Christology: The Study of Jesus Christ: Part 4A of Bible Basics: Essential Doctrines of the Bible

Introduction: Any study of this sort must of necessity fall short of absolute completeness, for the written word of God is in its every particular about the Living Word of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The better one understands scripture and the completely integrated tapestry of fundamental truth which runs through its entire warp and woof, the more perspicuous this one essential truth becomes, that Jesus Christ is the reason for the Bible, and the Bible is all about Jesus Christ, the Word of God (Jn.1:1-14). The purpose of this study therefore must be limited to explicating the major biblical themes contained in scripture regarding our Savior, His unique Person and His work of salvation on our behalf. For Jesus is the truth, the way and the life (Jn.14:6), and the fundamental essence of the testimony of the entire Bible is the divine revelation of Him, who He is and what He has done for us in giving up His very life for us (Rev.19:10). All things were made through our Lord Jesus Christ and for Him (Col.1:15-18). He is thus the cornerstone of the entire plan of God for all of creature history (Eph.3:11).⁽¹⁾ The salvation of all members of the human race who turn to God, as well as the victory over the devil (who had held human beings in his power) have been won through our Lord's sacrifice of Himself on our behalf and could not have been won in any other way (Col.2:14-15).

Therefore Jesus is our ultimate hope (Col.1:27), our highest love (Phil.1:21), and the sole object of our faith (Acts 4:12). Jesus Christ is our life (Col.3:4). Only in Him do we have a full share in the resurrection to come and eternal life (1Pet.1:3-4; cf. Tit.3:6-7), for He is the resurrection and the life (Jn.11:25). Without Jesus we along with the entire human race would be lost, but in Him we have been delivered from the wrath to come (1Thes.1:10). Without Jesus all of human history and our lives in particular would be essentially pointless and meaningless, but in Him we anticipate eternal life and great reward (Rev.22:12). Without Jesus the world is a hard, cold, and bitter place, but in Him we rejoice with boundless joy, for as intimate and everlasting members of His Bride, the Church, we exist for Him (Rom.8:8-39; Eph.1:9-10; cf. 1Cor.8:6; 2Cor.5:14-15; Gal.2:20; Col.1:17-20; Heb.12:2), and will ever be with Him (Jn.14:3). Like all corrupt human flesh we are by nature of our physical birth creatures of wrath, condemned to die, but through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have been purchased from our sins and eagerly anticipate an eternity with our Master which will be glorious and exquisite beyond all earthly expression or comprehension (Rev.21-22; cf. Jn.14:1-3). Although we were His enemies, with nothing to recommend us and nothing to give Him, He gave His all for us on the cross (Rom.5:8-10). Thanks be to God for His indescribably wonderful gift of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, sacrificed on our behalf (2Cor.9:15)!

Indisputably, if the Messiah is literally a “son” of David, then He must be a human being, while if He is “Lord”, as David calls Him in Psalm 110:1 which Jesus quotes, then He must be God as well. Both elements of our Lord's unique nature, divine and human, are essential for the accomplishment of God's plan to redeem humanity and restore eternal peace to the universe. For the rulership of the world on the part of the Messiah depends upon His prior removal of the problem of sin, that is, His victory over death on the cross which opens the way for the devil's removal and for our redemption and salvation. That the Messiah's suffering – something which is of course impossible without the fact of His possession of true humanity – is taught in the Old Testament, is put beyond all question by, for example, by Isaiah in chapters 52-53 (of which this excerpt will suffice here to make the point):

Indeed, the entire message of the gospel and the necessity for the Christ to suffer on behalf of the sins of the world was taught in various ways throughout the Old Testament, even if that message was reluctantly received and insufficiently understood before the cross. Our Lord Jesus Himself makes this very point to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (cf. Lk.24:25-27; Acts 2:23; 3:18; 7:52; 10:37; 17:3; 26:23; Eph.3:5; 3:9; 1Pet.1:11; 1:20):

For the sake of illustration, a few more of the more well-known passages prophesying the coming of the Messiah are included below, but an all-inclusive treatment would require its own separate study nearly as voluminous as in the case of Old Testament typology (cf. Jn.21:25).

When we combine the Christophanies or appearances of our Lord in the Old Testament with the ubiquitous typology which teaches about His Person and His work, and with the specific prophecies of His Messiahship, incarnation, suffering, resurrection and second advent, we see clearly that Jesus Christ has been the true message of scripture since the very beginning of the Bible.

Since the point of His birth, Jesus Christ, who has always been true God, has also become a true human being. The proper, orthodox understanding of the fact that Christ now possesses both of these natures, divine and human, without any diminution of the quality or quantity of either, and is yet a single, absolutely unique Person, is often called in theology “the hypostatic union”. The first word in this somewhat unhelpful phrase is taken from Hebrews 1:3 where our Lord's unique Person composed of two natures, human and divine, is described as “the [very] shining forth of [the Father's] glory, the precise image of His essence”. In this verse, “essence” is the Greek word hypostasis from which the adjective “hypostatic” is derived. In Hebrews 1:3, since Jesus is the “shining forth of the glory” of God, He is God and possessed of the identical essence which the Father and the Spirit share. As a true human being, however, Jesus is the “precise image” (Greek character, χαρακτήρ) of that essence, and by this is meant that our Lord's humanity is a perfect mirror or representation of that divine essence (the Greek word character meaning the exact stamp or impression of a minted coin, for example). Thus Hebrews 1:3 teaches that between the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ there is complete harmony and integrity with no rift of personality whatsoever in the One undivided Person of Jesus Christ despite the fact that He now possesses two natures, human and divine. While somewhat technical, this description is nevertheless important, since failures to accept various parts of this complex truth have resulted in many deadly heresies, past and present (and no doubt to come in the future as well).⁽²¹⁾ However, it does go without saying that this is a somewhat difficult concept for mere human beings to grasp, since in truth we are incapable of fully comprehending God's divine nature and what it really means (let alone being able to understand except in general terms the wonder of the combination of the two natures in the Person of Christ).⁽²²⁾ What we should at least appreciate at the very outset here, however, is the marvelous truth that by wedding Himself to the human race in such a personal and irrevocable manner, our Lord has given us the clearest and most convincing proof that we are special to Him in ways that we can scarcely begin to fathom.

While the fact of Jesus' divinity, humanity, and uniqueness in combining the two natures since the incarnation may be relatively easier to understand now that He has been glorified (see for example the description of Him as He appeared to John at Revelation 1:12-20), it remains to discuss what scripture has to say about the manner in which these two natures coexisted during His first advent. For while from the resurrection forward there is no limitation, compartmentalization, or separation of His divine and human nature, it is the case that, during His first advent, our Lord had to suffer in the same fashion as we do (and indeed far beyond, not only in every other aspect of His earthly life but especially when He was judged for our sins on the cross). This self-imposed limitation of deity in respect to the support given to His humanity is known in theology as kenosis,⁽²³⁾ another Greek word taken this time from Paul's discussion in his letter to the Philippians of the subject of our Lord's sacrificial life:

The word translated “deprived” above is the Greek verb kenoo (κενόω), “to make void”, from which our technical term kenosis is derived. This deprivation, as the next verse makes clear, involved great humiliation for our sakes, even to the point of our Lord's sacrificial death for us on the cross. Clearly, the suffering and abuse Jesus took for us throughout His life, accelerating through His extensive thirty year preparation, His ministry “against such opposition by sinners against Himself” (Heb.12:3; cf. Jude 1:15), the gauntlet He ran for us even to get to the cross, and the death He died to sin for us in the darkness on the cross, would have been incompatible with His deity apart from the self-imposed limitation of its function on behalf His humanity, a condition which, as mentioned above, is traditionally called kenosis.

As can be seen from the preliminary discussion above, kenosis is essentially a set of “ground rules” wherein Jesus voluntarily refrained from using His deity to help His humanity during the first advent in accordance with the Father's will (Jn.4:34; 5:30; 6:38).

1) The reason why Christ's kenosis was necessary: Being perfectly just, God could not as God forgive the sins of mankind unless they were appropriately paid for. And only a perfect human being would be able to pay the price for sin and have that payment be acceptable to God's perfect justice. Jesus is that unique, perfect sacrifice, the “Lamb without spot or blemish” (1Pet.1:19), a reference to the symbolism of the Old Testament sacrifices wherein no animal with a defect was acceptable as an offering to the Lord (e.g., Ex.29:1; Deut.17:1; Mal.1:6-14). In the analogy, the perfect body of the animal represents the fact that Jesus was a perfect and perfectly acceptable substitute for us, qualified in every way to be our sin-bearer. Part of this perfection rested in the fact that, unlike all of the rest of us, He lacked a sin nature, and, unlike all of the rest of us, He never committed a single personal sin (subjects about which we shall have more to say below). But in addition to preserving the perfection of His body, our Lord was also required to demonstrate and preserve the perfection of His human spirit as well, and that required complete integrity in the exercise of His human free will from the moment of physical birth to the moment of physical death.

There is a principle of leadership which proclaims that a commander should never require more of his men than he himself would be willing to do in their place. Never has this principle been carried out more completely or more faithfully than in the case of our Lord Jesus, “the Captain” of our salvation (Heb.2:10), who not only lived a perfect life of selfless sacrifice far beyond anything we are capable of imagining, but who even more amazingly died on the cross for all of our sinful failures. But without kenosis, it would have been impossible for our Lord's human free will to be put to the extreme and honestly unimaginable tests He had to endure (all of which He accepted and passed in perfect fashion). That is because with the help of His deity they would not have been tests at all. And without kenosis, it would have been impossible for our Lord to die on the cross at all, because on the one hand He would not have been able to die physically (since deity cannot die), and because He could not have come into contact with our sins in order to die for them on the other (since deity can have no contact with sin). In short, without kenosis, there would have been little point to the incarnation in the first place. In order to be an acceptable substitute for us, our Lord would have to do more than “merely” refrain from sin: He would have to exercise His human free will in this world just as we do, but do so in an absolutely perfect way; then, having done so throughout His life, He would have to go to the cross for us, suffer and die for us, all from that same, genuinely human free will.

So while it is common in theological treatments of this sort to concentrate on our Lord's sinless life, it was His perfect, daily response to the Father in carrying out all the positive actions that were required of Him that was arguably something which required far greater effort than “merely” avoiding the negative ones. This is unquestionably true when it comes the most difficult exercise of free will any human being has ever dreamed of attempting, namely, our Lord's obedient willingness to go to His death for us on the cross, a sacrifice which Jesus had to agree to undertake every step of the way, a decision which was challenged every step of the way, and an incomparably blessed wonder that cannot be compared to any other event in the history of the universe. Indeed, our Lord's free will acceptance of God's judgment for our sins is history, the cornerstone event upon which everything else depends (whether or not we fully appreciate at present the extent to which this is true). Simply put, our Lord took on true humanity for a purpose, namely, to carry out the Father's plan of salvation, and since the carrying out of that plan was impossible without Jesus' humbling of Himself as the Servant of God, kenosis, the temporary state of living in humiliation without the glory He possessed from before the world was created (Jn.10:30), was necessary for us to be saved (Is. 49:7; 52-53; Lk.22:27; 2Cor.8:9; Phil.2:5-11).

One important result of our Lord's incarnation and of His walking through this world in the complete humiliation of kenosis is that He has personal experience of what it is like to be a human being, and of what it takes to do the will of God in this world.

Now of course Jesus is God in His own right, and in His humanity He perfectly fulfilled the will of the Father for His life in every single respect (e.g., Is.42:19; Jn.10:30). And it must also never be forgotten that the “testing” He underwent was in every way and on every level far more intense than we can even conceive, right down to the gauntlet of the cross and of His death on our behalf (things the like of which we will never be called upon to endure). But in all that He was called to do, Jesus did it perfectly in perfect response to the Father's will. Jesus' earthly life was thus also an example to us of what we ought to do as well: always putting the Father's will, the Father's plan, ahead of personal plans, desires, and weaknesses. Naturally, we will never come close to duplicating what our Lord accomplished in exercising perfect Human will from His humanity without the help of His deity (an area of temptation with which we are not even able to identify), but we can and should emulate Him to the best of our ability.

2) The role of Christ's divine nature during the period of kenosis: In Matthew's account of Jesus' arrest, there is a passage which reveals much about the nature of the voluntary restriction by our Lord of the use of His deity. After Peter in his misguided zeal struck with a sword one of those who had come to arrest Jesus, Matthew tells us that our Lord said, “Do you assume that I am not able to entreat my Father, and that He will not immediately bring more than twelve legions of angels to my aid?” (Matt.26:53). Though God in His own right, even in this extreme situation our Lord demonstrates deference to the Father, maintaining His attitude of humble obedience in the carrying out of the Father's plan. Jesus did not actually make this hypothetical request (to which He gives voice only for the benefit of Peter and the other disciples), yet we see clearly from the emphatic nature of His words that He was in absolutely no doubt that as God's Son, co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial with the Father, the request would certainly have been granted, had He decided to make it. Given our perfect Lord's absolute surety about this amazing potential deliverance, we can ascertain that the only thing standing between Jesus' humanity and the full use of His deity on behalf of that humanity was at all times during the first advent the righteous exercise of His human free will alone responding to the plan and the mission on which He had been sent. We may therefore further discern that the “barrier” between the two natures which we are calling kenosis was not something imposed “from above” by His deity. Rather it was a conscious limitation undertaken by His humanity in consonance with His deity, a fact which makes our Lord's successful completion of His life without violating the restrictions of kenosis all the more amazing (for which of us if possessed of any remotely similar “power” could realistically be expected to refrain from using it?). Jesus knew full well that He was God, yet He did not “access” His divine nature on behalf of His human nature in violation of the principle discussed above, for to do so would essentially have invalidated the acceptability of His sacrifice on our behalf. Therefore our Lord's humiliation for our sake involved far more than perfect separation from sin or even perfect use of His human free will in all the ways with which we are familiar: it also involved perfect self-restraint in voluntarily refraining from using His deity day by day, moment by moment, test by test.

Seen from the point of view of His divine essence, kenosis means that, until His glorification, by becoming human Jesus took on a material existence and eschewed the use of His omnipotence in that material humanity. By becoming human Jesus subjected Himself to time and eschewed the use of His omniscience in that humanity. And by becoming human Jesus limited Himself to finite space and eschewed His omnipresence in that humanity. The cost to Him and the difficulty of the human life thus undertaken can scarcely be appropriately described, let alone even marginally appreciated. Suffice it so say that Jesus' love for us knows no bounds. As to what these limitations meant in the playing out of His thirty three years on earth, we shall limit ourselves to two examples which are instructive in demonstrating the boundaries within which this restriction on the exercise of His deity operated.

