Why would Jesus call his disciple Peter “Satan” shortly after giving him this accolade: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”(Matt 16:18)?
Peter must have done something really terrible! So what was it? He held Jesus in such high esteem that he would not accept Jesus’ self-proclaimed destiny to go to Jerusalem and be killed! For this Peter was slapped down with: “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offense unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Jesus understood his destiny to be God-ordained and Peter’s sympathy to be a denial of his sacred mission. Peter’s was a human, or carnal response, opposed to God, hence Satan.
And what brings this lesson home, full-circle, is the preceding incident, where Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was. When Simon Barjona nailed it with: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”(Matt 16:16), Jesus recognized that this was no human response, but rather a message direct from the Father, i.e. divinely inspired. There followed:
“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”(Matt 16:18)
The juxtaposition of these two incidents makes it abundantly clear that Jesus did not deal with persons per se, but with thought. He never envisioned his church being built upon the person of Peter, but upon the spiritual recognition of the Christ, the very essence of his life and teaching. Had it been otherwise, potentially the church would have been built upon Satan!!
And it should be noted that Jesus never regarded Peter as the personage of Satan, but that his denial of Jesus’ mission, because it seemed so wrong that he should be killed, warranted that assignation. In hindsight, we now know that without Jesus’ crucifixion, there would have no resurrection and ascension, and no Christianity!