What’s going on here? Weren’t the disciples supposed to spread the word; wasn’t that the whole idea? Actually, this isn’t the only time Jesus censured the people who had significant interactions with Him. In Matthew 8:9, for example, He instructed the healed leper not to tell anyone, but to go show himself to the priest (see also 9:30, 12:16, etc.).

A clue can be found in Matthew 17:9 where the Lord Jesus tells His disciples not to reveal the event on the Mount of Transfiguration until after the resurrection. There is a time for everything, including telling others about Jesus, or particular aspects about the truth of Christ. In our passage today, Jesus is not finished with the training of His disciples. They have come to a watershed in concluding the central truth of Jesus and His mission. He is the Christ, the promised Messiah, the Son of God. They didn’t come by this easily, but had arrived at that conclusion without Him stating it in point-blank terms. This is what we might call an inductive approach to training, leading them to discover for themselves the intended conclusion.

This was generally the Lord’s approach to all of His teaching about Himself. As skeptics are quick to point out, He never claimed in unambiguous terms, “I am God.”  But, He certainly encouraged people to come to that conclusion and never “corrected” people when they did, which, if it were not true, would have been monstrously blasphemous (see John 8:53, 59, John 10:33).

Jesus was doing a bit of “time management” at this point. Things had to move forward on His schedule, not on the disciples’ time-table. He knew their zeal and tendency to act impulsively (especially Peter), and He worked at containing their zeal to freely banter about their newly discovered awareness that He was the Messiah. Jesus was cognizant that it was “not yet my time” as He said in John 7:6. He still wanted people to arrive at the same conclusion as the disciples, in the same way as they did—by observing the signs and hearing His teachings.

There was coming a time when things would change, after the Lord died, rose again and left to be with His Father. Then would come the time for full and open witness about His identity. At that time, and not before, they would be given not just permission, but the authority to preach powerfully the message of Christ and identify fully with Him (see Matt 28:18-20).