Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Matthew 16:17

"And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven." — Matthew 16:17 (ASV)

Jesus calls Peter “blessed” . Jesus is the “Son of the living God” (v.16); Peter is the “son of Jonah.” Jesus’ Father has revealed to Peter the truth he has just confessed. Indeed, no one knows the Son except the Father (11:27), who has now graciously revealed his identity to Peter. Such knowledge could not have originated in “flesh and blood”—a Jewish expression referring to a mortal human being (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:50).

On the other hand, we need not suppose that the idea that Jesus was Messiah entered the apostles’ minds for the first time here (cf. 11:2–6). John’s witness is surely sound: the disciples began following Jesus in the hope that he was the Messiah (Jn 1:41, 45, 49). But their understanding of the nature of his messiahship was hindered by their own expectations (see comments on v.22; Mark 1:44); and they did not come into a full “Christian” understanding until after Easter. This verse marks a crucial stage along that growth in understanding and faith. Partial as it was, Peter’s firm grasp of the fact that Jesus is the Messiah set him apart from the uncertainty and confusion of the crowd and could only be the result of the Father’s disclosure. Indeed, the depth of Peter’s conviction was the very thing that simultaneously made talk of Jesus’ suffering and death difficult to integrate and yet prevented more serious defection when the one confessed as Messiah went to his death on a Roman cross.