In His temptation in the desert, Satan dared our Lord to turn stones into bread (Matt.4:3). Now Jesus was extremely hungry, having just fasted for forty days (Matt.4:2). From the context, it would appear that the fast and ordeal to which He had been led by the Spirit (Matt.4:1) had ended or was on the point of ending. Furthermore, eating is legitimate in any case, and would certainly be so and be all the more necessary at the conclusion of a lengthy and difficult fast of this sort. And Jesus could indeed have called upon His deity to do what the devil suggested. We know from our Lord's words and actions here, however, that to do so would have been wrong. For He was clearly not authorized to use His deity to aid His humanity even under these abnormally stressful and trying circumstances. In all such instances, our Lord endured far beyond the point where you or I would no doubt have given in. And He did so because “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt.4:4). In other words, God the Father's will was paramount to our Lord, and He never violated the restrictions which He was charged to observe. Throughout His earthly life, He suffered through this life in the same way in which we must do – save of course for the fact that what He endured and suffered even before the gauntlet that led up to the cross is beyond our ken, even without figuring in the strain of knowing He was God and yet refraining from making use of His divinity.

A second incident illustrative of the boundaries imposed by kenosis is found in Luke 4:16-30, the story of His rejection at the hands of his countrymen in Nazareth. After our Lord upbraided them for their unbelief (Lk.4:23-27), they became enraged and dragged Him off to the cliff upon which the town was built in order to throw Him down to His death (Lk.4:29). But Jesus “passed through the midst of them and went His way” (Lk.4:30). This certainly implies the use of supernatural power, and the distinction between this situation and that of Matthew chapter four could not be more clear. In the first instance, Jesus would have been making His own lot easier when it was not absolutely necessary. But in this case, had our Lord allowed the crowd to throw Him down the cliff, the prophecies of the manner of the Messiah's death would be negated – as would our eternal salvation.

We see then this basic principle at work throughout the first advent, namely, of our Lord using the power and gifts given to Him only in accordance with the Father's will in order to advance the Father's plan of salvation (for example, all of His miracles, healing, and raising of the dead in fulfillment of the scriptures), but refraining from the use of His divinity in any way whatsoever when it came to the possibility of relieving His own inconvenience, need, fatigue, toil or suffering – all the way to and through the ultimate suffering of the crucifixion and His death in the darkness on the cross for us all. Thus our Lord is permitted to turn wine into water for the benefit of others and a sign to His disciples, but not to turn stones into bread for His own benefit. He may walk on the water as a sign to others and in the furtherance of the Father's plan (delayed by necessary work and prayer, and now catching up to the disciples), but He still walks. He can overturn the incredibly heavy tables in the temple with superhuman strength to fulfill the prophecies, but He offers no defense whatsoever to those who come to arrest Him in Gethsemane. He can disappear through crowds to maintain His life to be sacrificed at the proper time, but He does not seek to avoid the cross.

3) Kenosis and the cross: Our Lord Jesus Christ “came into the world to save sinners” (1Tim.1:15), and this overarching purpose of saving us by His death for us on the cross constituted the single most important act of His human free will in response to the Father's divine will.

While every single decision our Lord made from His humanity during His first advent was perfectly responsive to God the Father, without His willingness to go to the cross and die for our sins in our place we would still be lost. The difficulty of this decision and the incredible load it placed upon our Lord may be seen from two sayings of Jesus, both uttered and both recorded for our benefit rather than for His (a fact often poorly understood even in orthodox Christian circles). These are 1) His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane on the night He was betrayed, and 2) His quotation of Psalm 22:1 just before He breathed out His Spirit.

In Gethsemane, Jesus prays that the “cup of the cross” might be taken away “if it be Thy will” (Matt.20:39; Mk.14:35-36; Lk.21:41-42; Jn.12:27). Now our Lord knew very well what the Father's will was, that it was in fact “for this very hour and purpose” that He come into to the world at all (Jn.12:27; cf. Jn.3:16). Therefore this prayer, far from being an indication of any doubt or second thoughts on our Lord's part, was prayed and recorded entirely for our benefit, that we might understand on at least some superficial level what an immense thing it was to anticipate and then follow through on the Father's will to die for the sins of the world on the cross.

Secondly, when He had accomplished our eternal redemption through His blood, that is, through the bearing of our sins in the darkness on the cross, our Lord said, “My God, My God, why did your forsake Me?” (Ps.22:1). This is also most definitely not a statement of confusion or discouragement – far from it! Our Lord quoted Psalm 22:1 just before He gave up His human spirit for our benefit, in order that we might know that He of His own free will in His humanity had voluntarily given Himself over to be forsaken and to be judged in the darkness for our sins in order that we might have eternal life. For our Lord knew very well why it was that He had to be forsaken and judged by His loving Father: in order that we might have eternal life.

Therefore these two statements of our Lord's immediately before and after His suffering for our sins, though often misunderstood, are in reality clear and deliberate proclamations of the fact that Jesus did what He did entirely of His own genuinely human free will in perfect responsiveness to the will of His Father and ours in order that we might be saved through His righteous act of sacrificing Himself on our behalf.

From this we can see that our Lord's human free will was precisely the same as ours – except that He used it perfectly and in perfect response to His Father's will. In terms of our subject of kenosis here, then, we may say that in His humanity Jesus' will was completely consistent with the will of His divine nature and with the Father's will, but that in His humanity He had to make these perfect decisions at every step along the way throughout His perfect life. This completely correct decision-making on the part of His humanity is often termed “impeccability” (lit., “an inability to sin”). However, that particular terms suffers from two flaws: 1) emphasizing the negative (i.e., not sinning) rather the much more important positive (i.e., the necessity to keep doing all that was required, moment by moment, day by day, no matter how difficult – and in light of the difficulty of going to the cross, this makes the avoidance of sin pale by comparison), and 2) the false implication that our Lord was unable to make bad decisions had He chosen to do so: while it is certainly true that our Lord's success was never in doubt because of who He is, it is nevertheless a mistake to suggest that His human free will was different from ours in any way, or that His perfect record of good decisions from that human free will was not difficult in the extreme. Indeed, it is precisely because His humanity was genuine in every way that His suffering was likewise entirely genuine, and it is precisely because He was tested and tempted just as we are that He can sympathize with us perfectly as someone who has actually gone through the very crucible we are now negotiating (yet without sin, and to a degree beyond what we can even imagine, culminating in the cross):

1) The nature of the incarnation: Our Lord's taking upon Himself of true humanity and thus becoming a genuine human being as well as undiminished deity is often called “the incarnation”, a word based upon the Latin caro / carnis meaning “flesh” (because Jesus came into the world “in the flesh”). As we have already pointed out, our Lord's irreversible wedding of Himself to our kind in this way, God that He is, was in and of itself a stupendous event, especially when one considers what that event necessarily entailed, namely, His fulfilling of His mission and the Father's will by dying for our sins. From the point of the incarnation onward, Jesus is both God and Man, the unique God-Man, undiminished deity and true humanity in One perfect Person forever. Scripture calls this time the “conjunction of the Ages” (Heb.9:26; cf. Rom.5:6; Gal.4:4; 1Tim.2:6; Tit.1:3; Heb.1:1-2; 1Pet.1:20), and so it is, for Jesus' physical birth marks the postponement of the Jewish Age (cf. Matt.11:12; Mk.1:15; Lk.12:49ff.), while His death, resurrection and ascension to heaven signal the imminent commencement of the Church Age (Acts 1:4-5; cf. Matt. 27:51; Mk.7:27; Jn.2:4; 7:8; Heb.9:10).⁽²⁴⁾

2) The conception of Jesus' physical body and the fact of the virgin birth: Both Jesus' conception and His birth were absolutely unique in the history of the world. While Adam and Eve were made directly by God, Jesus is the only human being who has or will ever be conceived by the agency of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. Both of these facets of our Lord's incarnation need to be considered in their own right, and it is significant that the first prophecy to address the issue directly mentions both aspects of our Lord's entrance into the world as a true human being:

Without divine agency, virgin conception is, of course, an impossibility. Mary was therefore not rebuked for her questioning of the angel on this point (Lk.1:34), whereas Zechariah was (since in his case, the miracle was not only precedented but also fell within normal human parameters: compare Lk.1:18-20 with Gen.18:10-14). Unlike any other human being before or since, the engendering of our Lord's human body came about not through the agency of any created thing, not through any man or any angel, but through the Creator Himself, specifically, the Holy Spirit.

As can be adduced from all three of these quotes, while the conception of our Lord's human body was supernatural, as in the case of all human beings it is His birth rather than His conception which marks the beginning of His human life, the beginning, in His unique case, of the incarnation.⁽²⁵⁾

3) The Necessity for the Virgin Birth: In addition to the need for fulfilling the prophecies discussed above, it no doubt goes without saying that the virgin conception described in quotations above (Lk.1:35 in particular) along with the virgin birth that followed was also the only way for God to become man, for our eternal Lord Jesus Christ to take on a genuine human body and share in the flesh and blood we all possess. Since His coming into the world was absolutely necessary for us to be saved, this is certainly the primary reason that necessitated His conception and birth take place in this miraculous way. But there is a secondary reason as well, which, if not as primarily critical, would in and of itself likewise necessitate Jesus being virgin born: only a pure and sinless Jesus Christ would be qualified to bear our sins and so atone for them on the cross (2Cor.5:21; 1Pet.2:22-24; Heb.2:14-18; 4:15; 7:26; 1Jn.3:5; cf. Is.53:9). Without a human father (Heb.1-2; cf. Jn.19:34-35; 1Jn.5:6-8), the potential problem of the passing down of the sin nature through the line of Adam could be and was thus avoided. Indeed, since the sin nature is universally passed down from Adam through the male line, a virgin birth was the only way in which our Lord could be at the same time truly and completely human, and yet be born without a sin nature. For Jesus' mother, Mary, an exceptional woman of exceptional spirituality,⁽²⁶⁾ was nevertheless human and thus possessed a sin nature as we all do.⁽²⁷⁾ It was Adam who “brought sin into the world”, even though Eve too had sinned, and since it was Adam who caused “death to spread to all mankind”, not Eve, the sin nature is thus passed down through the male line, not the female line:

Thus, by being Virgin-born, Jesus did not receive the transmission of a sin nature in the manner of the rest of Adam's progeny.

a) The birth of Christ Prophesied: We have already seen (in section 5.d.1 above) that the historical birth of Christ was prophesied extensively in the Old Testament.

b) The date of the birth of Christ: To begin with, we know from Luke 3:1 that John began baptizing “during the fifteenth imperial year of Tiberius” (i.e., from August 19^th of A.D. 28 to August 18^th of A.D. 29).⁽²⁸⁾ Since Luke states that Jesus was “about thirty” at the commencement of His public ministry (Lk.3:23), an event that post-dates the time when John began baptizing, there can be little doubt that the birth of Christ is to be fixed ca. 1-2 B.C. To place Christ's birthday any earlier would make Him “twenty-something”, not “about thirty”. Moreover, this phrase is best taken (and arguably can only be properly taken, especially given Luke's penchant for precision: cf. the precise dating of John's ministry at Lk.3:23) to mean that while Christ had not yet reached His thirtieth birthday, He was very close to doing so, that is, He was 29 and set to turn thirty that same calendar year.⁽²⁹⁾ If we accept December as Christ's birth-month, therefore, He will then have been born in 2 B.C. (only one year earlier than supposed by the Christo-centric calendar we now use, established by Dionysius Exiguus ca. 525 A.D. at the behest of Pope John I).⁽³⁰⁾ It is impossible within the scope of this study to detail all of the chronological details and arguments connected with Christ's birth, but the 2 B.C. date, in addition to being based on the only two clear chronological references in the gospel (i.e., Lk.3:1 and 3:23), is also recommended by three other important factors. First, it allows for a three year ministry of Christ (as required by the chronological details of John's gospel).⁽³¹⁾ Secondly, it allows for a crucifixion date of 33 A.D., by far the most likely date when independently derived.⁽³²⁾ And, thirdly, it squares most precisely with the universal census mentioned by Luke (Lk.2:1-3).

