Passage: Mark 8:27-38

The Big Idea

We’ve reached the turning point of Mark’s Gospel. The first half answered “Who is Jesus?” and Peter confessed, “You are the Christ.” The second half answers “What did He come to do?” and the answer shocked the disciples: the King must die. When Peter tried to talk Jesus out of the cross, Jesus called it what it was: thinking the way people think, not the way God thinks. The flesh, our self-life running on our own thoughts, wants and feelings, can’t be reformed or saved. It must be denied. But whoever loses his life for Jesus’ sake finds it.

The Turning Point

We’ve come to the middle of Mark, the halfway point, and there’s a huge shift.

First half: who He is.

The good news: “The King has come!”
Our response: “Repent and believe.”
The first great confession, by an insider, Peter: “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29).

Now that it’s clear who Jesus is, He’ll make clear what He came to do.

Second half: what He came to do.

The good news: “The King must die!”
Our response: “Take up your cross and follow Him.”
The second, climactic confession, by an outsider, a Gentile Roman centurion: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39).

Look how Mark summed it all up in his very first verse: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Peter confesses the first title; the centurion confesses the second.

“Who Do You Say I Am?” (Mark 8:27-29)

Jesus and His disciples went out to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way He asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They answered, “John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.”

All great men, but not the truth.
Herod thought Jesus was John the Baptist, just recently beheaded, come back to life.
Elijah was expected to come before the Messiah, before God saved Israel (Malachi 4:5).
The prophets were people God chose to deliver a message.

He asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”

Peter was convinced Jesus was the Messiah.
All through the first half, Mark has been showing what the Messiah came to do: make things right, save the poor and weak, heal the sick.
Jesus had more than proved He could do all that.
But there was more to the Messiah’s job than Peter realized, and Jesus began to explain it.

The King Must Die (Mark 8:30-31)

He strictly warned them not to tell anyone about Him. Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes, be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus revealed the Messiah’s full job: to be the Passover Lamb, the sacrifice, rejected by the nation and its leaders.
To suffer and die: unloved, abandoned, rejected, hated, put to death.
And then to rise to new life.

It shocked His disciples. “You’re here to save the day, and now You say You’re going to die? How can You do everything we need if You’re dead?”

This was new information for them.
But this is what the Son of God came to do. This is His great work, the plan from the beginning, woven all through the Old Testament prophecies (Isaiah 53).
They’d been blind to it. Now Jesus was revealing what being the Messiah was really about.

Put yourself in their sandals. This man you love, who has changed your life, whom you’re convinced is the perfect man, even God, salvation straight from heaven, now tells you He’s going to lose. Die.

They’d been chafing under Rome for years. Rome was the main thing holding them back.
They expected a Messiah who would deliver them from Rome.
Like so many then and now, they wanted a Jesus who fit their agenda. Peter wanted a Christ on his terms, one who would benefit his plans and his life. Just like most of us.
But Jesus is a Messiah who cares about God’s will, not His own. He wasn’t going to try to save His own life. He was going to lay it down. That’s the way.

“Get Behind Me, Satan!” (Mark 8:32-33)

Jesus said this plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But Jesus turned, looked at His disciples, and rebuked Peter: “Get behind Me, Satan! You’re not thinking about the things of God, but the things of men.”

Peter thought he was doing the right thing, taking Jesus aside to correct Him.
Nothing in Peter’s mind could make sense of Jesus suffering and dying.
Because Peter loved Jesus. Is that so wrong?
What was wrong is that Peter couldn’t tell the difference between the things of God and the things of men.
And that made him, in that moment, an opponent of God’s will and plan.

Friends, we do the same thing all the time. Let me explain.

Spirit, Soul and Body

Scripture speaks of us as spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

The spirit is the part designed to lead us. God created us to be like Him, with a spirit that guides, governs and empowers everything we do. But the spirit is invisible.

The soul is the mind, will and emotions: your thinking, your choosing, your feelings and desires. The soul was meant to receive direction from the spirit and then direct the body to carry it out.

