NOT ROME BUT RELIGION
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Mark 8:31-33
This incident shows us how influential Peter was in this group of disciples. He vocalised and the rest of the disciples tended to follow what he said. At this point in his life, where he was unstable in his thinking and still vulnerable to deception, he was a dangerous man in the group and needed to be tamed and brought to heel by Jesus before He could risk allowing him out into the world with his power to influence and persuade. He was a valuable ally but a dangerous enemy.
Jesus was never afraid to offend people as long as it exposed what was on the inside. Peter must have smarted under Jesus’ rebuke. We can imagine him withdrawing from the group, humiliated and angry. He knew Jesus was right but he resented the exposure in front of the other disciples.
It was necessary for Jesus to correct Peter’s wrong thinking and to douse his influence over the other disciples. He could see that they were wavering and He jumped in to put that fire out before it spread. He had introduced them to the necessity of His suffering and death and nothing must detract from the centrality of that because it was the heart of His victory, not over Rome but over sin and death. Rome still had a part to play in helping to form His church through suffering and, ultimately Rome was not the issue.
The greatest threat to Jesus’ mission was not Rome but religion. It was religion that would crucify Him and His victory over religion would be the final victory over the devil because the devil’s most deceptive disguise is religion. People will kill to protect their religious beliefs because religion influences every part of their lives. The Jewish leaders hated Him because He exposed the emptiness and hypocrisy of their religious system.
Religion is power because it holds people in slavery. Satan wields his power through religion and through religious leaders. It is his favourite disguise to keep people enslaved by fear.