As to the census, the first two points that need to be clarified here are that the universal census described in Luke 2:1-3 is not the census of Quirinius, and, secondly, that Luke does not in fact equate the two. That Quirinius, Roman governor of Syria from ca. AD. 6 to 11, held a census in A.D. 6-7 is well established (cf. Josephus, B.J. 2.118; 2.433; 7.253; A.J. 18.4-10; 18.23-25; 20.102).⁽³³⁾ It is therefore unfortunate that English versions of the Bible inevitably mis-translate Luke's Greek to make these two separate censuses appear to be one and the same. Properly translated, Luke 2:2 states that “this was a census which occurred prior to Quirinius' governorship of Syria”.⁽³⁴⁾

It was important for Luke to point out the distinction between the census that took place at Christ's birth and the one held later by Quirinius. For, being seven years more recent and also more notable on account of the armed resistance it engendered, Quirinius' census would have been easily confused by his readers with the earlier one he describes at 2:2 (a confusion which, ironically, modern interpreters have almost universally failed to avoid in any case). The Roman Empire was a triumph of bureaucratic organization as well as military might. Not surprisingly, accurate census data (especially as it related to taxation) was essential for its administrative and financial operation.⁽³⁵⁾ In his res gestae, the synopsis of his most prestigious accomplishments, Augustus devotes considerable space to his work in census matters (CIL v.3, in loc., para.8). Secular historians have been (unreasonably, in my view) skeptical about extrapolating a regular, empire-wide census from Augustus' remarks cited above. Indeed, Augustus' census of Roman citizens in 9/8 B.C. is paralleled by evidence for a census taking place in the Roman province of Egypt at the same time.⁽³⁶⁾ This Egyptian census cycle is known to us primarily from papyrological records, and that fact is significant, for papyrus has generally only survived from antiquity in places with extremely arid climates (i.e., conditions which did not obtain in most of the rest of the Empire). Mundane records such as official census returns are not likely candidates for preservation in climates where heroic efforts were historically necessary to safeguard important literary texts. In other words, there is much we simply will never know, because the documentation has not survived. But when we add to the 9/8 B.C. and 6/7 A.D. censuses the further fact of a 13/14 A.D. census under Augustus and Tiberius, the pattern of a seven year cycle emerges, and 2/1 B.C. is the only gap within this otherwise repetitive cycle.⁽³⁷⁾ Rather than a slap-dash approach, it seems more in keeping with his penchant for careful organization that Augustus would have begun the systematic application of Roman census procedures (cited in his res gestae above) not just to certain provinces, but to all territories under Roman sway, exactly as the biblical record indicates:

One of the characteristics of Roman provincial census procedures which seems to be indicated by our admittedly incomplete data on the topic is that results are recorded for the year preceding the year of recording. ⁽³⁸⁾ The census process thus covered roughly two calendar years, with the first year being the year of record and the second the year of recording. But unlike in the U.S. today where we file income tax by April the 15^th of the year following the year being officially recorded, under the Roman system the census was a “snapshot” of assessable wealth and legal status, taken (and officially registered) during the first year, thus giving the imperial administration a further year to verify, validate, correct if necessary, and record the information submitted by all residents of the province in question. That, at least, is what the surviving evidence strongly suggests. And coupling this last fact with the likelihood that Joseph and Mary journeyed to Bethlehem to fulfill the legal requirements of the universal census of 2/1 B.C., we would come again to the proposition stated above that Christ was born in 2 B.C., the year of registration (as opposed to 1 B.C., the year of official recording).

c) The place of the birth of Christ: Our Lord's nativity in Bethlehem fulfilled the prophecies about the coming Son of David, offering tangible proof of His Messiahship from the instant of His unique birth (cf. Is.9:1-2; Matt.2:23; 4:14-16; 28:7):

Being born in Bethlehem also has to do with the important issue of demonstrating and validating our Lord's inheritance and claim to the throne as the greater Son of David who was prophesied to come and “rule over Israel” (cf. the importance of our sharing in an eternal inheritance through Him: Rom.8:17; Gal.3:29; Eph.1:11-18; 3:6; Col.1:12; 3:24; Tit.3:7; Heb.6:17; 9:15; 11:9; 1Pet.1:4; 3:7; Jas.5:2; Rev.21:7). Bethlehem is of course David's city, and our Lord's physical line (through Mary) and legal line (through Joseph) both go back to David and were both therefore intimately connected with Bethlehem as the geographic focus of the earthly inheritance of David's progeny. Being born in Bethlehem was thus a prerequisite for anyone claiming a share in the Davidic line, especially for anyone who claimed to be the Messiah (cf. Matt.2:5; Jn.7:42). Additionally, the name Bethlehem means “house of bread”, and this fact is certainly also meant to be prophetically significant since Jesus, the true Messiah, is “the Bread of Life” through the partaking of whom by faith we have eternal life (cf. Jn.6:32-58).

As we have already seen, the genealogies in Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38 serve slightly different purposes, with Matthew's genealogy giving Jesus' legal line (through His “step-father”, Joseph), and Luke giving Jesus' blood line (traced from Mary all the way back to Adam in order to demonstrate beyond any question Jesus' true humanity). Both lines go back to David through the royal family of Israel, making both Mary (Jesus' blood line) and Joseph (Jesus' line of inheritance) regal in every respect. This also means that Mary and Joseph were distantly related, though not nearly so closely as to provide any grounds for objection. This detail was in fact something that recommended the match since it kept any inheritance within the clan (a not uncommon thing in arranged marriages before and since). Moreover, since they were each of the line and lineage of David, both Mary and Joseph would have had their “official inheritance” in Bethlehem and its environs, a fact important both for Jewish genealogical recording (especially in the royal and priestly lines, cf. Ezra 2:62), and also for Roman administrative purposes.⁽³⁹⁾ As discussed above, Rome carried out a regular sequence of the census in the provinces (every seven years – the one at Jesus' birth being the first “world-wide” one, though they had been held in some provinces before this), and in each such case there was first a “year of enrollment” wherein each individual had to register his/her property in his/her official place of residence. This, of course, was a much more crucial thing in that day and age than it is today, for citizenship and civil rights were tied to localities for non-Roman citizens (so that this would be analogous today to U.S. citizens having to return to their original home states every so often to maintain their rights and pay their taxes). Although we do not know anything specific about Mary's immediate family, it is well to note that the Law required women who were heirs to the ancestral inheritance in their own right for want of male siblings to marry within their tribe and within their immediate clan (Num36:6–9). So it may very well be that Mary as well as Joseph were each heirs to their own ancestral inheritances, giving our Lord in this instance (as well as other; cf. section I.3.a above) a “double portion” symbolic of His unique humanity. Furthermore, if Mary no less than Joseph had reason to register for the census in Bethlehem, it would explain why Joseph felt it necessary to take her along, even though her pregnancy was by that time very far advanced. In any case, all of these events worked together to bring about our Lord's birth in Bethlehem, the city of David, according to the prophecies.

d) The timing of the birth of Christ: Scripture is clear that Christ's coming into the world occurred at exactly the right time, the precise time, in fact, that God had ordained since before the world began. Indeed, God has constructed history's true timetable entirely around Jesus Christ who is the pivot of God's plan and the central Person of history when correctly understood from the divine point of view.⁽⁴⁰⁾

4. Jesus came when “the times had reached their fulfillment”: Ephesians 1:10

e) The events surrounding the birth of Christ: The coming of the Messiah did not occur with the fanfare with which His arrival was expected by the religious community of that day. Instead of being announced to the reputed leaders of Judaism, Jesus' coming was announced to shepherds at night, as light shining out of darkness (Is.9:1-7; Lk.1:78-79), and good news being preached to the lowly (Is.61:1; Lk.1:52). Instead of being revealed to His countrymen, His coming was made known to foreigners, believers who followed God's word instead of the traditions of mere men (Matt.15:9; Mk.7:7), and who used the things of this world to worship the Savior rather than worshiping the things of this world (Matt.23:1-36). And instead of returning in resplendent glory, Jesus came as a true, as yet unglorified human being through physical birth (Heb.2:14-17; 4:14-16), coming into this world in order to die for us (Heb.10:5-10).

1. The proclamation to the shepherds:

(8) Now there were shepherds in that area who were camping out and keeping watches through the night to tend their flock. (9) And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone all around them [so that they] were very frightened. (10) And the angel said to them, “Don't be afraid. For, behold, I proclaim good news to you [of] a great [occasion for] joy which will belong to your entire people. (11) Today there has been born for you a Savior. [Even He] who is Messiah (i.e., Christ), Lord – in the city of David. (12) And this will be your sign [that the One you find is truly Him]: You will find a [newly] swaddled baby lying in a feeding trough”. (13) And immediately there was with the angel a multitude of [the] heavenly army [of elect angels], [all] praising God and saying, (14) “Glory to God in the highest [heavens]! And [also] on [the] earth [let there be] peace among men of [His] good pleasure (i.e., “men with whom He is well pleased = believers)”. (15) And it came about as the angels left them for heaven that the shepherds were talking with each other. “Let's go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us”. (16) And they hurried and went, and they found Mary and Joseph, and the baby [who was] lying in a feeding trough. (17) And when they saw [these things], they let [everyone] know about what had been told them concerning this child. (18) And everyone who heard was amazed at what was told them by the shepherds. (19) And Mary remembered these words of theirs, [and was] meditating on them in her heart. (20) And the shepherds returned [to their flocks], glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen [which turned out] exactly like it had been told to them.
Luke 2:8-20

In the manner of His famous ancestor king David whom God prepared to lead His people Israel through the experience of faithfulness in shepherding, Jesus is the Good Shepherd of the sheep (Jn.10:14), and our Lord uses this same analogy to show Peter and all “pastors” after him what is really important in leading the Church of Christ: feeding the flock and caring for their safety through the Word of God (Jn.21:15-19; cf. Lk.10:38-42). As is obvious from their positive response, these shepherds to whom the angels proclaimed the coming of the Messiah were clearly believers who were awaiting the “hope of Israel” (cf. Acts 28:20). Rather than being heralded in Jerusalem to the assembled multitude and rulers of the people, our Lord is announced instead to a group of men who would never enter the thoughts of the rulers, priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, and other powerful individuals of Judea. But these faithful believers prove obedient to the angelic proclamation, and do not take umbrage at the fact that the Messiah has been born as a lowly human baby in most inglorious circumstances (as the worldly “persons of repute” would most certainly have done, and in fact did throughout our Lord's first advent).

2. The babe in the manger (Lk.2:4-20):

In the place where Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem, there was no crib in which to lay our newly born Lord. For this reason, they used a feed trough instead, that is, a movable wooden tray deep enough to hold animal feed, normally employed in a barn, but used here in place of a normal crib. This was the “sign” to the shepherds that the baby they found in Bethlehem was indeed the Messiah – not the fact that He was “swaddled”, that is, bound up in the wrap normally used to dress newborn infants in that day and age, but the fact that He, the Lord of the world, the One who created everything and who holds everything together by His powerful Word, was to be found lying in something so far from elegant that it was worthy of note and comment. This sign was a clear indication of the kenosis or humbling which coming into this world, becoming a true, unglorified human being, and taking on the form of a servant would entail for the Son of God. It was symbolic and representative of the human life He would lead: not a life of privilege, luxury, and appreciation for who He was and what He was about to do for all mankind, but instead a life characterized by humility, by privation, and by experience of the most outrageous ingratitude.

Given the many popular misconceptions about this particular aspect of our Lord's birth, a few further words of explanation are in order here. The notion that Jesus was born in a barn and that this is where Joseph and Mary had to stay because “there were no rooms at the inn” is, while very popular today, entirely based upon a misunderstanding of what the original text means in Greek as the following translations demonstrate:

And [Mary] gave birth to her Son, her first born, and she wrapped Him up, and she lay Him down in a feed-trough (Greek phatne, φάτνη), because they did not have a[other suitable] place [to put Him] at the inn.
Luke 2:7

And the [shepherds] hastened to come, and they found Mary and Joseph and the baby [Jesus] who (singular) was lying in the feed trough (i.e., the one explained in Lk.2:7 – this is the sign they were looking for).
Luke 2:16

The Greek word translated “place” (topos, τόπος) may be only translated as “room” in the sense of “area” or “space” and does not have the meaning here of a “room” in a house (or inn) as, for example, the King James version seems to imply. Secondly, the word translated feed-trough above (Greek phatne, φάτνη), refers to just that, a relatively small oblong wooden box used for feeding cattle, and it is highly doubtful whether it can ever mean anything else.⁽⁴¹⁾ The KJV actually allows for understanding the passage as translated above (i.e., in English, a “manger” may mean a feed-trough as well as an entire barn), but once extrapolated from a misunderstanding of the KJV's English, the “barn-manger” story has acquired an unfortunate cultural momentum of its own, unfortunate because the false focus on the “barn” and its putative menagerie of animals takes away from what we are supposed to concentrate on, namely, the fact that the sign of humiliation here belonged to and was meant to be focused upon our Lord alone – it did not extend to His parents or, still less, to the location. The feed-trough crib was a sign of His Messiahship, and a symbol of the life of humility and humiliation that He would endure on our behalf. It was, moreover, a sign and symbol of the momentous nature of the gift our heavenly Father was giving to the world by offering up His one and only Son on our behalf. The Lord of life, Maker and Sustainer of the universe, glorious God forever, was born to die. He came into this world in a dirty wooden box resembling a coffin and left it (before His resurrection) nailed to a rugged wooden cross, having died in our place that we might not die but instead have life eternal with Him.

3. Jesus' dedication and presentation in the temple (Lk.2:21-38):

Our Lord was circumcised on the eighth day after His birth in keeping with the sign of the covenant given to Abraham (Lk.2:21; cf. Gen.17; Ex.12:3; Jn.7:22; Acts 7:8; Gal.3:17), and given the name Jesus in accord with the directions of the angel to Joseph and to Mary individually (cf. Matt.1:21; 1:25; Lk.1:31). After the forty days of separation and purification mandated for women upon the birth of a first born son were completed (Lk.2:22; cf. Lev.12:1-4), the family made the short journey from Bethlehem to Jerusalem in order to present the required sin offering for Mary (Lev.12:6-8; cf. Lev.5:7; 5:11), as well as to present Jesus in the temple in order to consecrate Him to the Lord (Lk.2:23; cf. Ex.13:2; Num.3:13; 8:17), without doubt also paying the redemption price required of all first born males, “five shekels of silver” (Ex.13:11-15; 34:20; Num.3:13; 3:44-48; 18:14-16).⁽⁴²⁾ Joseph and Mary fulfilled all of these details carefully, and given this scrupulous approach, we can certainly conclude from the fact that the sin offering they provided for Mary was the inexpensive alternative to a lamb, namely, “a pair of doves or two young pigeons” (Lk.2:23), that 1) they were not of people of great means, and 2) the Magi had not yet come and presented Jesus with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. As it would turn out, these gifts would be very needful to support the family during their flight to Egypt.

Finally, the presentation of our Lord in the temple also provided an opportunity for two further witnesses to His Messiahship in the words of Simeon (Lk.2:29-32, also known as the nunc dimittis), who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Christ (Lk.2:26; cf. Lk.2:30: “my eyes have [now] seen Your salvation”), and in the words of the prophetess Anna, which, while not recorded verbatim, were directed to all those who were “looking forward to the redemption of Israel”, a feat that only the Messiah could accomplish (Lk.2:38).

