Daily Bible Reading 7th August 2026 // Luke 9:18-27
18 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?” 19 And they answered, “John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.” 20 Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”
21 And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, 22 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.”
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
It is true that the disciples did not understand Jesus' teaching about the necessity for His death, and that they could not fathom the connection between His death and their salvation. But when the Spirit came, as He did, to them, enlightening their eyes, then they understood. And their whole message became centred on the Cross. It became their glory, their joy, and the power that changed their lives (cf Galatians 6:14; 1 Corinthians 1:23; Romans 5:8). And when we, in turn, having listened to the gospel word about Christ, begin to be gripped by a persuasion and conviction concerning Him and about the truth and reality of the gospel, we must also recognise that this is not something that we have come to by a process of reasoning and understanding, though it comes through that. It is the work of the Spirit of God to produce in us such a conviction (cf Matthew 16:17). The eyes of our understanding are opened by Him, so that we see the truth. But, having said that - and it needs to be said - we must go on to say something else. For by itself it is not enough. Light in the mind is not the same as life in the soul. And the essence of true Christian experience - that which makes Christian experience authentic and real - is that the illumination of the mind leads, in a genuine work of God, to a wholehearted committal to all that that illumination implies. It is significant that Jesus not only proceeded at this point to teach the disciples that He, the Son of Man, must suffer: He also said that they, His disciples, must be associated with Him in His sufferings. In other words, for Christian experience to be real, the response, under spiritual illumination, to confess Christ as the Saviour and Lord from heaven, means, implies and involves a total commitment to Him, which brings us into union with Him in His death and resurrection, a dying to sin and a living unto God. This is what Caesarea Philippi meant.