CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 2, 2024 – It must’ve hit Peter like a frying pan when Jesus thundered at him: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Peter had only wanted to assure Jesus that he’d always have his back, come what may, but Jesus wanted none of it. Instead, he told Peter that his offer of protection showed that he had man’s perspective, not God’s, and that he thought as someone who was still in the world, not in the Kingdom, and that Peter was in fact doing the devil’s bidding.

I can imagine that not only Peter but everyone who witnessed Jesus’ tirade would have been thrown for a loop. I mean, the last thing you’d expect when offering someone your undying love, loyalty, and protection is to have it all thrown back into your face, and being called Satan, to boot. But Jesus here, as elsewhere, was precisely on point when it came to dealing with adversity. He had, as he phrased it, a “cup to drink” that was given specifically to him by God. What Peter was doing by offering his protection was wrenching the cup out of Jesus’ hand and preventing him from doing what God had sent him to do.

As born-again believers, we all have a cup to drink that’s been given to each of us by God. In drinking our cup, we’ll almost always have people trying to intervene, thinking they’re doing us a favour by “helping” us, like Peter thought he was helping Jesus. Those in the world can’t help thinking like the world, but we need to think like God, as Jesus reminded us, because once we become Jesus’ followers, the rules of engagement change significantly. In the Old Testament, we annihilated our enemies; in the New Testament, we love them even as they’re killing us.

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” should have been a eureka moment for Peter, but I don’t think it was, considering that he later attacked one of the soldiers who arrested Jesus. In response, Jesus had again to remind him that his heroism was misplaced and that those who live by the sword, die by the sword. In other words, Jesus was again schooling his disciples on the difference between how man thinks and how God thinks.

What about you? Have you resolved to drink the cup that God has given you, or are you happy to accept any and all offers to avoid or delay drinking it? Or maybe you’ve inadvertently interfered with someone else when they were trying to drink their cup? We need to be honest with ourselves in considering the cup that God has given us and others and what we’ve done either to accept our cup or avoid it.

Whole “doctrines of men” have been developed over the centuries pandering to our baser impulse to avoid trials and tests at all costs. One of the more infamous of these doctrines is the pre-tribulation rapture. Jesus had to go through torture and crucifixion, as did Peter; Paul was beheaded, Steven was stoned to death, and thousands of born-again believers throughout the ages have likewise suffered horrendous torture, mutilation, and killing at the hands of the prevailing religious authorities, all in an attempt to have them deny Jesus.

Our cup will not be any less onerous than the ones given to our brethren over the years, and to believe otherwise is delusional. Jesus told us that whatever they do to him, they’ll do to us, too. There’s no easy way out of the cup given to us by God. We either drink it as presented, or we don’t go Home.