4. The star and the Magi (Matt.2:1-18):

Following our Lord's presentation in the temple, Joseph and Mary, along with our Lord Jesus, returned to “their city” of Nazareth (Lk.2:39). Then, though we are not told specifically why, the family returned again to Bethlehem shortly thereafter. They may have received divine direction to do so, or they may have concluded on their own that the city of David, the ancestral town of both Mary and Joseph, was the proper place for the Messiah to be raised. In any case, the hypothesis that their brief return to Nazareth after Jesus' presentation in the temple was for the purpose of closing down their household there and collecting up their possessions for the move has much to recommend it: in Matthew 2:11, the Magi find them in a “house” rather than in an “inn”, and we may glean from this that the family had secured what they may have hoped would be a permanent residence in Bethlehem after traveling south this second time (also implied by Joseph's first inclination to take up residence in Judea rather than in Nazareth after the return from Egypt, a fact that suggests that he had intended to return to the new household already in place in Bethlehem).⁽⁴³⁾ It was at this time that the Magi arrived, following the star which portended the birth of the Messiah, the Light of the world.⁽⁴⁴⁾

(78) Because of the compassionate mercies of our God, through which the rising [Light] from on high will visit us, (79) to shine upon those in darkness and dwelling in the shadow of death, to make straight [paths for] our feet in the way of peace.
Luke 1:78-79 (cf. Is.9:2; Mal.4:2)

Jesus is the Light of the world (see section I.4.b.18 above). Throughout the Bible, light is a powerful metaphor, especially when contrasted with darkness. Light is good (Gen.1:3); light is truth (Jn.3:21); light is life (Jn.1:4). Darkness is the absence of all these things, and it was into the darkness of this world that Jesus, the true Light, did come. Thus the star of light that heralds His birth, shining in the darkness, is a fitting symbol for our Lord's first advent. He alone is life and light, clearly visible in the darkness around us, drawing all who are willing to come to His light.

(6) I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and shall take You by the hand, and guard You, and appoint You a covenant for the nations and a Light for the gentiles, (7) to open the eyes of the blind, to bring forth the prisoner from the dungeon, and those who dwell in darkness from their place of captivity (i.e., physical and spiritual redemption).
Isaiah 42:6-7

In Him was life, and this life was the light of men. And this light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not quenched it.
John 1:4-5 (cf. Jn.18:12; 12:46)

For God who said, “Let light shine forth from the darkness!”, is He who has shone forth [His light] into our hearts to illuminate our knowledge of God's glory in the Person of Jesus Christ.
2^nd Corinthians 4:6

The true Light which illuminates every human being was coming into the world.
John 1:9

Sadly, however, though He came to give light to the entire world, only a handful are willing to open their eyes and see the Light of truth. The star of Bethlehem was visible far and wide throughout Judea, yet it was left to a small number of foreigners to recognize it for what it was, the sign of the Messiah. Thus the star shining in the darkness and leading the way to the Messiah, to salvation through faith in the true Light of the world is an apt metaphor for the fact that although Jesus came to His own, His own were, by and large, not willing to receive Him.

He came to His own, but His own did not receive Him.
John 1:11

This is the [basis for] judgment, that the light came into the world, and that men loved darkness rather than light.
John 3:19

The Magi (a Persian word from which our “magic” is derived through Greek) are traditionally known as the “wise men”. That these gentiles were believers who were waiting for the kingdom of God is evident from their actions:

The only gospel that even deals with our Lord's life before the time when He was on the point of commencing His ministry at about age thirty is the gospel of Luke, and even here we have only the account of His Passover in Jerusalem at the age of twelve, framed with two general statements which characterize His formative years on the one hand and His years of further preparation on the other. This fact alone should impress upon us the burden our Lord took on for us. For though He is both God and man from the point of virgin birth, the Savior of the world, yet for thirty years He walked through this world in complete obscurity and anonymity, preparing for the ministry of ministries which would end in His sacrifice of Himself for the sins of that world.

This passage, though rather short considering it contains by far the bulk of our information about our Lord's life until the commencement of His ministry at about age thirty, is very revealing. For one thing, we see immediately the load and the difficulty that our Lord had to bear just in terms of His normal family life. He was God and the Son of God, and His answer to His parents indicates that without any doubt He was fully aware of these facts. And yet, since in order to be qualified to be our sin-bearer He had to live an absolutely perfect life, free from the slightest tinge of sin (a feat truly beyond our comprehension which He did indeed accomplish), our Lord had be the perfect son, even as He had to prepare to fulfill the obligations of the Son perfectly. This meant obeying His parents when they were right – and when they were wrong. As Jesus perfectly negotiated the mundane hours, days, weeks, months and years until He came upon the scene to fulfill the ministry of ministries many years later, we can say without question that He never did wrong, either by omission or commission, and thus was never in the wrong. However, people being the imperfect creatures that they are, there must have been countless occasions whereupon He had to endure the faulty conclusions, impressions, and applications of others with whom He necessarily had to interact, and, until His majority, interact with in an obedient and submissive way – even on those numerous occasions where He was in the right and they were in the wrong. This would have been difficult enough for anyone to bear, but considering that He was aware of His status as the Son of God, and that He had to prepare with every spare moment and ounce of energy for what was to come, what for the rest of us would constitute mere “daily” life must have been for Him a gauntlet which intensified with every step forward. We often fail to appreciate the sacrifice that becoming a human being and enduring with perfect patience the years of waiting must have entailed for our Lord, even as He had to take maximum advantage of every opportunity to prepare for what would be the most incomparably difficult three and half year experience any human being would ever know culminating in the passion and the cross, especially since, being God, His existence before the incarnation was blessed to an infinite degree:

Although our Lord's parents, Mary His mother and Joseph His stepfather clearly did not entirely “get it” as this story shows, yet our Lord “got it” and yielded to them on this and without a doubt on many other occasions as well, maintaining perfect obedience in spite of ignorance, lack of appreciation, and downright opposition to His necessary course of spiritual growth (Lk.2:40). But before we are too hard on Mary and Joseph it is well to reflect that Jesus had the best possible parents, and we would be most unlikely to do as well. For we all say that we “know” that Jesus is our life, and say that we believe in the resurrection and eternal rewards as far more important than anything this earthly life has to offer, and yet we have a tendency to live life as if such were not the case. Mary and Joseph had seen the demonstrations of Jesus' Messiahship at His virgin birth and had undoubtedly seen many other amazing things since, but even though on some level they believed (Lk.2:51; cf. Lk.2:19), it is safe to say that, like His future disciples, even daily contact with the One who had come into the world to save it was insufficient to melt through our human preoccupation with the world, given that Jesus' refulgent deity was shielded from their view (cf. Mk.6:52; 8:17). This too would be part of the daily challenge our Lord would have to face throughout His earthly life (cf. Matt.17:17; Mk.9:19; Lk.9:41).

It is also of great significance that our Lord, whose understanding of the Word was clearly light-years ahead of the most exalted scholars in Jerusalem by the time He was only twelve years old, still had to undergo a further 18 years of preparation before beginning His ministry of ministries. Such was the importance of the task He faced, such the magnitude of the degree of preparation necessary to successfully negotiate the crucible ahead.

As discussed above, scripture makes it very clear that in His humanity Jesus was not exempted from any of the normal trials, temptations, or obligations that confront us all (cf. Is.52:13 - 53:12; 2Cor.8:9; Phil.2:5-8; Heb.2:5-18; 4:15; 5:7-10). Without question this means that in that aspect of human life which is indeed the most important (though the least appreciated as such by humanity in generally), namely, spiritual growth, spiritually maturity and the deep and in His case perfect understanding of all the wisdom and counsel of God revealed to man was not offered up to our Lord on a silver platter. He had to learn truth and grow spiritually just as we do, only He actually did so in a perfect way and to a perfect degree. Spiritual growth is a process of seeking, learning, believing, and applying the truth of God's Word (in deliberate thinking, speaking, and active behavior), and it is a measure of just what it would take to emulate our Lord's accomplishment of becoming perfectly spiritual mature, having attained an absolutely complete and flawless understanding of the entire revealed truth of scripture, that it took Him nearly thirty years to do so (including the preparation necessary for His ministry, on which see below). For our Lord never involved Himself in any sinful waste of time. More to the point, He was thoroughly dedicated to the purpose for which He had come, for which He had been sent into the world, and love for the Father ruled His every thought and action. Accomplishment of the essential personal preparation of attaining complete spiritual maturity was thus for Him “job one”, and a task moreover that had to be completed by just the right time. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not have a minute to lose or a moment to spare, and He set Himself to the task of growing up spiritually from His earliest days, having gained a measure of insight few of us could ever hope to achieve by the time He was only twelve years old. That some eighteen additional years of concentrated “graduate study” were required before He would commence the most sublime ministration of God to man only goes to show how difficult in truth those final three and a half years were for Him (whether we fully appreciate that fact or not).

So it is a fair and indeed an important question to ask, “just how did Jesus grow?”, especially since it is clear that His level of spiritual maturity at age twelve surpassed that of most if not all believers who have ever lived. The principle of kenosis (see section I.5.e above) means that He did not have any sort of “unfair advantage” but had to grow up spiritually in precisely the same way as we all do. What advantages He did have as the Son of God, devoid of a sin nature and empowered to an unlimited degree by the Spirit from the moment of His birth, and as a prophet in His own right, were more than balanced by the extraordinary satanic opposition He faced throughout His earthly life, and the incredible difficulty of the mission on which He had been sent for the salvation of us all. For it was His challenge not only to grow up spiritually in a perfect way while living a perfect and sinless life of complete dedication to the Father, but also to conduct the perfect pre-cross ministry, run the most horrific gauntlet of opposition to get to the cross, and then bear the sins of the world while hanging there in the darkness between heaven and earth.

It was prophesied about John the baptist, Jesus' herald, that he would be “filled with the Holy Spirit from out of his mother's womb” (i.e., from the moment of life at birth; Lk.1:15). And we may be sure that this was the case for the Messiah he heralded as well (Mic.3:8; cf. Matt.3:11; 3:16; 4:1; 12:28; 12:31-32; Mk.1:8-12; 3:29; Lk.3:16; 3:22; 4:1; 4:14; 4:18; 11:13; 12:10; Jn.1:32-33; 7:39; 14:26; 15:26; 16:15).

As we are told at John 7:39, the universal baptism of the Spirit was a gift from the Father to the victorious Son, and was thus not poured out upon all believers until after the cross, beginning on the day of the first post-cross Pentecost. But our Lord possessed the Spirit “without measure” (Jn.3:34), being filled from the moment of His birth – precisely as we believers all are now as well from the moment of our new birth (for the descent of the Spirit upon our Lord in visibly “bodily” fashion as a demonstration of His Messiahship see section I.5.h. below). Thus our Lord's astounding spiritual growth was not due to anything to which He had some unique or secret access. We too have the Spirit given in an unlimited way, for He now dwells in all of us as well (Rom.8:9; 2Tim.2:1), and as a result we possess the very “mind of Christ” (1Cor.2:16; i.e., the indwelling of the Spirit illuminating the truth of scripture, all of which is accessible to us if we are willing to pursue it). The difference is that our Lord Jesus made perfect use of this wonderful Helper to learn and to grow and to live in precisely the way the Father desired, doing so perfectly at all times. For in Jesus Christ alone this unlimited portion of the Spirit met with perfect responsiveness.

The passages in Luke commenting upon His childhood both make reference to the mechanics of the process of Jesus' Spirit-empowered spiritual growth. Luke 2:40 tells us that He “grew and was strengthened by being filled up with wisdom”, demonstrating perspicuously the fundamental principle of spiritual growth: learning, believing, and applying the truth of the Word of God (true wisdom). Luke 2:52 further states that Jesus grew “in wisdom” and (consequently) in “grace/favor with God and men”, showing us the result of this consistent process of spiritual growth: God's legitimate pleasure in those who respond to Him. For while God's grace is astounding and truly unlimited, it is clear from this and other passages that it is possible to “grow” in that grace, to experience an increase in grace (Jas.4:6; 2Pet.3:18; cf. Acts 6:8; Rom.1:7; 1Cor.1:3; 16:23; 2Cor.1:2; 9:8; 9:14; 13:14; Gal.1:3; 5:4; Eph.1:2; 4:7; 6:24; Phil.1:2; 4:23; Col.1:2; 4:18; 1Thes.1:1; 2Thes.1:2; 1Tim.1:2; 1:14; 6:21; 2Tim.1:2; 2:1; 4:22; Tit.1:4; 3:15; Philem.1:3; Heb.4:16; 12:15; 13:25; 1Pet.1:2; 5:5; 2Pet.1:2; 2Jn.1:3; Rev.1:5; 22:21). And the means to the increase in God's favor, God's pleasure with us, is shown here by example on the part of the One who accomplished just such a “growth in grace” to a degree never to be matched before or since. It is important to note that God's favor is not manifest in terms of overwhelming material prosperity in this instance (and if not in the case of the perfect response of His own Son, then we too would be wise not to look for God's favor in purely material terms). But one important result seen here to flow from Jesus prodigious spiritual growth is that He also grew in grace concomitantly with men as well as with God: when we do what God wants us to do, we not only gain favor in His eyes, but He also gives us favor in the eyes of all with whom we have to do, even our enemies (Prov.16:7).

Every plant sprung from seed must grow in the natural way, from small to large, and without passing any step of growth along on the road to maturation as it pushes up against the resistance of the soil towards the light, drawing strength and size from that light. Our Lord would later repeat this image in the parable of the Sower wherein He told us how to grow, to provide good soil for our seed of faith, to grow apace, to rise above the weeds of this life, ever stretching outward and upward towards the light of the truth of the Word of God. And as the prophecy about Him in Isaiah above makes clear, He had already accomplished this very process Himself when He taught this lesson, and had done so to a perfect degree – in spite of the fact that in His case the earth was dry, an image which is meant to convey in a very vivid way the deprivation and the resistance with which the Messiah would have to cope even as He was accomplishing His historically exceptional course of spiritual growth.

Herein we see the Messiah's approach of complete dedication to the process of learning the Word of God. Jesus' spiritual growth was an every day commitment, engaged in the very first thing in the morning every morning precisely because it was His top priority. If this was true of our Lord, should we not adopt a similar approach as best we can? And there is something else of importance to note in these verses as well. When it says that our Lord Jesus “did not refuse” and “did not turn back”, it should remind us that spiritual growth is often not an entirely easy process. Despite the fact that the Word of God is the sweetest thing on earth, it still takes discipline and fortitude to take it in consistently, and that is doubly so whenever our good application of consistency in this regard is challenged, whenever we are under pressures of various sorts that have a tendency to knock us off of our “game”, and especially whenever the Word touches a nerve, perhaps finding fault in an area where we have issues with our present or past behavior (whether of commission or of omission) or for whatever reason find some truth difficult to accept or to face. The Word of God challenges us all, reproves us all, refines us all like the flames of a crucible. Staying with it, continuing to “take the heat” day in and day out, not merely listening, but learning, believing, and applying what we know to be true, takes a deep level of dedication to God. Not only did our Lord never shrink or sink back (as is often the case with us where frequently we find ourselves taking three steps forward and two back), but He pressed forward each and every day regardless of circumstances, pressures, and opposition (often preferring His communion with the Father to His necessary sleep: cf. Matt.26:36-46; Lk.6:12-13; Heb.5:7-9), and in so doing showed us the way toward the high upward calling of drawing closer to God, pleasing Him, and becoming fit to do what it is He has called us to do. When the time came to take up the most difficult ministry in the history of the world, our Lord Jesus was ready. We see in all of Jesus' words in the gospels the truth of the statement quoted above that He knew “the right words [of truth] to encourage the weary”. And because of His dedicated pattern of growth, when the time came He was ready for the gauntlet that led to the cross and even for what came after: the bearing and expiation of the sins of all humanity, the pivot point of all history and the means of our eternal life.

