Jesus Corrects His Disciples Who See in Part

[Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must… be killed, and after three days rise again… Peter… began to rebuke him… [Jesus] 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.” Mark 8:31-33

You read Peter’s wonderful confession—“You are the Christ”—and you are tempted to say, surely the disciples are seeing clearly. But look what happens next.

Peter feels confident enough to tell Jesus what He should be doing. And Jesus has to correct him. The danger for a new Christian is that you become overconfident: You feel sure that you know what God is doing and what He should do.

The first lesson Peter learned was that he still had to be guided by God’s Word. He must submit all his ideas to the teaching of Jesus, to the Word of God. That’s the first lesson we have to learn as well.

When you come to faith in Christ you see some things, but you do not see everything. If you expect to see everything clearly, you have not understood the nature of the Christian life. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then [when Christ comes] face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12).

A proper grasp of the gospel will give you: (1) a confidence that knows you can trust Christ in all things, and (2) a humility that knows many things are not yet revealed.

Without faith’s humility we become arrogant, and no one will hear us. Without faith’s confidence we become agnostic, and we have nothing to say. Faith’s confidence trusts Christ as Savior. Faith’s humility takes Christ as teacher.

Do you have faith’s confidence but not faith’s humility? Or are you living in the Word enough to be corrected by it?