Part 1: The Surprise | Part 2: The Son of God | Part 3: God Himself

As far as the supremacy of this servant, Mark could end his account right here in the middle of chapter 1 and have made his point. But there’s much more to say.

Mark spends just 2 verses noting that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Mk 1.12-13). He chooses not to say much—unlike his fellow evangelists Matthew (Mt 4.1-11) and Luke (Lk 4.1-13)—but what he says comports perfectly with the theme he’s already established.

He uses the servant word—immediately—to begin the account. This man, who we’ve just learned is the Father’s Son, in whom he is well pleased (Mk 1.11), is under orders again, and he obeys. The wording is so strong that we wonder if he even had any choice:

Immediately the Spirit impelled him to go out into the wilderness (Mk 1.12).

That’s the NASB. The ESV and KJV use the verb drove.

I learned in my childhood in the American West that you don’t drive people (especially Westerners!). You drive cattle; and nowadays you drive cars. But you don’t drive people. People are free, with a right to self-determination.

Not this person. Not on this mission. Not in this circumstance.

The Spirit drives him. He impels him. And Jesus, the servant, obeys.

This obedience is not easy. He driven out into “the wilderness”—specifically, the wilderness of Judea.

If you’ve ever been there, you know that it’s a hostile place. It’s a desert, thus dry, and it’s hot during the day and cold at night. Either one can kill you. In Jesus’ day, it was where he set the story of the Good Samaritan, in which robbers set upon a Jewish man walking the steep road downhill from Jerusalem to Jericho (Lk 10.30). So if the climate isn’t enough of a threat, there are always brigands to be concerned about. And, perhaps worse, the desert creatures—mammals, reptiles, insects—who can’t be reasoned with. Mark tells us, “He was with the wild beasts” (Mk 1.13). If you’re alone, and you obviously have to sleep at some point, what’s to protect you from them?

In the desert, time is your enemy. There’s no water, and no food, and the temperature extremes wear down your body. You can take a 10-minute walk in the desert and ordinarily be no worse for the wear. But if you’re planning to stay for a while, you’re going to need supplies.

Jesus stays for 40 days. And nights. No food, no water, and, as far as we know, no shelter. Any outdoor guide would tell you that that’s not wise.

But Jesus is a servant. He does what he’s told. He goes, and he stays.

Mark says very little about the actual temptation: “tempted of Satan” (Mk 1.13). We know, obviously, that he survived the testing, because the story continues for 15 more chapters. That leads us to think that he was successful in defeating the tempter—and of course Matthew and Luke, in their longer accounts, give us the details. We don’t find Satan being finally crushed there; that will have to wait for the cross (He 2.14) and the final judgment (Re 20.10). But he meets the tempter on his ground, at his best and strongest point, and he is not defeated.

The Bible says that Jesus was tempted “in all things as we are” (He 4.15). Some wonder how that can be, given that he is God, and God is unable to sin. There’s an area of theology that discusses that specific question, and conservatives are divided. In that discussion it’s been suggested that Jesus’ temptation was actually harder to endure than ours, despite his moral perfection—or perhaps because of it.

When we’re tempted, the temptation lasts only until we give in. But Jesus never gave in; he endured all the temptation there was, to the bitter end.

And he won.

This servant is Lord of evil, and of its greatest proponent, Satan. Even as he is a servant “driven” into the wilderness, he overcomes the one who continually and continuously defeats us.

He is no ordinary servant.

Photo by Praveen Thirumurugan on Unsplash

Part 1: The Surprise | Part 2: The Son of God

After his surprising opening sentence, Mark introduces us to John the Baptist, the prophet whom God has chosen to be the forerunner of the Messiah—whom we now know to be Jesus.

John is—unusual, to say the least. He’s very much in the mold of the Old Testament prophets—Amos, Micah, Hosea, Isaiah, and others—who denounce the corruption of Israel’s leaders and the mindlessness of the people. But despite—or perhaps because of—the edge on his behavior and his message, the people throng to hear him (Mk 1.5), responding positively to his call for repentance.

Mark introduces this character as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy himself—specifically, God’s last words to his people (Mal 3.1) before the four centuries of silence out of which Israel is now to emerge. John, he claims, is the promised messenger who will clear the way for God’s arrival.

Let’s not pass over that too quickly. He is preparing the way for whose arrival?

