Petrine Confession Essay

The Petrine confession at 8:29 is a turning point in the life of the disciples’ walk with Jesus as it solves their problem of Jesus’ identity raised at 4:41; ‘Who can this be that even the wind and the sea obey him? He is the Christ! However, the problem of understanding Jesus’ mission now emerges and it is this problem that we shall concentrate on from 8:31:10:45. There are three subsequent points that demonstrate Jesus’ appreciation of the disciples’ progress in their walk with him after the Petrine confession. Firstly, Jesus for the first time begins to reveal his mission to the disciples. Three times in this section (8:31-10:45) Jesus predicts his passion consisting of his suffering, death and resurrection; in all these three predictions the disciples fail to understand. The most amazing aspect …show more content…
Only two miracles are featured in this section; the healing of the boy (9:14-29) and the healing of Bartimaeus (10:46-52). This emphasizes that the revelation of the passion—the Christ who was going to die could not be intuitively understood through miracles. That is the reason Jesus did not perform an immediate miracle to open the disciples’ eyes to discover who he was and what he come to do. Rather, he verbally, gradually, and persistently taught them. While miracles were a perfect means of the revelation of Christ’s deity as seen in the cries of the demons professing Christ’s holiness and deity as the Son of God (Mk.1:24); they could in no way reveal the death of Christ and its implications for discipleship. In fact, miracles were a hindrance for the disciples to receive the teaching of a suffering Christ and suffering discipleship. Thus verbal revelation was the only means through which Christ’s mission of death and its corollary for discipleship could be