Where Do You Stand?
In Matthew 16:23, Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
There is a sharp distinction made here. Jesus addressed Peter as “Satan.” It is not that Peter was actually Satan, but that his rebukes of Jesus about God’s plan for man’s salvation and redemption were influenced by Satan. Many times, people try to be neutral about Jesus. However, Jesus never allowed any neutral grounds. He expressed on many occasions, if you are not with Me, you are against Me. Peter was caught in the middle of a spiritual battle. He was in the crossfire. One minute he was acknowledging Jesus as the Christ, the son of the living God and the next minute he was rebuking Jesus forbidding Him to redeem man. We go through the same battle almost on a daily basis. Sometimes we want to be “tolerant” of others. To me, tolerant is a short way of saying a person has no confidence in what you truly believe, if they believe it at all. We say Jesus is the way for me but someone might have their own way that works for them. If that is the case, we do not know Jesus as we should. With those kind of statements, we are calling Him a liar and we stand against Him. He said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one gets tot he Father except through Me.” If we say someone has their own way, we are going against God and spitting on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross which wash away all of our sins and cleansed us white as snow. At that point we are being used by Satan just as Peter was being used. O, my beloved, it is so important that we know Jesus personally. We need to stand with Him so we are not misguided and mislead by this ever so dying world around us.