158.  The sternness of Jesus’ rebuke escapes extravagance only in view of the fact that the words of Peter had greatly affected Jesus himself.  At the outset of his public life he had faced the difficulty of doing the Messiah’s work in his Father’s way, and had withstood the temptation to accommodate himself to the ideas of his world, declaring allegiance to God alone (Matt. iv. 10).  Yet once and again in the course of his ministry he showed that this allegiance cost him much.  Luke reports a saying in which Jesus confessed that, in view of this prospect of death which Peter was opposing so eagerly, he was greatly “straitened” (xii. 50), and at the near approach of the end “his soul was exceeding sorrowful” (Mark xiv. 34).  It should never be forgotten that Jesus was a Jew, and heir to all the Messianic ideas of his people.  In these, glory, not rejection and death, was to be the Messiah’s portion.  That he was always superior to current expectations is no sign that he did not feel their force.  They quite mistake who find the bitterness of Jesus’ “cup” simply in his physical shrinking from suffering.  The temptation was ever with him to find some other way to the goal of his work than that which led through death.  What Peter said hid a force greater than any word of the disciple’s.  It voiced the crucial temptation of Jesus’ life.  The answer addressed to Peter showed that his words had drawn the thought of Jesus away from the disciple to that earlier temptation which was never absent from him more than “for a season” (Luke iv. 13).

159.  Jesus was not content with a mere rebuke of his impulsive disciple.  In his first announcement of his death as necessary he had also declared that it would not be a tragedy, but would be followed by a resurrection.  This the disciples could not appreciate, as they found the idea of the Messiah’s death unthinkable.  Jesus, however, saw in it the general law, that life must ever win its goal by disregard of itself, and called his disciples also to walk in the path of self-sacrifice.  In order that the new lesson might not quite overwhelm the yet feeble faith of these followers, Jesus assured them that after his death and resurrection he would come as Messianic Judge and fulfil the hopes which his prediction of death seemed to blot out utterly (Mark viii. 34 to ix. 1).

160.  That this new lesson was a difficult one for master as well as disciple seems to be shown by the experience which came a few days later to Jesus and his three closest friends.  He had withdrawn with them to a “high mountain” for prayer (Luke ix. 28f.).  While he prayed the light of heaven came into his face, and his disciples were granted a vision of him in celestial glory, conversing with Moses and Elijah, representatives of Old Testament law and prophecy.  The theme of the discourse was that death which had so troubled the disciples, and which then and later weighed heavily on Jesus’ own spirit (Luke ix. 31).  At the conclusion of