Malachi’s prophecy had said, “He will clear the way before Me”—meaning, not Malachi, but God himself; for “me” in this passage is identified at the opening of the book as “the LORD”—Yahweh—whose word to Israel Malachi is relating (Mal 1.1). The prophecy goes on to say, “the Lord [Adonai], whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple” (Mal 3.1).

As if to double down on this claim, knowing that the hearers will reflexively resist believing it, Mark quotes a second prophecy, that of the highly respected prophet Isaiah:

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight (Mk 1.3, citing Is 40.3).

The choice of this Isaianic prophecy is significant for at least two reasons. First, it is the opening of the second major section of Isaiah’s prophecy, where the message turns from judgment for sin to future gracious restoration—a shift in tone that perfectly parallels the movement from Old Covenant to New. And second, the prophecy is that the Coming One is “the Lord,” as it appears in Mark. In the OT prophecy, the word LORD is in ALL CAPS, signifying that the Hebrew name here is not “Adonai,” “Lord,” but “YHWH,” “Yahweh”—not the title of sovereignty, but the personal name of the covenant God of Israel, the Creator of the world.

John is preparing the way for Yahweh, the Coming One.

So who is Jesus, the Christ?

He is not only “the Son of God,” a title that some sceptics twist to imply someone less than God himself; he is Yahweh, God himself, all that God is, ever has been, or ever will be (He 13.8).

Now Mark adds John’s testimony to that of the two OT prophets:

There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose (Mk 1.7).

Well, if the coming One is Yahweh, he’s certainly greater than John; that should go without saying.

But it doesn’t.

Further, the Coming One is going to baptize in, or with, the Holy Spirit (Mk 1.8), acting in concert with the very Godhead.

With John the Baptist’s pronouncement narrated, Mark now recounts John’s baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River (Mk 1.9-11).

And here we see explicitly what has just been implied: the Godhead’s embrace of Jesus as one of their (his? its?) own:

He saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Mk 1.10-11).

Father and Spirit act together to publicly recognize the Son and to announce his complete acceptance. Here again the relationship is expressed as sonship, but in context the full equality of the Son is clear.

This servant, it turns out, is God himself.

Photo by Praveen Thirumurugan on Unsplash

Part 1: The Surprise

How does Mark begin his Gospel, his telling of the story of this servant of God?

The very first sentence surprises us:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mk 1.1).

To a Jewish reader, this would be astonishing.

We learn first that this man has a typical Jewish name: Joshua. No real surprise there.

But then we learn that he’s specially anointed: that’s what the title Christ means. It’s the Greek synonym for the Hebrew Messiah, “Anointed One.”

Now, this isn’t necessarily surprising in itself. In the Hebrew Scriptures—what we Christians call “the Old Testament”—lots of people were anointed as a sign that they were being set aside for a particular role:

• The priests were anointed (Ex 28.41)—but they had to be descendants of Aaron, from the tribe of Levi, so Jesus, a descendant of Judah, couldn’t be one of those, or so it appears.
• The prophets were sometimes anointed (1K 19.16); perhaps Jesus will be a prophet? Well, there have been lots of prophets, so while that would be interesting, it wouldn’t be astonishing.
• The kings were anointed as well (1S 15.1; 16.12-13)—and Jesus is indeed from the tribe of Judah, David’s tribe (1Ch 2.3, 15), the tribe to whom Jacob had prophesied that “the scepter” belonged (Ge 49.10).

Could Jesus be the coming king? That would be a much bigger surprise. There hasn’t been a king since just before Judah’s exile to Babylon, six centuries ago. (That would be like the year 1400—well before Columbus—to those of us living in the 21^st century.) But how can there be a king, with Rome dominating the entire known world? And much more significantly, how can there be a king, if God has cursed the royal line by telling Jehoiachin, the last Davidic king, that none of his descendants would ever sit on the throne of his father David (Je 22.24-30)?

OK, maybe Jesus is just a prophet, then. That’s reasonable, and it meets the terms of the verse’s language, and it will make a good story. Elijah was interesting, wasn’t he? And Elishah? And Jonah?

But then Mark explodes all of our expectations with three little words.

Jesus, the anointed one, is the son of God.

To a first-century Jew, what does that mean?

There’s the reference to the “sons of God” in Genesis 6.2, but the rabbis were all over the place in trying to interpret that. The book of Job refers to the “sons of God” presenting themselves before the Lord, apparently in heaven (Jb 1.6; 2.1)—is Jesus some kind of angel? And again in Job, God himself refers to the “sons of God” in parallel with the “morning stars” (Jb 38.7), which seems to imply some sort of heavenly body or being.

