Mark 8:31-38 — 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life[d] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
We left off last week in Mark 8 with Peter making a glorious declaration of Jesus as the Christ, only to be followed by him sharply correcting the Christ for teaching about God’s eternal plan of redemption. Even though he had the proper identification of Jesus, Peter was severely misguided in his motive and expectation for following the Messiah. In the first verse we will look at today (v.33), Jesus provides the reason for this misconception—he was setting his mind on the things of man instead of the things of God. In light of Jesus’ association of Satan with this mindset, we should understand this is something of utmost danger to our spiritual lives. So how do we know if we are setting our minds on the things of man instead of the things of God? There are a variety of ways that manifests itself, but if we were to generalize them into a few categories, these 3 categories would be representative of the whole. We set our minds on the things of man when we: 1) seek to prosper ourselves; 2) seek to preserve ourselves; 3) seek to promote ourselves. However, what will jump off the page today is that the core of the gospel, otherwise known as the mission of Christ, and a non-negotiable component of gospel living is denying yourself those things. Pursuing that which benefits ourselves is, by definition, contrary to that which brings God glory. Generally speaking, having one’s mind set on the things of man means to live without being conscious of God’s meticulous sovereignty of this world or his revealed will in Scripture or being irrespective of the power of the gospel to defeat sin or failing to live with the prospect of heaven and the rewards to come.