Matthew 16:23, “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block for me, because you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men.”
What are the things of men, that Jesus refers to (which, notice, are simultaneously the things of Satan?) Well, what does Peter do to receive this rebuke? He denies the necessity of the cross. More than that, he denies the identity of “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” as the one who must suffer, die, and rise. When Peter tells Jesus that His death on the cross can “never be,” he is essentially saying that the Lord’s Christ is not one who suffers and dies at the hands of others, that is not the way God works; he denies the identity of Christ—and so the identity of God—as the one who is crucified and rises again.
What, then, are the things of men? They are the constellation of desires and values and purposes that oppose the identity of Christ—and so the identity of God, and so the shape of true life—as the one who must be crucified…..the mind of man denies the cross of Christ….it calls the cross foolishness and weakness.
Conversely, the things of God are defined by the cross. The minds set on the things of God is the mind that embraces the cross as wisdom and power, the mind that embraces the cross as the necessary form of God’s Christ. Further, the mind set on the things of God does not only accept the cross as necessary form of Christ, but as the necessary form of true life. Indeed, if it is necessary for the Christ and Son of God to go to the cross, then the cross stands at the center of the identity of God as He is revealed in His anointed Son….and if the cross stands at the center of the identity of God, the cross stands at the center of all true life and light and power and peace and joy and goodness.
For us to carry our cross is not—as so much popular thinking would have it—merely enduring trials in this life, rather, it is embracing the self-denying, life-outpouring, love of our Lord and God as manifest on the cross. It is repudiating the mind of man—the mind that disdains the cross—and embracing the mind of God—the mind that embraces the cross as the shape of God’s own life.