Nor should we imagine that Jesus' spiritual growth was limited to this important daily regimen, for we know that He spent much additional time in prayer, fasting and scripture reading. And not only that, of all who have ever lived, we may be assured that our Lord perfected the technique of “walking with God” better than anyone else (Enoch, Gen.5:22-23, included). This day by day, moment by moment “Sabbath” depended upon a deep and in Jesus' case undoubtedly perfect knowledge of the scriptures as they existed in His day (i.e., the entire Old Testament canon). We know, for example, that when He was tempted by Satan, He replied to all three of the devil's ploys with precise and precisely appropriate quotes from the book of Deuteronomy (cf. Matt.4:1-11; Lk.4:1-13).

We cannot know all the details but His conduct in the synagogue suggests that He made maximum use of the availability of the scriptures in Nazareth (cf. Lk.4:16-20), and He must have been ever present and ever listening with intent concentration whenever the scriptures were read until He possessed them in His human heart forever. Further, we may expect that in His day to day conduct, Jesus' mind was never idle but that He kept His heart ever focused on the truths of the Word and the Word itself. Many passages of Old Testament scripture reflect the Messiah's experiences, and one in particular, Psalm 119, sets the tone for His course of spiritual growth as a young man (cf. Ps.119:161 with Jn.15:25), for example . . .

Although truly God and in full knowledge of that salient fact (Jn.5:18; Jn.14:9; 17:5), our Lord, who had humbled Himself to take on true humanity, also humbled Himself continually during His years of preparation, learning truth as we all must, through observation of the world (cf. Jn.2:25 for our Lord's perspicacity regarding human nature), diligent study of the scriptures, humble attention to direct prophetic revelation, and a dedicated approach of applying the truth He had learned and believed in a systematic way. If we wish to draw closer to God, we cannot ask for a better example than our Lord of the best way, indeed, the only way to proceed.

The purpose of John's ministry as seen very clearly from the passage above was to prepare the hearts of His countrymen for the Messiah's imminent return (cf. Mal.3:1; Lk.1:76-77). John is the King's herald; Jesus is the King Himself. Without any question, therefore, the purpose for Jesus' baptism was entirely different from that of the baptism of those in Israel who chose to repent at John's proclamation of the Kingdom. They were sinners; Jesus is sinless. They were waiting for the King; Jesus is the King. They were helpless without Him; He was their help – and is ours today as well. Thus we can well understand John's reluctance to baptize Jesus (Matt.3:14), while our Lord's response “Allow [this] now. For it is appropriate for us [to act] in this way in order to fulfill all righteousness” calls for some comment. As John correctly discerned, Jesus did not have to be baptized, for there was certainly no need for Him to indicate any repentance, since He was sinless. Jesus' baptism is unique and demonstrates His acceptance of the cross. For after others had gone down into the water to symbolically wash away their sins, our Lord went down into the same water to symbolically die for those sins, so that His baptism represents His satisfying of the Father's righteous requirements of salvation = “fulfilling all [God the Father's] righteousness” (i.e., His righteous requirements that had to be met in order for salvation to be made available to mankind, namely, the propitiation of all of our sins by the blood of Christ, His work on the cross in dying [spiritually] in our place). Jesus' coming up out of the water (a picture of His resurrection just as going under is a picture of His spiritual death on our behalf) is accompanied by the visible coming of the Holy Spirit as an indication both of the fact that He is the Messiah (and indwelt with the Spirit from birth as we have seen), but also as a picture of the gift of the Spirit which He would be given to give in turn to us after His glorification (Jn.7:39).

2) The Temptation in the Wilderness: Rather than preparation per se, our Lord's forty day trial in the wilderness was more to demonstrate that He was in fact completely prepared to take on the ministry of ministries which, after increasingly intense opposition in its own right, would lead through even more intense trials to the cross where Jesus would bear the sins of the world. Of this we can be sure: this was not the first time that Jesus Christ had been led to spend extensive time in fasting and prayer apart from other people. Isolation and fasting, while extremely difficult for most of us to endure except for very limited periods of time, do have the potential of opening a person up to God, His voice and His will – when they are done for the right motives. There are many, and the Pharisees constitute an excellent example (cf. Matt.6:16-18; Lk.18:12), who engage in this sort of behavior totally apart from God and in order to appear pious rather than to seek God in truth. Our Lord, quite to the contrary, was led into the wilderness by God the Holy Spirit (Matt.4:1; Mk.1:12; Lk.4:1), and we can be assured that while we know of this event after the fact (through the revelation by the same Spirit), none of His contemporaries had any idea that this particular trial was taking place (just as was the case in all of the no doubt extremely numerous trials He had undergone in His nearly thirty years of preparation), so that His motives were entirely pure: not the seeking of human admiration, but the willingness to respond to the Father even under the most trying and difficult circumstances. The forty days of this trial on our Lord's part are, moreover, deliberately parallel to the forty days spent by Moses (a biblical type of Christ)⁽⁵⁰⁾ on Mt. Sinai during his receiving of the Law. On Moses' receiving of the second set of tablets (on account of his breaking of the first set in response to the people's rebelliousness in worshiping the golden calf) he also is said to have fasted for forty days (Ex.34:28; cf. Ex.24:18; Deut.9:9). In Moses case, we are not told that he was hungry (as was the case with our Lord at the conclusion of this time: Matt.4:2; Lk.4:2; cf. Matt.4:11; Mk.1:13), and the context strongly suggests that Moses was supernaturally provided for during this special time of communion with the Lord. Thus while Moses does represent a foreshadowing of the Messiah's experience, the critical point of comparison is not the period of the fast. For Moses' experience looks forward to the time when we shall have no need of food whatsoever in our eternal fellowship with Jesus, while our Lord's forty day fast demonstrates the exceptional degree to which He was prepared to suffer in order to carry out the Father's will. Rather, the true, critical point of comparison is between the commencement of Moses' ministry and that of Jesus' ministry, the latter of which would inaugurate a New Covenant through Jesus' suffering and dying for the sins of the world which would replace the Old Covenant mediated by Moses (which could only foreshadow this wonderful reality which was yet to come just as Moses as a type of Christ could only represent the Messiah, but the Messiah Himself, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, would have to come in the flesh in order for salvation to be provided in fact). These forty days of privation also serve to set the tone for the public ministry and further life of our Savior, for He would know nothing but ever increasing opposition and suffering from this point forward. Just as the “scapegoat” which was released into the wilderness symbolically bore the sins of the people (Lev.16:8-26), so our Lord Jesus would “suffer outside the camp”, bearing the sins of the world (Heb.13:11-12), and this forty day period of genuine physical affliction (fasting and along with the extreme discomfort of exposure to the elements, insects, wild animals [cf. Mk.1:13], and the like without anything more than the clothes He wore) is symbolic of and indeed looks forward by way of anticipation to His act of supreme sacrifice, the bearing and expiating of the sins of the world in the darkness of those final three hours on the cross (not to mention the ostracism from traditional religious society that His ministry would entail).

The three specific temptations attempted on our Lord by the devil have been covered in detail before in respect to Satan's overall methodology.⁽⁵¹⁾ What concerns us here is the meaning and significance of the devil's threefold attempt to throw our Lord off stride. What we should notice first of all is that after forty days of such intense privation, our Lord's responses were beyond all question reflective of His true inner heart. Some of us might put up a bold front in the face of such an intense and diabolical assault if well-rested, well-fed and otherwise under no particular pressure. It is another thing entirely to resist Satan's appeals when ill, or in danger, or in trouble, or in want (as Job's experience shows us very well, i.e., the case of a man as perfect and righteous as mortal man could be, yet eventually worn down by pressure of a similarly unique sort). In order to endure trials even approaching this extreme type, the Word of God has to be so deeply ingrained in a person's heart that instead of being a factor in the inner person it dominates the entire inner life. This was certainly the case for our Savior, who, when refined like gold in the crucible, merely reflected the exquisite quality of what was truly inside. It is also not to be overlooked that the specific form in which this shining forth of the perfection of His inner-self flawlessly developed from His youth came out as direct quotation of the scriptures, a fact which should remind us of the critical importance of the Bible in everything we do or aspire to do as Christians, followers of Jesus Christ: the Word of God is our spiritual life-blood just as it was for Him who is our Model in all things.

As we have seen in the past (see the references in the previous note), the three temptations directed at our Lord by the devil, the temptation to put self-will over God's will (stones to bread), to reverse roles with God substituting our will for His (jump), and to put personal ambition over God's authority (kingdoms of the world), are all met by our Lord Jesus with Bible verses which expose the subtleties with which Satan has attempted to cloud the issue in each case. In regard to the first temptation, the context of our Lord's first response, Deuteronomy 8:3, “not by bread alone”, is that of the testing of Israel by the Lord in the desert , who Himself had deliberately and for good reason “made them hungry”, “to humble you and test you so as to know what was in your hearts, whether or not you would obey His commands” (Deut.8:2). This privation was followed – after they failed the test – by the gracious and supernatural provision of manna. In regard to the second temptation, the context of our Lord's second response, Deuteronomy 6:16, “don't put the Lord your God to the test”, is the comparison which completes the verse “like you did at Massah” in the desert, the place where the people tested God by demanding of His spokesman, Moses, that they be provided water, and were on the point of stoning him, asking “Is the Lord among us or not” (Ex.17:1-7). Thus the demand for water was a “testing of God”, reversing roles with Him. For it is He who tests us, not the other way around (cf. Ps.91, quoted by the devil, where the true context is that of our Lord being our dwelling place; only then will “He give His angels charge” to protect us, i.e., when we are trusting Him rather than testing Him). In regard to the third temptation, the context of our Lord's third response, Deuteronomy 6:13, “Him only shall you serve”, is that of the Lord being the One who brought the people out of slavery into the desert. He is not to be forgotten but remembered as the only One who can truly give us anything of value. He is the One who prospers us if we prosper at all (cf. 1Sam.2:7; Ps.75:7). There is also a level on which all of these temptations were more severe in the case of our Lord than they could ever be for us. For, being God as well as a true man, Jesus really could turn stones into bread; He really would have been rescued by the angels were He to have jumped; and He really was entitled to the rulership of the entire world. But in all these things, through perfect understanding and flawless application of the truth of the Word of God, He who is the Living Word acquiesced to the Father's authority, the Father's will, and the Father's glory in carrying out His plan for the 1^st Advent in all things and in all ways and at all times. Thus these three temptations serve to show as well the categories of humility perfectly adhered to by our Lord throughout His time here on earth prior to the cross and His subsequent glorification.

Israel had spent 40 years wandering in the desert, one year for every day their scouts spent reconnoitering the promised land (Num.14:34). They failed the test of trusting in God in the wilderness (repeatedly), but our Lord Jesus Christ, though He must have been down to His very last reserves of strength after forty days of fasting in this hostile environment, demonstrated perspicuously what had been and would continue to be His pattern of behavior until the very end, namely, the complete degree to which He relied on the Father in all things, from His necessary needs, to the confidence of His faith, to the plan for His life. In each thing and in everything, He put the truth first, and there was not a sliver of daylight between His perfect understanding of that truth and His flawless execution of it. These forty days and the testing by Satan which followed demonstrated beyond any doubt that our Lord was more than ready to put the Father's will in place of His own will during His ordeal in the desert of this world with all the forces of evil arrayed against Him, culminating in His death on the cross for all mankind.

i. The Course of His Ministry: Short of a complete exegesis of the four gospels, it is impossible in this context to do more than give a short synopsis of the ministry of ministries undertaken and successfully completed by our Lord Jesus. What we can say here is that His teachings preserved in the gospels are consistent with, reflective of, and reflected by all of the truth found elsewhere in scripture whether in the Old Testament or in the New. Further, His miracles demonstrate His status and His authority as the Messiah, the Son of God. Lastly, His deeds over the course of His ministry reveal the love, the sacrifice, and the commitment of the One willing to be sent into this corrupt world in order to do the Father's will for the good of us all, an incomparable task wherein He died to save us all from our sins.

As to the (possibly disappointing) brevity of this section, on the one hand, the contents of the gospels are (or should be) well-known to all Christians, while on the other hand many if not most of the incidents, parables, and discourses of our Lord require detailed exegesis in their own right (so that a brief consideration of them here would be of little value). We shall thus have to content ourselves with an overview of some of the major issues of Jesus' three and half year ministry before moving on to His “passion” (that is, the gauntlet He had to run to get to the cross), the crucifixion itself, and the events which followed.

