21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. 28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:21-28 NIV)
Happy Monday, Friend! I pray the joy of the Lord is your strength! A joyful strength is what the world needs! With that strength we can face all things and make life better for many. Use joy in your prayers as we pray for one another, even those we don't know. God knows all people and so when we lift up a name, God knows exactly who that is! Love all people and seek to bless other with loving acts of kindness.
I've said it many times before and I still believe that Peter is the man. He reminds me of me that many times he and I rushed into things and many times spoke before reflecting, and this passage reinforces that. Let's look deeply at this passage and what it may say to you and me.
Here's the thing about Peter — you have to love him, even when he's getting it spectacularly wrong, because he gets it wrong in the most relatable way possible. Just a few verses earlier he had the finest moment of his life: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus praised him, gave him the keys of the kingdom, told him that flesh and blood hadn't revealed this but the Father Himself. Peter was on top of the world. The ink was barely dry on his greatest theological achievement when Jesus begins to explain what being the Messiah actually means — suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection — and Peter pulls Jesus aside and begins to rebuke Him. The same Peter. The same conversation. The same afternoon.
"Never, Lord! This shall never happen to You!" It's said with complete sincerity and obvious love and total confidence, which makes what Jesus says next both necessary and a little startling: "Get behind me, Satan!" Now, before we feel too sorry for Peter, it's worth noting that this is the second time in the Gospels that Jesus has said those words — the first was to the actual devil in the wilderness. Peter has managed to land himself in some very uncomfortable company through the simple act of trying to protect Jesus from the cross. His heart was in the right place. His theology was not. He was so focused on a Messiah who would win without suffering that he couldn't hear the one standing in front of him explaining that the winning would come through the suffering.
And isn't that one of the most human things in all of Scripture? We all have a version of Peter's speech somewhere inside us — the part that wants the crown without the cross, the resurrection without the dying, the transformation without the process that produces it. We want the outcome but we'd like to negotiate the path, please, and perhaps remove the parts that are uncomfortable and time-consuming and don't fit our preferred timeline. Jesus looks at that tendency in all of us with the same gentle, firm directness He aimed at Peter: you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of humans.
But then — and this is where the passage opens into something genuinely beautiful — Jesus doesn't stop at the correction. He turns to the disciples and issues an invitation that is both a warning and one of the most liberating things He ever said: "Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me." Not "you must" in the sense of reluctant obligation. "Whoever wants" — it's an open door, a willing choice, an invitation extended to anyone who is actually interested in what following Jesus produces. The cross is not something He sneaks up on you with after you've already committed. He puts it right in the front of the brochure.
And then He says the thing that sounds paradoxical until you actually try it, and then it sounds like the truest sentence you've ever heard: "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it." This is the great inversion at the heart of the gospel — the life that is clutched and managed and protected and optimized for maximum self-preservation turns out to be the life that empties itself of everything worth having. And the life that is released, offered, poured out in the following of Jesus turns out to be the only life that actually fills up. This is not a threat. It is the most practical piece of life advice in the New Testament, confirmed by every person who has ever genuinely tried it.
Jesus closes with a question that deserves to be written somewhere you'll see it regularly: "What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" The whole world. Every achievement, every accumulation, every successful grab at security and status and comfort — if it comes at the cost of the thing that makes you actually you, the deepest and most essential you that God made and loves and is calling home, what exactly have you won? And the good news tucked right inside that searching question is this: your soul is worth more than the whole world to the One who made it. You are not being asked to deny yourself because you don't matter. You are being asked to deny yourself because you matter so much that God wants more for you than the world can offer.
Take up the cross. Lose the life that was never really working anyway. Follow the one who is going somewhere worth going — and who has already paid, in full, the price that makes the journey possible.
PRAYER: Loving Lord, give us the courage to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow You into the life that only surrender can produce. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one specific thing you have been holding onto for self-protection that Jesus might be inviting you to release today, and take one step toward opening your hand and following Him.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!
Let's win the world with love, for Jesus!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
