the Peter was a rebuke to us all: stop thinking like human beings!