Thursday, January 03, 2008

"Get behind me Satan!"

Mark 8:31-33
31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

This passage stood out to me in my reading today. I thought of the overlooked temptations of Chtist. What really grabbed my attention was a sentence in my study Bible: "Satan now is at work in Jesus' own disciples, not only in Judas, but even in Peter, whose intervention would have annulled the plan of redemption and accomplished Satan's goal."

I think we often forget about the humanness of Christ. How hard would this have been. Peter, one if Christ's closest friends and disciples, who was like family to Jesus, was pleading with Him to not die. This undoubtedly was hurting Christ deep. Christ, however, seeing Satan at work nipped it in the bud and commanded him to stop tempting Him.

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