The body is the physical part that acts.

The problem since Adam is that the enemy tricked us into letting the soul make the decisions instead of the spirit. When that first happened in the Garden, it brought death to humanity’s spirit. Remember Eve: she saw the fruit was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise (Genesis 3:6). Thinking, wanting, feeling. That’s how they walked into the enemy’s trap.

When we become believers, God makes our spirit alive and places His own Spirit within us. Now we can live the way we were designed to live, with the Spirit leading.

But we soon find that the soul, left to itself, doesn’t want to give up control. It’s bossy and proud. We still want to decide based on what we feel, what we want, or what we think.

When the soul and body run on their own, apart from the Spirit, Scripture calls that the flesh.

God calls us to deny the flesh and walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16). That’s His will, and it’s exactly what Jesus was doing.

And it’s what Peter didn’t get yet. Your mind, will and emotions are a huge part of you. But however holy or right they seem, they aren’t meant to be the boss. The flesh, the self-life running on its own power, must die.

Why? Because the flesh will never submit to God’s will. It’s hostile to God and can’t please Him (Romans 8:7-8). It always wants the glory. It always wants to live and thrive on its own terms. God has no plan to reform or improve the flesh. It must simply be denied and put to death.

That’s not what our mind, will, emotions or body want to hear. The flesh recoils at the thought of its utter uselessness for pleasing God.

But here’s the good news: when the flesh is denied, our minds aren’t destroyed; they’re renewed (Romans 12:2). Our wills are set free to want what God wants. Our emotions are healed and filled with His joy and peace. Death to the flesh is the doorway to a soul made whole.

In this scene, Peter pictures our flesh: taking our Messiah aside to tell Him how things should really go. And Jesus names it accurately. The flesh is on the adversary’s side, opposed to the Spirit at every point.

So Jesus, the true Messiah, was about to show us how to deny the flesh and live by the Spirit: letting the Spirit lead even into suffering and sorrow, so the flesh never gets control.

The flesh ends up dead, and Jesus is raised in glory. The flesh is no more problem once it’s dead. It’s the only way. Jesus, the Son of Mary and Son of Adam, overcame in the human nature He took on, and now we’re called to follow in His steps.

Take Up Your Cross (Mark 8:34)

He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”

To walk in the Spirit, we must deny self, the flesh. That’s not fun.

Mind: we can’t live by what we think.
Will: we can’t live by what we want.
Emotions: we can’t live by what we feel.
Even the body: hunger, thirst, lust, pain.

They’ll all argue with and resist this way.

This is what it means to follow Jesus: let the Spirit lead! Believe that He has given you His Spirit. And as you look to the Word of God, and to Jesus, the living Word, He’ll show you His will. His will won’t please or serve the flesh. It won’t always be what you feel or think or want.

Lose Your Life to Find It (Mark 8:35-38)

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

We can’t live to save or please the flesh. We must lose it.
And as we surrender the flesh to death, choosing Jesus’ will over its will, our life is actually saved!

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? What can a man give in exchange for his soul? Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

It might seem embarrassing to admit that we can’t do anything right in our flesh: that our minds are broken, our wills are wrong, and our emotions are flawed.
The world will mock this kind of surrender.
It will take us aside, just like Peter did, and say, “You’re not that bad. You don’t need to suffer so much. Respect yourself. Treasure your self-life. Protect it. Don’t deny it!”
And the Spirit will answer, “Get behind Me! You’re thinking about the things of men, not the things of God.”

Grace Takeaway

Peter loved Jesus and still tried to talk Him out of the cross, because the flesh always thinks the way people think, not the way God thinks. Jesus didn’t save His own life; He laid it down for us, and He calls us to follow. The flesh can’t be fixed, only denied. But that’s not loss. Whoever loses his life for Jesus finds the real one: a renewed mind, a freed will, and a life led by His Spirit.

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The Flesh Can’t Be Saved