Peter, answering for the others, affirms their conviction that Jesus was ‘the Christ’—that is, the Messiah, or the coming King of the Jews. This affirmation became the bedrock [Matthew 16:15-18] upon which the Jesus movement was formed. This story, like the ‘good confession’, served to highlight the central conviction that bound Jesus’s earliest followers together: Jesus of Nazareth was the coming King of Israel.

We know of course that these terms would later lose their apocalyptic edge. Following the extended delay of the apocalyptic scenario proclaimed by the Apostles, many of the terms used in the New Testament texts would be repurposed to represent the evolving values of the growing Christian community. ‘Christ’ came to reference, not the long-awaited king of the Jews, but Jesus’s identity generally. The ‘good confession’, later used as a general public affirmation of one’s allegiance to Jesus, lost its concrete meaning and, with it, the ability to inspire hope and perseverance that Paul attempts to stimulate in his letter to Timothy. This isn’t intended to demonize these later Christian leaders. It’s simply how history has unfolded and how the early hope of the Apostles was displaced. - Bill Scofield, The Good Confession