Tuesday
Tuesday
Mark—Jesus the Suffering Servant
He [Jesus] then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and … be killed and after three days rise again.
Mark 8:31
The center of Mark’s Gospel is the cross of Christ. Once the Twelve had grasped who Jesus was and had confessed him as the Messiah, he began to teach them about the cross. It was a turning point in Jesus’s ministry and so also in Mark’s Gospel. Before this time Jesus had been fêted as a popular preacher and healer. But he had not come to be that kind of Messiah. So from now on he taught his disciples openly about the necessity of his sufferings and death. Mark records that on three more separate occasions Jesus solemnly predicted his death. Indeed, approximately one third of Mark’s Gospel is devoted to his passion.
The essence of Jesus’s teaching is found in his statement that “the Son of Man must suffer.” Why must he suffer? What is the origin of his sense of compulsion? It is because the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Why, then, “the Son of Man”? By using this Hebraism for a human being, Jesus was referring to Daniel 7. In this vision “one like a son of man” (that is, a human figure) comes on the clouds and approaches the Ancient of Days (God). He is then given authority and sovereign power so that all people will serve him, and his kingdom will never be destroyed (Dan. 7:13–14).
Jesus adopted the title (Son of Man) but changed his role. According to Daniel, all nations would serve him. According to Jesus, he had come to serve, not to be served. In fact, Jesus did what nobody else had done: he fused the two Old Testament images, Isaiah’s servant who suffers and Daniel’s Son of Man who reigns. For first Jesus must bear our sins and only then rise and enter his glory.
For further reading: Mark 8:27–9:1