1) Obstacles to Jesus' Ministry: Apart from the thirty years of struggle necessary to prepare for it and the forsaking of any sort of normal life (we should not underestimate, for example, the sacrifice of refraining from marriage and the hope of any physical progeny), our Lord's pre-cross ministry entailed the constant negotiation of a number of serious hurdles most of which are unique to His experience (certainly in intensity if not altogether in type). The list given here is not meant to be exhaustive – we can only hope to have a dim idea of what Jesus endured by coming into this world for us, living the perfect life, and ministering the perfect ministry (let alone what He went through before and most particularly on the cross as He bore our sins).

a) Physical Obstacles: Traveling all over the territories of Galilee and Judea for three and a half years, all the while ministering intensely in the teaching of the Word and the demonstration of its power through healing and the performance of other miracles involved a level of physical effort and exertion, and of mental and emotional fatigue that cannot be easily comprehended merely by reading the gospels in the comfort of one's easy chair. No matter how much of the burden His disciples and supporters were willing or able to bear, of necessity the lion's share of that burden fell upon Jesus as the One doing the teaching, the healing, and the managing of the ministry on every important level. The loneliness and the pressure of command, the energy necessary to teach and minister, and the effort required to keep a careful eye on every facet of His ministry had to be wearing and wearying beyond what any other person in the history of the world was capable of enduring, and that is especially true when we add the caveat that Jesus did it all perfectly at every point, on every occasion, day after day, year after year, without the slightest slip or oversight or mistake in planning, teaching or general execution.⁽⁵²⁾ And at the same time, of course, our Lord had to prepare constantly during ever spare moment for the concentrated teaching that was the hallmark of His ministry. Thus, however difficult His early life of preparation, Jesus' public ministry involved an exponential increase in the level of difficulty. We catch a glimpse of the stress and strain it entailed both physically and emotionally as Jesus calls those years “My trials” (Lk.22:28), a characterization which does much to explain the tremendous demands made upon Him during that time, especially in terms of the [potentially and ultimately] violent opposition He constantly encountered from the hostile religious establishment (e.g., Matt.12:14; Mk.3:6; Lk.6:11; Jn.5:18; 7:1; 7:19; 7:30; 7:32; 7:44; 10:39; 11:53):

b) Psychological Pressures: In addition to being divine, our Lord was (and is) a perfect human being – but He was even so a true human being during all of His years here on earth, and that meant He had, in addition to a physical body that experienced fatigue, genuine human emotions that experienced the entire range of what we feel, albeit without sin. Our Lord learned early on how to control His feelings and how to interpret (in terms of the truth of the Word of God) the events which affected them. This does not mean, however, that He did not experience emotional pain, for He certainly did (and at times He expressed it righteously; e.g., Matt.17:17; Lk.22:48; etc.). Therefore we should not in any way imagine that life was somehow unreal for our Lord, that He didn't know the pressures of the heart that full often bear down upon us much more heavily than any physical pressure ever could. Indeed, the emotional pressures with which He had to deal were not only more intense than the ones we have to confront; in many instances they were unique to Him.

The gospels of course are replete with examples of this pressure. Jesus, who might have punished His enemies severely on many occasions, consistently and perfectly bore up under the completely unwarranted disdain with which He constantly had to contend. Indeed, on one occasion when His disciples asked to bring about what they felt to be a just retaliation for an exceptional slight, He roundly rebuked them (Lk.9:51-55). Although fully recognizing His truly exalted status, Jesus walked through this world in complete humility, refusing to react to the opinions or expectations of others, and taking into account only what the Father thought (where we would be almost certain to react; compare Mk.15:5 with Ps.39:1-3). In this our Lord showed us by example what it really means to “not be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of your thinking” (Rom.12:2).

As can be seen from these and many other like passages, while our Lord expresses honest disapproval of all failure to accept the truth, He never allowed Himself to get overly or unreasonable frustrated with negative response (of which there was much; cf. Ps.118:22; Is.49:4), nor was He ever carried away by the superficial and transient positive responses His ministry often engendered (cf. Lk.11:27-28; Jn.6:15). For thousands would sing “Hosanna” in His Name, only to turn away very soon thereafter and demand His crucifixion (compare Jn.12:37 with Acts 1:15). Jesus knew well what was truly in man (Jn.2:25), and never allowed human responsiveness or lack thereof to affect His following of the course His Father had laid out for Him.

This verse records the crushing anxiety bearing down on our Lord hours before His arrest and crucifixion, but the burden of anticipation of the cross – the bearing of the sins of the world in the darkness more than the trials and crucifixion itself – was one which He had to bear His entire life. And while we may not properly understand the pressure this coming crucible exerted upon Him daily (since after all we can only dimly appreciate what it took and what it entailed to be judged for sins of the world), the fact is that scripture records this aspect of our Lord's first advent as significant (cf. Mk.10:38; Matt.16:21; Lk.9:22; 9:44; 13:32-33; 17:25; 18:31-34; Jn.12:27).

This passage is exceptional because it is one of the few places where our Lord gives vent to legitimate and righteous indignation. Yet, as in the case of His legitimate, necessary, and mild reproofs to His earthly mother (Lk.2:49; Jn.2:4; cf. Lk.11:27-28), this correct assessment of the situation is followed by gracious and miraculous intervention, true testimonies to the incredible patience of our Lord, who on innumerable occasions had ample reason to react adversely. Unlike the rest of us, however, our Lord's testing in this area of self-restraint was indeed unique. For not only would the temptation to angry reaction and summary action in response be understandable in His case (since He was and is perfect, and as a result was always dealing with others being “in the wrong”), but also He was capable of commanding the powers of God to redress any injustice, slight, offense or attack that might come His way. This sort of behavior was not in the Fathers plan for the first advent (cf. Lk.9:51-55; the second will be quite another matter), but since Jesus had the power at His finger-tips, restraining Himself on this score moment by moment day by day throughout His entire earthly life was an accomplishment indeed (for which of us if invested with such power could refrain completely from self-vindication for even a single day?).

Akin to the need to show perfect self-restraint in regard to rendering judgment was the similar necessity not to be swept up in the popular enthusiasm which came His way as a result of His miracles. Even Herod desired to see Him because “he hoped to see him perform some miracle” (Lk.23:8). Rather than craving celebrity as the rest of the human race does almost without exception, our Lord eschewed it as the passage above shows, and went to great lengths to avoid it as far as He possibly could (Matt.8:4; 9:30-31; 12:16; 14:13-14; Mk.1:43-45; 3:20; 8:26; 9:30; Lk.4:42-44; 5:15-16; 5:19).⁽⁵³⁾ For Jesus knew full well that the approbation of human beings is about as stable as the wind; He was looking not for human approval but to please His heavenly Father (e.g., Matt.26:42; Lk.11:2; Jn.4:34; 5:30; 6:38).

c) Supernatural Assaults: Though little recorded outside of the temptation in the wilderness (treated above), and the devil's role in orchestrating Judas' betrayal (covered below), the intensity of demon opposition in the case of our Lord (and no doubt countervailing action by elect angels), must have been the most intense in world history. In short, our Lord Jesus met with stiff resistance in every good thing He did – and everything He did was good.

2) The Teaching Ministry of Jesus Christ: The first thing to note about the three and half year public ministry of our Lord is that Jesus was always teaching. His life was a perfect model to all who cared to notice then and still is for all who care to read about Him today. Everything He did and said, whether set in a formal teaching venue or not, was perfectly considered in order to communicate God's truth in a flawless fashion.

a) Organization and Logistics: As hinted at above, our Lord probably prepared for this ministry on the home-front on the one hand by taking steps to ensure Mary's well-being, and on the other the family business was no doubt set on a stable footing sufficient for the following three and a half years. By way of contrast, our Lord's “organization for combat” in personal terms is striking. For it would seem that other than the sandals on His feet and the clothes on His back, He had very little if anything to bring to this ministry in a material way.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Spiritually, however, He carried more precious possessions in His heart than anyone before or since, for He had put the Word of God first in His life at all times, and was now thoroughly prepared to minister it in the unique and glorious way that scripture records, becoming the Father's “Light to the world”, and revealing the one true way of salvation. There is certainly a lesson for us in this, for the world assumes that without significant (or even prodigious) logistical support, most efforts of ministry ought not even be attempted. Jesus put the objective first, and let His heavenly Father and ours take care of the details. Of course it should go without saying that, for such an approach to be successful, both an extremely close walk with God (so that there is no doubt about what His will really is), and a high level of personal spiritual maturity are absolutely essential.

This approach of traveling extremely light demonstrates a level of reliance upon God reminiscent of the Exodus when the children of Israel were commanded to leave Egypt in haste, an event memorialized in the Passover command to eat that meal “with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste” (Ex.12:11 NIV); and this indeed is same the attitude of mind that all followers of Jesus Christ ought to have, prepared to serve and follow Him apart from worldly hindrances “with your feet shod in the readiness [to serve] the gospel of peace” (Eph.6:15). It also demonstrates that even with exceptional support from God, we are not meant to ignore earthly realities entirely, as if they didn't exist (i.e., even the payment of the temple tax required Peter to “work” after a fashion, doing what he knew how to do best in fishing for it: Matt.17:27).⁽⁵⁵⁾ The disciples had a common purse (which Judas kept, Jn.12:6; and which was used to buy necessities such as the requirements of the Passover: Jn.13:29), indicating that the ministry was supported by others (most of whom were apparently women: Lk.8:3; 10:38-40; Jn.11), who generously gave of their resources. We have suggested above that our Lord “saved up” for this ministry, and we probably see an example of this in the colt provided for His triumphant entry into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday” (i.e., our Lord had no doubt provided for this necessity ahead of time in order to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9; cf. Matt.21:1-7). Even the 70 who are sent out with deliberately negligible resources (Matt.10:9; Mk.6:8; Lk.10:4) are told to rely on the provision of those to whom they will minister (a situation which would change rather dramatically during apostolic times: cf. Lk.22:35-36). Thus we see in our Lord's ministry the proper balance we are to maintain during our own walk through this world: utilizing the means of this world without being subject to them, and in all things putting complete faith in the One who provides them, our heavenly Father.

b) Plan and Purposes: The very plan of God for us all, of course, can be summed up in Jesus Christ. We exist for Him and He cast His lot with us, becoming a human being and dying for our sins on the cross. Therefore on the most important level, the purpose for His ministry is as obvious as the plan behind it, namely, the offering of the Savior of the world to the world in order to save the world. But our Lord could have come in glory, and glory so blinding that denying who and what He was and is would have been an impossible feat for any mortal human being to accomplish. Instead, like the parables with which He often taught, our Lord's personal truth and glory was shielded to a very great degree, so great in fact that although He was and is the Son of God, it was (and still is) possible for human beings to ignore that fact and even to deny it.⁽⁵⁶⁾ More than that, the reality of Him, who He really is, is still masked today behind the noise and fury of this present decaying world to such an extent that only those who choose to seek for the truth of Him find it, responding to invitations God has placed at every turning point in our lives, but which are nonetheless very easy to pass by without response if the heart is not willing.

For this reason during His earthly ministry, Jesus came not in power but in weakness, not in wealth but in poverty, not in glory but in humility. Clearly, His coming and His teaching were signs, truth whispered in the ears of all like a still, small voice, leading those willing to listen to eternal life, but allowing those who had no wish to do so to disdain Him and His message entirely. It is ever thus. Jesus could have come as the King, but He came as the servant, and the reason, the purpose behind this critical part of the plan of God, was to separate the wheat from the chaff, just as is the case today. Human history, God's plan and purpose for the human race, is all about choice, all about free will exercised in faith, and, specifically, all about separating those who truly do want God from those who in truth do not. From the standpoint of the things which appeal to the world, our Lord and His ministry had nothing to recommend them. He was not attractive in the way celebrities usually are (Is.53:2). He did not use persuasive arguments to win over the crowd (Lk.11:27), but instead told them truths which His listeners often found difficult or impossible to accept (Jn.6:60). He offered neither economic nor political nor social solutions or relief (Lk.19:11; Jn.6:26). In short, to hear Jesus Christ and follow Him required, demanded a very definite and definitive choosing of the invisible kingdom of God over all other earthly concerns. That has always been the choice that confronts every human being, and never was it made more clear than during our Lord's ministry. For on the one hand no one after seeing the prophecies about Him fulfilled so completely, after seeing the miracles He accomplished so dramatically, after hearing the words of truth that poured forth from Him so penetratingly, could seriously doubt that this was the Messiah, God's own Son. On the other hand, the commitment He demanded, the sinfulness He exposed, and the dismissal of worldly concerns He required ran against the grain of everything the world taught to be true then as now. As no ministry before or since, Jesus' earthly ministry, like the entire Word of God, which Word He is, was a touchstone which immediately and unswervingly proved the quality of every heart, separating the silver from the dross, and making the choice of choices clear: “Follow Me” (Jn.10:27; 12:26; 21:19; 21:22; cf. Matt.4:19; 8:22; 9:9; 10:38; 16:24; 19:21; Mk.1:17; 2:13; 8:34; 10:21; Lk.5:27; 9:23; 9:59; 14:27; 18:22; Jn.1:43; Rom.15:5; 1Cor.11:1; 1Pet.2:21; Rev.14:4).

Jesus Christ came to earth at precisely the right time, at the “conjunction of the ages” (Heb.9:26; cf. Rom.5:6). His life and death, His person and His work, His ministry and His cross are the very pivot around which human history actually turns, for they are and He is “the plan of God”. In His three and a half year earthly ministry, the Word of truth Himself confronted the entire cosmos, the devil and his world system, along with the worldly power structure of His day, political and religious, head-on. In Jesus Christ, mankind saw the offer of the Messiah, God in the flesh not as imagined in self-serving human fantasy, but as He actually was and is, the power of God, the grace of God, the love of God. The heavenly kingdom of God which Jesus preached was not the worldly kingdom of earthly power and glory most men either expected or desired. Given the chance and the ability to reject Him, most did so in a clear and emphatic way as the willing crucifixion of the Messiah demonstrates so perspicuously. Thus, in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, we see the plan and purpose of God fulfilled but also encapsulated. For never was the choice of God's kingdom or the devil's more pellucidly presented than in the offer of the Son Himself to the world. With very few exceptions, the world rejected Him decisively, even though He had come into it to save the entire world, and, at the end of these precious few years, He died on the cross to make that salvation a reality available to all mankind. Jesus' ministry therefore demonstrates the nature of the choice that faces everyone: face the truth and yield to, gratefully accepting the mercy of God in Jesus Christ through faith, or ignore or reject it, hardening the heart to serve Satan instead. For Jesus Christ is the plan of God; He is the New Covenant which was promised in the Old and replaces the Old by fulfilling it every way through true sacrifice, the death of the Son on the cross for all sin. Jesus Christ is God offering Himself to us, providing us with eternal life without cost to us but at the dearest possible cost to Himself, the death of His one and only Son on our behalf. In Jesus Christ's earthly ministry, therefore, we see most clearly this offer of eternal life being placed before those who ought by rights to have appreciated it the most and understood it the best, and, even so, most chose to harden their hearts against Him and the truth of His words. Yet for those few who did turn to Him and for all those who turn to Him today, the purpose and plan of His ministry is ever being fulfilled, the demonstration of the true power and wealth and glory of God in opening up the life-gate to the invisible kingdom of heaven for all who choose to enter it.

c) Procedures and Reception: Although the procedures our Lord employed for broadcasting the offer of eternal life through faith in His Person and work were designed to reach the entire nation of Israel, even so as mentioned above the response was far from universally positive, and the faith of most of those who did respond positively at first, like the seed sown on the rocks, withered away at the first sign of trouble. But the one thing that Jesus' generation could definitely not say is “we never heard the message”. The personal ministry of Jesus Christ served to present the Messiah to the nation and to offer Israel their king – on God's terms (rather than in terms of human expectations). One of the things the perfect presentation of the perfect ministry of the perfect Son of God makes clear is that the issue of salvation for humanity has nothing to do with God's provision of the message. He provides for all who seek Him, and perfectly so. The Israelites of Jesus' day were yearning for a Messiah, and were in fact offered the Messiah, the message of His kingdom being delivered personally and in a dramatic and perfect way. But even so, few were willing to respond to God on God's terms and accept Him. No other period of history, no other series of events related by scripture, documents so clearly how the hardness of the human heart is a matter of free will choice pure and simple, and how that God's provision of salvation and the information about it, the gospel, has therefore been perfect and perfectly designed in the case of every human being who has ever lived. For God knows what everyone truly thinks in their heart, and how everyone will respond to the truth. Even the provision of the Truth Himself in this awesome way did not result in salvation for those determined to reject God and follow their own course instead.