But this is all pretty confusing. What does it mean that Jesus is “the son of God”?

I’d suggest that the mind of the first-century Jew would go immediately (!) to a far more significant passage.

In the second Psalm, Yahweh / Adonai laughs (Ps 2.4) at the assembled rebellious kings of the earth (Ps 2.2) and tells them, “I’m going to set my own king on the hill of Zion” (Ps 2.6). And who is that king, the one preferred over all the kings of the earth? He himself speaks in verses 7-9:

⁷ I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. ⁸ Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. ⁹ Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel (Ps 2.7-9).

Yahweh has told the speaker, “You are my Son!”

This is a king, all right. But he’s not like any other king. He’s going to rule over the entire earth (Ps 2.8), and he’s going to be unopposed and unopposable (Ps 2.9).

And the Psalm continues,

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him (Ps 2.12).

This absolute sovereign is one in whom all humans are urged to put their trust.

This is no mere human king, or even an angel.

This is no ordinary servant.

There’s more. Next time.

Photo by Praveen Thirumurugan on Unsplash

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Everybody knows about the four Gospels.

And many commentators have, well, commentated on the fact that there are four of them.

Why four biographies of Jesus—especially when there’s so much overlap? Why the inefficiency? Why not just one Life of Christ, effectively a harmony of the Gospels?

You’ve probably heard at least one answer to that question.

Why would you read more than one biography of George Washington, or Steve Jobs, or Michael Jordan?

Because you get different perspectives from the various biographers.

Well, how many legitimate perspectives do you suppose there could be on the only person who has been—and is—both God and man?

I suppose we could ask, why only four Gospels?

Perhaps you’ve seen the Gospels distinguished by their perspective on Jesus:

• Matthew presents him as Messiah, King of the Jews.
• Mark presents him as the servant of God, diligently fulfilling his divine mission.
• Luke presents him as the Son of Man.
• John presents him as the Son of God.

While such classifications aren’t perfect—each of the Gospels is more complex than this—they do give us some help in noticing themes of the books; for example, Matthew is filled with citations of Messianic prophecy that is fulfilled in Christ.

One feature of Mark that speaks to Jesus’ role as servant is the frequent use of a little Greek word usually translated “immediately”; it occurs

• 19 times in Matthew;
• 11 times in Luke;
• 7 times in John;
• and a whopping 43 times in Mark, which is by far the shortest of the Gospels.

In fact, it occurs more times in Mark’s first chapter than in all of Luke or in all of John.

• Jesus comes immediately out of the water after his baptism (Mk 1.10);
• then the Spirit immediately drives him into the wilderness (Mk 1.12);
• then he immediately calls his disciples (Mk 1.20),
• and immediately they follow him (Mk 1.18);
• then he immediately begins teaching in the synagogue (Mk 1.21);
• and immediately his fame begins to spread (Mk 1.28);
• and he immediately goes to Simon’s house (Mk 1.29);
• and they immediately tell him that Simon’s mother-in-law is sick (Mk 1.30);
• and when he takes her hand, immediately the fever leaves (Mk 1.31);
• and when he speaks to a leper, immediately the leprosy goes away (Mk 1.42),
• and Jesus immediately sends him away (Mk 1.43).

And that’s just chapter 1. Whew.

Jesus is busy.

Later in the Gospel Jesus tells a story of a landowner who sends a series of servants to the tenant farmers to collect his rent. The tenant farmers kill each servant he sends. So he sends his son—and they kill him too (Mk 12.1-8).

This biographer of Jesus presents him as God’s Servant-Son, sent to accomplish a critical mission under the direction of his Master-Father. He hastens to do his Father’s will.

But in carrying out his Father’s mission, this servant surprises us.

He doesn’t really act like a servant. He acts like someone who’s not only in charge, but very comfortable with being in charge.

You would expect this perspective from John, who begins his Gospel by saying, “And the Word was God” (Jn 1.1). You would expect it from Matthew, who begins by quoting Isaiah, “They shall call his name Emmanuel” (Mt 1.23)—and then immediately and helpfully informs us, “which being interpreted is, God with us.” You would expect it from Luke, who begins by reporting Gabriel’s words to Mary—”He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Lk 1.32-33).

But Mark? Mark, who’s telling us about Jesus the servant, constantly hurrying to his Master’s next assignment?

Mark?

Yes, Mark.

You see, this is no ordinary servant.

We’ll look into the details in the next post.

Photo by Praveen Thirumurugan on Unsplash