Matthew 16:17
Matthew 16:1717Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven.
Jehovah's Witnesses treat as Jesus affirming that Peter's insight — recognising Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God — came from Jehovah rather than from human reasoning. The Watchtower uses the phrase "flesh and blood did not reveal it to you" primarily as evidence that spiritual understanding requires God's guidance, which in turn supports the claim that a divinely appointed channel (the Governing Body) is necessary to mediate correct Bible understanding. The verse is also cited in discussions of , where "flesh and blood" is read as an idiom for mortal human nature, reinforcing the Watchtower's denial of a bodily resurrection and bodily return of Christ.
Protestants focus on what the revelation itself implies about Jesus' identity. Why would Peter need divine revelation to know that Jesus is a created being? Angels are called sons of God in the Old Testament — that knowledge is publicly available, not requiring supernatural disclosure. Peter needed the Father's direct revelation because the truth is deeper than creatureliness: Jesus shares the nature of the living God. The Father was revealing something the Jewish leaders would kill Jesus for claiming (; ). Reformed apologists also note the idiomatic force of "flesh and blood" — it is a Semitic expression for mortal human limitation, not literal tissue. Paul uses it the same way in and , and Jesus himself uses it here. This idiomatic reading is important for , where the Watchtower takes "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom" as a denial of bodily resurrection — but in context the phrase means mortal, perishable creatureliness, not any physical substance whatever. The verse thus serves double duty: it reveals the depth of Peter's confession and it establishes the correct semantic range of "flesh and blood" across the New Testament.