The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 146

Let us learn of our dear Lord to be indifferent to titles, not to ea.re to make known things that. may bring us earthly honour. The Lord had received, as his due, thel homage of St. Peter; he was the Christ, the Son of the liviug God. But while he accepted, as his by right, those loftiest of all conceivable titles, he prophesied the near approach of the extremest humiliation. He must go to Jerusalem• he must suffer many things; he must be killed. It must be, he said; it was necess~ry for the fulfil- ment of the Divine purpose, for the remission of sin, for the salvation of mankind. He must rise again the third day. He could not be holden of death, for he bath life in himself; he ~s the Life. The a.pos~les ~id not understand him (Mark ix. 10, 32); they could not thmk that he was speaking literally; they could not believe that the Divine Messiah would suffer what seemed to them such utter degradation. And when it had come to pass, their misery and despondency were so great that they found no comfort in the prophecy of the resurrection; their horror and distress drove it quite out of th_eir hearts. The Lo,:d was _graciously and tenderly preparing them for the coming trial. Let us prepare m the time of health and strength for what must come, sickness and pa.in and death; so by his grace may we be ready. 2. Peter. He was impulsive, -impetuous, as always. He took the Lord, caught him by the dress or hand; he ventured to rebuke him, as if be was wiser than the Christ. The Lord interrupted him; he would not allow him to proceed in his thoughtless talk; he sternly checked his improper freedom. "Get thee behind me, Satan," he ea.id to the apostle whom not long before be had pronounced" blessed," to whom he had committed the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The Lord had used those same strong words once before. The evil spirit, whom be bad foiled in the wilderness, was now tempting him a.gain through the agency of Peter. Again the Lord repelled the temptation. It was the old tempta- tion, the last of Satan's approaches in the wilderness (eh. iv. 8, 9), the temptation to wear the crown without bee.ring the cross; to take the kingdom which was his by .eight, but to take it without treading the path of suffering, the way ordained by God. Peter was a stumbling-block now. Years afterwards, in his First Epistle (ii. 8), he . described "the chief Corner-stone" (with a manifest allusion to this conversation) as being to the disobedient and unbelieving" a Rock of offence (1r/,,.pm a-rcmvllcl\ou)." •He . was now ma.king himself a stumbling-block to Christ ; he was minrling, not the things -0f God, but the things of men. Men set their affections on earthly things, ease, comfort, .Jionour, riches; these a.re not al ways good for us. Affliction, meekly borne, is better; .it worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Peter acted the tempter's part. Our kindest friends sometimes unwittingly do the like, when they dis- -suade us from enduring hardness, from ma.king sacrifices for Christ's sake. Peter loved the Lord fervently, but his love was not wise. He was presumptuous, forward, even in some degree irreverent. Perhaps he was exalted above measure by the Lord's commendation, as St. Paul thought he himself might have been through the abundance of the revelations (2 Cor. xii. 7). There is no safety without humility; the nearer we draw to Christ, the more we need to learn of him that most precious grace, IL THE DISCil'LE 111.UBT FOLLOW THE MABTEB'B STEPS. 1. The daily cross of •ii/- denial. The Lord had told the apostles of his own coming sufferings; now he warns ,them that those sufferings must, in some sense, repeat themselves in all his faithful followera. He speaks to alL "!f any man W1,tleth. to co?1~ a.fte~ me," he s~id. '.fhere must be the wi£h first. There 1B no perseverance in religion without desire, without -!onofog without love. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteoue- 0nes~." 'They who do not hunger a.re not filled. .Again, the true Christian wi~h is to come after Christ. All men wish, more or less earnestly, more or less languidly, to get to heaven at last. That wi:5h is, ae many_enterta~n it, utterly selfish. Th~ Chrfs- tian wishes to come after Chnst, and, followwg Christ here, to be at last with him there. To come after Christ, then, is the central wish of the Christian life, and the means by which that wish is realized is self-denial. Christ pleased not himself; his disciples must follow him. The true self is the conscience; but the lower part of_ our nature, the appetites and affections which we share with the rest o_f the ~n1mal .creation, are so noisy and turbulent, fill eo large a part of our conscious eustenco (in many men, alas I almost the whole), tha.~ they seem to be th;e self, and usurp the name of self, which properly belongs to the higher self! the con~c1en_ce. and the re,~son. lt is the lower self which we must deny. When appehte says, ' Tlrn11s pleasant, but OB. xvi. 1-28.J TIIE GOSPEL ACOORDING TO ST. MATTllEW H9