Our Lord Jesus made Himself and the message of the Kingdom available to the Jewish people far and wide. He taught in their synagogues where they gathered on the Sabbath day (Matt.4:23; 9:25; 12:9; 13:54; Mk.1:21; 1:39; 3:1; 6:2; Lk.4:15; 4:44; 6:6; 13:10; Jn.6:59), He taught in the temple and made Himself and His message available during the major festivals when Jews from throughout Judea, Galilee, and the entire world came to worship at Jerusalem (Matt.26:55; Mk.14:49; Lk.19:47; 21:37; 22:53; Jn.18:20; cf. Matt.21:14; 21:23; Mk.12:35; Lk.20:1; Jn.7:14; 7:28). He taught in the cities and towns (Matt.11:21-23; Lk.10:13-15), taught on the lakeshore (Matt.13:2; Mk.4:1; Lk.5:3) and by the river Jordan (Jn.10:40-42; cf. Mk.10:1; Lk.3:3; Jn.3:22-26), taught inside and outside (Mk.6:56; cf. Mk.2:1-4), taught even in the wilderness whenever and wherever the people gathered (Matt.4:25 - 5:2; Mk.6:32-34; Lk.9:10-11; cf. Matt.14:13-14; 15:29-32; Mk.8:1-4). He filled up the countryside and the city streets with the words of God's truth, and through the spectacular nature of His ministry, the unmistakable power of both His words and His miracles, in those few short years He made the truth available to all who were in any way willing to hear it or even to give it a brief consideration, as well as to those who chose to reject it out of hand. For our Lord did not restrict Himself to a single area or a single venue or a single method: He traveled and strove and labored to the end of His strength to make the good news of the Kingdom of God available to all:

As the Messiah, the One sent to the nation Israel to fulfill the promise of her coming King (and the prophecy of His rejection at her hands), His ministry was primarily one of offering the Kingdom of God to His fellow countrymen. But in spite of this, wherever worthy gentiles were to be found, that is, those who “thirsted for righteousness” and the truth of eternal life, our Lord made sure through the guidance of the Spirit that they too were not denied, as can be seen from the cases of . . .

The man of Gadarene possessed by the legion of demons (Matt.8:28ff.; Mk.5:1ff.; Lk.8:26ff.), the only one in his area willing to come to Christ (Matt.8:34; Mk.5:17; Lk.8:37).
The Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter was demon-possessed, to our knowledge the only person in her vicinity who responded to our Lord (Matt.15:21-28; Mk.7:24-30).
The centurion whose faith exceeded that of anyone in Israel (Matt.8:5-13; Lk.7:1-10).
The village of Samaritans whose faith response put Jewish towns to shame (compare Jn.4:4-42 with Matt.11:21-23).

A few words also need to be said about the specific procedures adopted by our Lord in the conduct of His unique ministry. First, from the early days (though not from the very start; compare Matt.4:12 with Matt.4:18-20 and Matt.9:9), He was attended by disciples. These came in at least three groups: 1) the twelve selected by our Lord (Matt.4:18-22; Mk.1:16-20; Lk.5:2-11; 6:12-16; Jn.1:35-42); 2) the seventy selected by our Lord (Lk.10:1ff.); 3) other seriously committed believers who were “called” to follow Him with some degree of consistency and dedication (Matt.8:18-22; Lk.8:57-62; cf. Matt.5:1). These last were not members of the official inner circle, but are to be distinguished from the crowds who showed up to hear Him and to benefit from His miracles on any given day. The possession of a cadre of disciples was certainly not an unprecedented thing for a prophet (cf. John: Matt.9:14; and Elijah: 2Kng.2), so that we should not be surprised to see them attending the Prophet. However, while it is certainly true that part of the reason for the selection of the two innermost groups had to do with ministry as in the sending out of the 12 (Matt.10:1ff.) and the 70 (Lk.10:1ff.), our Lord's choice of all of these individuals was for their benefit and the later benefit of the Church as a whole (rather than to provide administrative or logistical support for Himself). Simply put, Peter, James, John and the rest, named and unnamed, benefitted greatly from their close association with our Lord (although less than they should have but undoubtedly more than we would have), and through their constant attendance upon Him, hearing His every word and observing His every deed, were being prepared for the apostolic ministries they would in a few short years shoulder themselves. For the Church is built upon the Rock, Jesus Christ (Matt.16:18), and He personally trained the twelve apostles and these other early “pillars” who, in company with the Old Testament prophets, embraced the Cornerstone and provided the rest of the foundation for the Church of Jesus Christ.⁽⁵⁷⁾

(19) So then, you are no longer strangers and hangers-on, but you are fellow citizens and fellow members of the household of God, (20) established upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Himself the cornerstone, (21) in whom the entire structure is in the process of being riveted together and is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, (22) in whom you too are being built up into a dwelling place of God by the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:19-21

As would also be the case with the apostles, the synagogues throughout Judea and Galilee were an important venue for our Lord's propagation of the good news of the coming kingdom of God and the salvation that was about to be provided to all through faith in Himself (Matt.4:23; 9:25; 12:9; 13:54; Mk.1:21; 1:39; 3:1; 6:2; Lk.4:15; 4:44; 6:6; 13:10; Jn.6:59). Since these “places of coming together” (the meaning of the Greek word) were to be found in every major community, with no distinction made between the people of God as is the case with so many churches and denominations in our present day (except of course for the distinction still operative at that time between Jew and gentile), it was imperative for the message to be disseminated in these formal local assemblies as much as it was necessary to do so during the major collective assemblies in Jerusalem. For by proclaiming the truth of salvation in local and national gatherings, and in settings formal and informal, all excuse was removed: no one alive and of age during Jesus' day will be able to say at the judgment “but I didn't know”. In contrast to present day Jewish practice and in great distinction to that of almost all Christian churches, the synagogues of Jesus' day offered a prime opportunity for addressing the local body of Israel whose custom it was to gather twice every Sabbath (and often at least once during the week as well), but without the presence of any formal teaching or sermonizing (apart from the regular reading of the Law and the Prophets). As Schürer remarks, “Strangely enough, [in the synagogues of Jesus' day] no one was nominated to conduct worship proper: the reading of the Scriptures, preaching and public prayer were still performed by the members of the congregation themselves, which accounts for Jesus (and Paul) being able to speak in various synagogues . . .”⁽⁵⁸⁾ Thus, unlike today, it was possible for our Lord and later for His apostles to make at least an initial presentation of the truth without prior vetting of their message by the ruler or elders of the congregation. So while later rejection was possible (and typical), no claim could be made of a lack of information.

(15) [Jesus] taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. (16) He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. (17) The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: (18) “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, (19) to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (20) Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, (21) and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:15-21 NIV

Our Lord was of course unique in every way, and one of the ways He gained a hearing outside of the formal assembly of the synagogue for His unique ministry was through His performing of miracles. Jesus' raising of the dead, His curing of leprosy, His expulsion of all manner of demons, His restoring of sight to the blind, His multiplication of the loaves and the flesh, His turning of the water into wine – the world would not be able to contain the books which could be written about all the wonders He wrought (Jn.21:25)! Yet the performance of such exceptional miracles was for Him problematic. For Jesus did not seek His own glory but the glory of the One who sent Him (Jn.7:18; 8:50; 8:54). He did not do miracles to call attention to Himself, but only to gain a hearing for Word of God, and in His perfection kept Himself from all arrogance and pride that might attend such marvelous gifts were you or I in possession of them. Thus His only desire in accomplishing these miraculous works of healing and the like was the furtherance of the Father's plan, giving authority to the message of the Kingdom with which He had been entrusted (Matt.13:58; Mk.1:39). Therefore the celebrity and enthusiasm which inevitably tended to accompany these dramatic happenings had a great potential downside as well (as when those who had eaten of the miraculously multiplied bread and fish wanted to make Him king by force: Jn.6:15), so that on more than one occasion our Lord instructed beneficiaries of His miracles not to bruit abroad the wonders He had performed, precisely so that over-ebullient false enthusiasm might not hamper His true purpose (cf. Lk.8:56). Even so, we see clearly enough in the stark contrast between the loud shouts of “Hosanna!” when He entered Jerusalem before that last Passover and the roars of “Crucify him!” a few days later the true value of celebrity-induced enthusiasm. Our Lord understood this only too well (cf. Jn.2:25), and there is certainly a lesson to be learned from this for all who minister the Word of God: it is the Word received in the heart which is important; all superficial expressions of response no matter how enthusiastic are likely to be as ephemeral as the morning mist.

d) Actions Reactions: Because He was unwilling to compromise the truth in any way – indeed, He is the Truth – it was inevitable that our Lord's ministry was not going to produce a reaction in those who had long ago rejected the truth for the sake of their own positions, whether secular or religious (and often a violent one at that, Ps.119:161 with Jn.15:25; Ps.35:19; 69:4; cf. Is.52-53; Jn.8:59). For our Lord's ministry of undiluted truth threatened those comfortable positions by stripping away their patina of false authority and exposing their hypocrisy on every hand. Challenged as to their true motivations, shown up to be false and dissembling, it was little wonder that, like all of the false prophets who had preceded them, these “wicked husbandmen” would soon seek to destroy the source of that challenge (Matt.21:33-41; Mk.12:1-9; Lk.20:9-16).

For our Lord's authority came from the Father, but the religious establishment of His day had become so completely divorced from the truth that their only authority was a pseudo-authority based entirely upon the positions they held and the legalistic traditions they maintained, traditions which obscured the spiritual realities which the Law was intended to teach (cf. Matt.23:1-26). Our Lord cut straight to the heart of this particular point when challenged as to His authority by asking His accusers about their position on John the baptist's ministry, thus forcing them to plead ignorance rather than admit the truth: they were not at all concerned with God, only with their own positions (Matt.21:25; Mk.11:30; Lk.20:4).

In fact, to anyone with a solid understanding of the scriptures based upon the truth, our Lord's authority was plain to see. The miracles He did substantiated that authority completely (cf. Jn.10:25-38), and everything He taught is paralleled in and by the Old Testament scriptures (e.g., compare Matt.5:5 with Zeph.3:12). It is worth considering for a moment just how brilliant Our Lord's perfect teaching was. He was kind while at the same time completely straight-forward and honest. He always found finds a way to say what was right yet without at the same time casting “pearls before swine” (cf. Prov.23:9). He had a perfect way of piercing the heart of every listener without making the issue unnecessarily personal (or having others take it that way). As in the example of the Matthew 21:23-37 passages referenced above, our Lords words always cut right to the quick, and in just a few words, Jesus was ever able to unveil people's true motivations. This was true because in everything He said, He always kept to the main issue at hand, namely, of the need for turning to God and following Him (through following the One He had sent). In facing the Person of Jesus Christ come in the flesh and in hearing His perfect words supported by undeniable miracles, all of His contemporaries were made to face the issue of life and death with crystal clarity, for He made that choice unmistakably clear in each and every case without any possibility of an honest mistake. This perfect standard of teaching required complete honesty on the part of the Practitioner (and does much to explain why His simple words are so much more powerful and so indescribably different than those of anyone else). To accomplish this perfect presentation of the truth of the Word required a complete rejection of flattery or any personal agenda (Matt.22:15-22; Lk.11:27; Jn.6:15); it allowed for no bitterness or for hurt feelings even when these were warranted through foolish rejection of the truth and self-serving invective, slander and mis-characterization of what our Lord was doing for us all and was about to do on the cross. It required a complete rejection of and mastery over the sorts of temptations to which the rest of us would inevitably fall prey, desire for personal honor and glory, desire for positive responses and the avoidance of negative ones, and the urge to retaliate when wronged, slandered and bitterly opposed (especially galling in His case since there was not a trace of legitimacy to support anything but humble appreciation and awe). Jesus had infinitely more claim to a worshipful response from everyone than anyone else before or since, and yet He had to repudiate His natural feelings when this was not forthcoming and persevere in a completely professional way despite such unprecedented “opposition by sinners against Himself” (Heb.12:3). Our Lord's unique ministry required, in the face of the unique reactions it engendered, perfect humility, wisdom, and self-control in order to deliver what He did, the absolute truth about the righteousness of God and how to attain it through faith in Himself.

e) Form and Content of Jesus' Teaching: Jesus is the Logos, the living Word of God in Person (Jn.1:1-14). Further, the content of God's truth is called in scripture “the mind of Christ” (ministered by the Holy Spirit: 1Cor.2:16). So while “red-letter” editions of the Bible which highlight Jesus' “own” words have their place, we should not be misled by them so as to forget that every word of scripture, every “jot and tittle”, is – as originally penned – the precise message God intended the world to have about Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is the Word, and all the words of scripture are His. As indicated above, there is no teaching of Jesus from the gospels which is not paralleled in the Old Testament (e.g., compare 1Kng.8:59 with Matt.6:11 and Lk.11:3) and in the New Testament epistles (e.g., compare Jn.17:17 with Eph.4:24). While all three of these major topical divisions of scripture have their own unique ways of expressing things, the content of the truth they express is completely consistent in every way. There is it is true a general trend in scripture toward progressive revelation, so that, for example, what we know about the end times from Daniel is greatly expanded in our Lord's “Olivet Discourse” (Matt.24-25; Mk.13; Lk.21), and then even more so by the book of Revelation (that is, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”). But this expansion is one of detail only, not one of essential truth: Daniel, our Lord, and John teach precisely the same things in every respect (when these passages are correctly understood); it is only that through God's plan of expanding revelation over time we are given to know more details in each successive wave of the unveiling that truth. Thus Jesus didn't “change” anything; rather He fulfilled everything, and everything is fulfilled in Him:

