NOTES for Mar 8:27-9:1
Today's passage describes the event usually called Peter's confession. Indeed, Peter was the first of the apostles to call Jesus the Christ, or, in Hebrew, the Messiah (v. 29).
It is not surprising that many who heard Jesus regarded Him as a prophet (v. 28): both His way of life and the form of His preaching most closely resembled the life and preaching of the ancient prophets. Nor is it surprising that some took Him for the ancient prophet Elijah or for John the Baptist, recently executed by Herod. At that time many expected the imminent coming of the Messiah, the Christ, while Elijah, according to ideas widely held among the people, was to return from heaven to earth shortly before that event. Many legends also circulated around John's own name; among other things, people said that God had raised him from the dead, thereby proving that he was right and confirming that the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, was already near. Interestingly, even Herod himself was prepared to believe this (Mk 6:16).
Now the word had been spoken: Peter had for the first time called Jesus the Messiah (Christ) aloud, and the time had come to tell the apostles everything else connected with His messianic ministry on earth, everything about the Cross and the Resurrection (v. 31). Yet Jesus' principal subject here is the “soul,” a word that in the Bible generally means life (vv. 34–38). Jesus points out that there is no true life in all its fullness in the world, and even if a person gains the whole world, he will not find such fullness. On the contrary, having gained everything, he may lose what matters most (v. 36). Nor is it possible to preserve an individual human life: in its separateness it is finite, and sooner or later everyone will have to part with it, for no one can buy his way out of death (vv. 35, 37).
There is only one way out: to widen the bounds of one's individual human life so as to receive the fullness of the life of the Kingdom of God, brought into the world by Christ, and thus to receive, instead of a separate, finite, and limited life, the infinite life of the Kingdom of God in all its fullness—not turning away from Jesus out of fear or shame, but following Him (vv. 34–35, 38).