156.  In his commendation of Peter Jesus revealed the secret of his method in the work which, because of this confession, he could now proceed to do more rapidly.  He cuts loose utterly from the method of the scribes.  He, the new teacher, commits to them no body of teaching which they are to give to others as the key to eternal life.  The salvation they are to preach is a salvation by personal attachment; that is, by faith.  The rock on which he will build his church is personal attachment, faith that is ready to leave all and follow him.  Peter, not the substance of his confession, was its corner-stone, but Peter, as the first clear confessor of a faith that is ready to leave all, a faith whose very nature it is to be contagious, and associate with itself others of “like precious faith.”  His faith was as yet meagre, as he showed at once; but it was genuine, the surrender of his heart to his Lord’s guidance and control.  This was the distinctive mark of the new religious life inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth.

157.  If anything were needed to prove that the idea that he was the Messiah was no new thought to Jesus, it could be found in the new lesson which he at once began to teach his disciples.  The confession of Peter indicated to him simply that the first stage in his work had been accomplished.  He immediately began to prepare the disciples for the end which for some time past he had seen to be inevitable.  He taught them more than that his death was inevitable; he declared that it was divinely necessary that he should be put to death as a result of the hostility of the Jews to him ("the Son of Man must suffer").  All the contradictions which he had offered to the Messianic ideas of his disciples paled into insignificance beside this one.  When they saw how he failed to meet the hopes that were commonly held, they needed only to urge themselves to patience, expecting that in time he would cast off the strange mask and take to himself his power and reign.  But it was too much for the late confessed and very genuine faith of Peter to hear that the Messiah must die.  So unthinkable was the idea, that he assumed that Jesus had become unduly discouraged by the relentlessness of the opposition which had driven him first out of Judea and later out of Galilee.  Accordingly Peter sought to turn his Master’s mind to a brighter prospect, asserting that his forebodings could not be true.  It is hard for us to conceive the chill of heart which must have followed the glow of his confession when he heard the stern rebuke of Jesus, who found in Peter’s later words the voice of the Evil One, as before in his confession he had recognized the Spirit of God.