Mark 8:31-32a 31And he began to teach them that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32And he said this plainly.
After the high point of Peter’s confession about the identity of Jesus, Jesus shifts the attention of the disciples back to the reality of why he had come. The disciples had shown many times that they did not understand Jesus or his mission. They saw the miracles and even participated in some of them, but their faith was still lacking to the point of entire sanctification. They needed to follow the path to the cross to experience the fullness of resurrection life. The next scene adds further proof about their immature faith and that they had not yet come to the point of full commitment. Like other Jews of their time, they may have had in their minds that the Messiah would come as a conqueror, but Jesus talked about being a victim.
Mark’s transition at the beginning of verse 31 marks the shift in topic: Then he began to teach them. From this point on, Jesus would teach the disciples the way of the cross and the necessity of his suffering and death. The sequence of verbs in this verse summarizes Mark 14-16. First, Jesus must suffer. The short Greek word for it was necessary (dei) has more significance than its size suggests. It means that the suffering of the Son of Man was the will of God and was necessary in order to accomplish the divine purpose of salvation. Suffering, however, was the opposite of what people expected from the Messiah. They believed he would inflict great suffering upon their enemies.
Second, Jesus would be rejected by the Jewish leaders. The Parable of the Rejected Son in 12:1-12 illustrates this point clearly. Those who rejected Jesus were the “cream of the crop” among Jews. They were the leaders who had reached the highest level of religious piety and political power of the nation. They thought they had God, religion, and life figured out, but they were blinded by their own hypocrisy. They heard the truth but refused to accept it because of their desire for influence and power.
Third, Jesus said he would be killed. This was the hard part for Peter to accept, as verse 32 indicates. How could the Messiah be killed? Peter had his own definition of “messiah,” implied in verse 30. But what did he believe about the Messiah? His thinking had to change. Jesus had to go to the cross for the redemption of humanity. The Old Testament Scriptures had to be fulfilled lest humanity continue to struggle against the power of sin and death.
Fourth, Jesus would rise again after three days. This prediction probably thoroughly confused the disciples. Jesus’ death is never mentioned in Mark without mentioning his resurrection. Death for Jesus never has the final word. The gospel is not about dying on the cross but rising from the dead. Jesus was not a martyr but a savior, and that required victory over death. He made this clear to the disciples, but they had to experience their own crosses of consecration and commitment before it would make sense to them.
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