The disciples are in the first stage of spiritual sight, seeing but not fully. Jesus is indeed the Christ, but they don’t understand what the Christ has come to do: be rejected, suffer, and die. Peter’s rebuke confirms his partial sight. He thinks he’s seeing better than he actually is.
Stories have turning points, and Peter’s confession—“You are the Christ”—is a turning point in Mark’s Gospel. Many New Testament scholars divide Mark’s Gospel in a way that outlines sections before this confession and after it. Peter’s confession is a threshold.
In Mark’s Gospel, the confession, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29), occurs after Jesus healed a blind man at Bethsaida. Reading this miracle alongside Peter’s confession can be interpretively helpful, especially since Mark’s Gospel is the only book that records this miracle. What can we notice by reflecting on this miracle and then on Peter’s confession?
The Blind Man’s Partial Sight
The miracle didn’t seem complete, as if Jesus’s first attempt fell short of the mark. Jesus laid hands on the man’s eyes, and then his sight was restored: “he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). Success!
We’re not used to seeing miracles take place in stages. We’re used to something more immediate. When Jesus tells the leper, “Be clean,” the leper is healed instantly (Mark 1:41–42). When he tells the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home,” the paralytic immediately rises (2:11–12). When he tells the man with the withered hand, “Stretch out your hand,” the man stretches out his now-restored hand (3:5).
Mark 8:22–26 reports a miracle in two stages. But this was not a record of dwindling power. The stages are the point.