3 questions that everyone must Answer

Read Matthew 16.

Dr. Bruce Shelly taught this chapter around three questions.  True followers of Jesus are neither legalists nor liberals. They are marked forever by their answers to three questions.

1. Who is Christ? (vv.13-16)
First, Jesus asked His disciples about public opinion.  They had been among the crowds on many occasions.  "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"  It is an innocuous question meant to stir the conversation.

Then, Jesus asked the most important question ever asked and the one that determines each person's eternal destiny.  "But who do you say that I am?"  The answer: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  The power is not in the person who said it but in the confession itself.  This statement is a recognition that Jesus is the Anointed One of God, the Messiah, who was predicted to come.  He alone is God, the Son.  It is not enough to simply have cognitive awareness of Jesus, or even to be in the crowd of those who follow Him.  One must make this confession of faith for themselves in order to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

2. What is the Church? (vv.17-20)
Jesus said on that rock solid confession "I will build my church."  There is no church in the Old Testament, or in the Gospels.  Jesus used a future tense here to indicate that something new will be coming.  The church exists in the Scriptures from the Book of Acts through Revelation chapter 3.  The word "church" does not refer to a building or a denomination but to a group of people who has been "called out" from other beliefs to put their eternal trust in Jesus alone.  Without such a personal faith, any such use of the word church placed on a building or a "membership" is a pretense.

3. Why the Cross? (vv.21-23)
"From that time" Jesus taught His disciples about the coming suffering, His death, and His resurrection.  This chapter begins with the religious leaders asking for sign to confirm Jesus' identity.  They had already asked this question in 12:38.  The answer was the same, as Jesus pointed to Jonah and the prophet's experience for three days and three nights.  There can be no true resurrection without death.

Peter's objection, similar to Satan's temptations of Christ in Matthew 4, is to skip the agony of the cross for some other plan.  But "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22).  Indeed, it is the essence of the gospel.  “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Nothing more.  Nothing less.  Nothing else.