Matthew 16:13-20 - Dummelow's Commentary on the Bible

St. Peter's confession (Mark 8:27; Luke 9:18). Jesus now undertook another distant excursion, partly to escape the hostility of the Pharisees (Matthew 16:4), but chiefly to hold private converse with His disciples, and to lead them on to the recognition of His Messiahship and divine Sonship, which was the supreme object of His ministry so far as the Twelve were concerned. What was the significance of this confession, which clearly marked a great epoch in Christ's ministry? According to some its significance lay in the fact that He was now for the first time recognised as the Messiah. But is this so? Already He had been called the 'Son of God,' i.e. the Messiah, by the Apostles (Matthew 14:33). He had been so designated by the Baptist (Matthew 3:11-12) and by popular acclamation ('Son of David'=the Messiah, Matthew 9:27; Matthew 12:23; Matthew 15:22). So also in the Fourth Gospel the apostles regard Him as the Messiah from the first ('We have found the Messiah,' John 1:41; 'Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel,' John 1:49). The significance of Peter's representative confession, therefore, lies in this, that what they had before received on the authority of the Baptist, and as a mere working hypothesis, which might or might not be proved by events to be true, they now deliberately ratified as their own conviction, based on their personal experience of what Jesus had shown Himself to be. Here then at last was the solid rock on which Jesus could build, not the shifting sand of possibilities and surmises, nor the weak faith which consists in mere submission to authority, but the strong conviction of earnest souls who know what they believe and why they believe it, and are willing to live by the truth they have apprehended, and, if need be, die for it.