Christ's Intimation of His Sufferings.
The time from which Jesus began to speak to His disciples of His sufferings was the time at which His Apostles had made open confession of His Godhead. Here then is a point from which to reckon, and on which to reason. We may now start with the inquiry, What inducement led to, and what instruction may be gathered from, the recorded fact, that when Jesus had drawn from His disciples the acknowledgment of His Divinity, then, and not before, He began to tell them of His sufferings.
I. The Apostles could have had none but the most indistinct apprehensions of the office and mission of our Lord, so long as they were ignorant of the death which He had undertaken to die. Christ deferred speaking of His sufferings till His disciples had full faith in His Godhead. As much as to say, "It will be of no avail to speak to them of My death till they are convinced of My Deity. So long as they only know Me as the Son of man, they will not be prepared to hear of the Cross; when they shall also know Me as the Son of the Living God, then will be the time to tell of ignominy and death."
II. We seem quite justified in gathering from the text, that henceforward our Lord made very frequent mention of His Cross. And what is very observable is, that it seems to have been upon occasions when the disciples were likely to have been puffed up and exalted, that ever after our Lord took special pains to impress upon them that He must be rejected and killed. Learn to expect, and be thankful for, something bitter in the cup, when faith has won the victory, and you have tasted, in no common measure, the powers of the invisible world. Triumph would make us proud, if not followed by humiliation; and the Good Physician who gave His own blood to save us from death will in mercy prevent the fever, by opening a vein. When Christ shows us the crown, He loves us too well, not commonly to follow it with laying on the Cross.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,268.
References: Mark 8:31-38. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 173; W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 250.