Mark 8:27-30
Who Do You Say I Am
27Then Jesus and His disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way, He questioned His disciples: “Who do people say I am?”
28They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”
30And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about Him.
Berean Standard Bible
Four verses, and the book turns over on them.
Mark told us who Jesus is in his opening sentence, and then showed us people getting it wrong. Unclean spirits knew and were silenced. Crowds wanted what he could do for them. His own family thought he was unwell, and the town he grew up in could not see past the carpenter.
Now he is walking north with his friends, in the villages around Caesarea Philippi, up at the foot of Mount Hermon and a long way outside Galilee. Nothing in what they talk about needs them to be there. He starts with the question that costs nothing.
Who do people say I am?
They hand him three answers Mark has already written down, back when the news about Jesus reached Herod: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets. Every one of them is respectful. Every one of them fits him into a category that already existed, a great man or a returning prophet or a figure out of the past come back again, and every one of them is wrong.
Then he changes the pronoun. The second question is the one this whole book has been walking toward, and it is the one question in it that cannot be answered by watching.
Who do you say I am?
Nobody can report somebody else's answer to that. Peter gives him four words: you are the Christ. Christ is not a surname. It means the anointed one, the king Israel had been promised and waited for through centuries of prophets and disappointment, and Peter lays the whole of that on the man he has been walking beside.
He is right. And Jesus tells the lot of them to say nothing about it to anybody.
It sounds like a strange way to treat a correct answer, and it is exactly what he has been doing since the first chapter. He has silenced spirits. He has healed people and told them to keep quiet about it. Now the one man who gets the words right is told to sit on them.
The reason turns up in the next paragraph, and it is not a comfortable one. Peter has the right word and the wrong picture behind it. He is about to hear what kind of Christ he has just confessed, and he is going to hate it.
How We Know
Where this conversation happens matters. Caesarea Philippi sat well north of Galilee, in territory ruled by Herod Philip. Josephus records Philip building the city at the springs of the Jordan and naming it Caesarea, which is how it came to carry the name of an emperor and the name of the man who built it. It was not Jewish country.
Asking who people say the Son of Man is, in a town named for an emperor, supports a setting chosen rather than incidental.
The answers in verse 28 are all respectful and all previously used in this Gospel: John the Baptist at 6:14, Elijah and the prophets at 6:15.
- Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.28.
Questions
1 Where does this conversation happen, and does anything in it need that place?
AnswerThe villages around Caesarea Philippi, at the foot of Mount Hermon, well north of Galilee. Nothing they say requires it, which is usually a sign that somebody remembered where they were standing at the time.
2 What three answers do people give, and what do the three have in common?
AnswerJohn the Baptist, Elijah, and one of the prophets. All three are respectful, all three fit Jesus into a category that already existed, and all three are wrong.
3 Before anybody looks at what Peter said, go round the table and answer the second question yourselves. Who do you say he is?
AnswerNothing to mark here. Let each person say it in their own words, at whatever age they are, and let the short answers stand as they come out.
4 What is Peter claiming when he calls Jesus the Christ?
AnswerThat he is the anointed one, the king Israel had been promised and waited for through centuries of prophets. It is not a title of politeness. It is the hope of a whole nation in four words.
What This Means for Us
There is a question here that cannot be answered secondhand.
Who do people say I am is easy. Anybody can report what is generally thought, and it commits you to nothing at all. Children who grow up around this often carry that answer for years without noticing. They know what their family believes, what the church teaches, what the correct response is, and none of that is a bad thing to have. It is just not the same as having answered.
So ask it around this table, plainly, and let it be quiet afterward. Who do you say he is. Nobody has to answer well. Everybody should get asked.
Prayer
Father, it is easier to say what other people believe than to say what we believe. Thank you for asking us anyway. Give each of us our own answer to that question, and make it a true one. Amen.