The Gospel - Luke 9-10

 Luke 9:18-22 (ESV)

Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And they answered, “John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.” Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”

And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Jesus was focused on His mission.  He was sent to the earth to suffer in the payment of our sins.  He would endure shame, evil treatment, physical pain, and public ridicule.  But, He would also be separated from God.  That was the payment for our sins.  In the above passage Jesus asks His disciples who He was.   Peter confesses that He is the Messiah of God.   Jesus immediately tells them NOT to tell anyone that.   He needed to be first “killed.”  Imagine how that settled into the minds of the disciples.   They, like most Jewish people, were looking for a Messiah to deliver them from Roman oppression.  But, instead they heard this Jesus, who they left everything to follow, was talking of martyrdom.   We don’t read about their responses.  But, we can understand how they may have felt.   They wanted a king and were told they were following a sacrificial lamb.  They would eventually get it.   Notice what Peter himself will write over 30 years late:

1 Peter 3:18-22 (ESV)

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Jesus came to give His life.  The disciples would eventually get it, wrap their lives around it and proclaim in for the rest of their lives.  But, at the first they may not have understood it.   Never-the-less, this is the gospel message and the reason we have freedom from sin and power to glorify Him.