Do not assume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets: I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For what I say to you is the truth: Until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or one serif will pass away from the Law – until everything has come to pass (i.e., the shadows of the Law fulfilled on the cross).
Matthew 5:18

For Christ is the fulfillment (lit., “end”) of the Law, resulting in righteousness for everyone who believes [in Him].
Romans 10:4

So whether it be the Law which foreshadowed Christ, the teachings of Jesus, the incarnate Word, or the detailed exposition of the truth ministered through the Spirit in the rest of the New Testament (cf. Jn.14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15), the message is one message, unified, indivisible, unchanging, and complete, the words of God Himself which witness to the Word, the audible proclamation of the truth and the only means by which men can know the truth.⁽⁵⁹⁾

(4) The Lord God has given Me a tongue of those who have been [fully] instructed [in the truth], that I may know the right words [of truth] to encourage the weary . He arouses His Word [within Me]. [And] every morning He awakens Me. He awakens My ear[s] to listen like [the ears of] those who have been [fully] instructed [in the truth]. (5) The Lord God has opened My ear[s], and I have not refused [instruction]. I have not turned away [nor gone] backward.
Isaiah 50:4-5

“My teaching is not My own, but belongs to Him who sent Me.”
John 7:16

(38) “I am telling you what I have seen in My Father's presence. So you also do what you have heard from the Father!” (39) They answered and said to Him, “Our father is Abraham.” Jesus said to them: “If you were children of Abraham, you would be doing the things Abraham [did]. (40) But as things actually stand, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth which I have heard from God.
John 8:38-40a

(44) He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in He who sent Me. (45) And he who sees Me, sees the One who sent Me. (46) I have come into the world as a light, in order that everyone who believes in Me may not abide in darkness. (47) But if anyone hears My words and does not hold on to them, I do not condemn him. For I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. (48) He who rejects Me and does not receive my words has someone who judges him. The Word which I spoke, that [is what] will judge him on the last day. (49) For I did not speak of my own accord, but the One who sent Me, the Father Himself gave Me instruction as to what I should say and what I will [yet] speak. (50) And I know that His instruction is eternal life. Therefore, as to the things which I speak, just as the Father has spoken to Me, that is how I speak.
John 12:44-50

“For the words You gave Me, [Father,] I have given to them, and they received them and have come to know truly that I came from you, and they have believed that You sent Me.”
John 17:8

j. The Last Passover: The final year of our Lord's three and a half year ministry is often referred to as “the year of opposition”, since it was between the penultimate and final Passovers that our Lord experienced a noticeable intensification of hostility from the Judean political and religious ruling classes (i.e., the Sadducees and the Pharisees). It should be noted that John was put to death by Herod just before that penultimate Passover (Jn.11:55ff.),(60) and that this event was one important factor in the increased resistance to our Lord. For during his lifetime, even while in prison for its final two years), John's “celebrity” served to run a sort of “interference” on behalf of our Lord (Matt.11:10; Mk.1:2-3; Lk.7:27), giving Jesus a freedom of action he would not have had otherwise (since, without the “cover” John provided, He and His ministry would have been the sole focus of the ire of the religious establishment toward the spiritual revival then underway). A second major factor in the intensification of the resistance was the intensified nature of our Lord's ministry. It is no accident that the bulk of the content of the gospels deals with this final year (i.e., roughly speaking, everything from Matthew 10, Mark 5, Luke 9 and John 6 forward), and it is in this final year that the most dramatic miracles take place (i.e., the feeding of the five and the four thousand, walking on the water, the transfiguration, the healing of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus), and that the widest and most obvious evangelism takes place on the part of Jesus' disciples (i.e., the sending out of the twelve [at its inception]: Matt.9:35-11:1; Mk.6:6-13; Lk.9:1-6; and of the seventy: Lk.10:1-20). This period of the most intense and growing resistance in the face of the most dramatic miracles and teaching on the part of our Lord and his disciples serves to demonstrate the implacable hostility of the world (in ultimate service to the present ruler of the world, Satan) towards the truth: the clearer the truth is made, the more threatening the source of truth is seen to be. Moreover, the amazing events of that final year brought home vividly the truth of Jesus' proclamation that “the Kingdom of God is near!”, a kingdom of light which is destined to sweep away the kingdom of darkness to which our Lord's opponents had given their allegiance, and whose defeat they fearfully understood meant the loss of their exalted positions (cf. the parable of the tenants: Matt.21:33-44; Mk.12:1-11; Lk.20:9-18; cf. Matt.27:18; Mk.15:10; Lk.13:17):

The Feeding of the 5000 and the 4000 (Matt.14:15-21; Mk.6:35-44; Lk.9:12-17; Jn.6:4-13; and Matt.15:32-38; Mk.8:1-9 respectively): The King's power to provide for His subjects demonstrated.
Walking on the Water (Matt.14:24-33; Mk.6:53-56; Jn.6:16-21): The King's power over time and space demonstrated.
The Transfiguration (Matt.17:1-8; Mk.9:2-8; Lk.9:28-36): The glory of the King and His Kingdom prefigured.⁽⁶¹⁾
The Sending of the 70 (Lk.10:1-24): The Kingdom Proclaimed as Imminent; the 12 proclaimed and showed its power; this is a “far and wide” proclamation (prefiguring Rev.14:6) that takes away the argument “we never heard” (cf. Rom.10:18-21).
The Healing of the Man Born Blind (Jn.9:1-41): The King's revelation of the truth for all willing to see demonstrated.
The Raising of Lazarus (Jn.11:1-16): The King's power over life and death demonstrated; His power to grant eternal life in place of eternal death prefigured.

The scriptural treatment of the final week before the crucifixion begins with Mary's anointing of Jesus in Bethany (i.e., the “six days” of Jn.12:1),⁽⁶²⁾ and nearly everything that transpires serves to demonstrate ahead of time the essential truth of which Jesus has been attempting to forewarn His disciples throughout this final phase of His first advent (e.g., Matt.16:21-26; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; Mk.8:31-37; 9:30-32; 10:32-33; Lk.9:22-25; 9:43-45; 18:31-34), namely, that the Messiah had to come twice, a second time to reign in glory (as all were expecting Jesus to do now in short order), but a first time as well, in order to die for the sins of the world and purchase a “people for Himself” to share His kingly reign forever (Rev.5:9; cf. Rev.1:5-6).

1) The anointing at Bethany: The first of these events was Jesus' anointing by Mary, sister of Martha and brother of Lazarus (similar to but to be distinguished from an earlier occurrence related at Lk.7:36ff.).⁽⁶³⁾ As Jesus Himself tells us, this was very significant not only because it prefigured His death and burial (i.e., anointed head and foot as in burial preparations: Matt.26:6-13; Mk.14:3-9; Jn.12:1-8; cf. the holy anointing oil: Ex.30:22-33), but because it demonstrated that while none of His disciples seemed to understand, at least Mary did realize full well that our Lord was about to give His life on our behalf, so that “wherever in the entire world this good news [of the Kingdom] is proclaimed, what this woman has done shall also be mentioned to remind of her [faith]” (Matt.26:13; cf. Mk.14:9). This incident and the outrage it initially caused among the disciples (because of the “waste” of money involved) we may take to be the “final straw” for Judas who realized great personal monetary loss from the anointing (helping himself to the common purse as he often did: Jn.12:4-6). For the nard employed was of such high quality that it was actually liquid (and thus would have fetched a princely price).⁽⁶⁴⁾

2) The triumphal entry (Matt.21:1-17; Mk.11:1-11; Lk.19:29-44; Jn.12:12-19): On that glorious future day of days, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, will enter Jerusalem from the east in glory, mounted on a heavenly white charger, spattered with the blood of His enemies just dispatched at the battle of Armageddon (Rev.19:11-13). On the previous day being considered here, only hours before He would pour out His life's blood for the sins of the world (the symbol which encapsulates Jesus' spiritual death in the darkness to atone for the sins of all mankind), our Lord rode into Jerusalem in humility, mounted on a donkey colt with an adult animal in tow, the pair of animals symbolizing both the purpose of this present advent as being different from the expectations of the populace, and also that it would be followed in the future by the advent of glory the people anticipated and yearned for then. In the symbolism here, our Lord's being mounted on the colt indicates that the cross comes first since a young and untrained animal would be unsuitable for battle (i.e., for Armageddon), but is on the contrary symbolic of purity and innocence recalling our Lord's sinlessness and suitability for sacrifice on behalf of the sins of the world.

(10) The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his. (11) He (i.e., Judah, and thus the Messiah) will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine (2^nd Adv.; cf. Rev.19:13-15), his robes in the blood of grapes (1^st Adv.; cf. Rev.7:15 with Lk.22:20).
Genesis 49:10-11 NIV

Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion. Shout [for joy], daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your King will come to you. Righteous and victorious He is (2^nd Adv.); humble and riding on a donkey, even on a colt, a donkey's foal (1^st Adv.).
Zechariah 9:9

As our Lord made His way down the descent from the Mount of Olives into the Kidron valley and towards Jerusalem, the populace, many of whom would soon be calling for His crucifixion, turned out to see the prophet they hoped might be the conquering Messiah (cf. Matt.21:11), strewing palm branches in His path (symbolic of the Millennial Kingdom Messiah would bring)⁽⁶⁵⁾, and singing a victory Psalm which indeed spoke of Him, but missing entirely the symbolism even therein which spoke of the necessity for the Messiah first to suffer and die for the sins of the world.

(19) [Messiah speaks:] “Open for Me the gates of righteousness (i.e., the eastern gate of Jerusalem and the gate of the temple facing east)! I shall enter by them and praise the Lord. (20) This is the Lord's gate. The righteous will enter by it (i.e., through Christ; cf. Jn.10:1-9). (21) I shall praise You although You humbled⁽⁶⁶⁾ Me (i.e., 1^st Advent sufferings), for You have brought me deliverance (i.e., the victories of resurrection and Armageddon).” (22) [The chorus of celebrants responds:] "The Stone which the builders rejected has become the Cornerstone! (23) This has come from the Lord, and it is wondrous to our eyes! (24) This is the Day which the Lord has made (i.e., the 2^nd Advent)! Let us rejoice and delight ourselves in it! (25) Yes, Lord, deliver us we pray (hoshi'ah na' = hosanna!) [from the Tribulation]. Yes, Lord, bless us with prosperity (i.e., the blessings of the Millennial Kingdom)! (26) Blessed be the One (i.e., the Messiah) who is coming in the Name of the Lord! We greet you all (i.e., the Messiah and His retinue) from the house of the Lord! (27) The Lord is God! And He has caused His Light to shine upon us! Bind up the Sacrifice with ropes to the horns of the altar (i.e., the inaugural memorial sacrifice of the Millennial Kingdom meant to remind of the cross)."
Psalm 118:19-27

Immediately upon entering Jerusalem that first day, our Lord went up to the temple mount and swept the court of the gentiles clean of the commercial enterprises that had turned the worship of God into a human system of monetary transactions, exactly as He had also done at the beginning of His earthly ministry (Matt.21:12-13; Mk.11:15-18; Lk.19:45-48; cf. Jn.2:13-22). This is a striking foreshadowing of what will happen in the Millennium (cf. Zech.14:21; Dan.12:10), and therefore another prophetic sign of Jesus' Messiahship.

While they were coming back into the city from Bethany on the second day, our Lord approached a fig tree beside the road in search of fruit,⁽⁶⁷⁾ but, finding none, He cursed the tree which withered soon thereafter (Mk.11:13-14; 11:19-25; Matt.21:18-22).⁽⁶⁸⁾ The symbolism of this miracle is most important, for the tree represents Israel and her lack of productivity (cf. Micah 7:1). At the very time she should have been welcoming the Messiah with open arms and putting before His feet the fruits of her spiritual labors, she was in fact bereft of all truly godly works, and was about to crucify the One who had come to deliver her from her sins. This demonstrative sign also has ramifications for every believer's spiritual life as well, for while production for the Lord is the normal and expected result of spiritual growth, a complete lack of production is usually associated with apostasy (Jn.15:1-1-17; Heb.6:7-8).

Another symbolically important event we should note here which took place during those final days in Jerusalem was the request from certain Greeks to meet with Jesus and our Lord's response, that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone by itself; but if it does die, it produces much fruit” (Jn.12:20-32). Now that His prophetic ministry to the Jewish people was complete, our Lord had His face “set like flint” (Is.50:7; cf. Lk.9:51) to last through the gauntlet of abuse ahead in order to fulfill the critical objective and primary purpose of His time on earth, namely, His bearing the sins of the entire world on the cross. In the manner of the grain of wheat in His illustration, Jesus' death would produce abundant “fruit” in the streaming into the family of God people of all nations (which these curious Greeks represent).

3) The Olivet Discourse: This is the name by which our Lord's extensive teachings about “the things to come” to His disciples on the Mount of Olives in response to their question about the timing of the coming of the Kingdom is commonly known (Matt.24:1 - 25:46; Mk.13:1-37; Lk.21:5-36). It is important to note that since “the Spirit was not yet given” (Jn.7:39), many essential details of eschatology would have to wait until after Pentecost (Jn.16:12-15; and compare the description given at pre-unction Acts 1:7 with the later statements in 1Thes.5:1 and 1Jn.2:20).⁽⁶⁹⁾ Nevertheless, on the cusp of His departure, our Lord gave the disciples much critical information about the end times and the need for believers to stay focused on the eternal realities in order to safely negotiate the Tribulation of that future day. These same truths, moreover, would prove to be essential for enduring the days of personal tribulation ahead for all His disciples during the two millennia of the Church Age to come on the other side of His passion and resurrection. Indeed, the disciples themselves would have need of remembering and applying them carefully in only a few short hours.

4) Judas and the Sanhedrin's Plot to Kill Jesus: Just as thirty three years earlier Herod had attempted to have Jesus killed on account of the threat he perceived to his own dynasty by a genuine “King of the Jews”, so also those in positions of power in Judea's political and religious establishment had long been concerned by the “threat” posed to their status by our Lord and His ministry (Matt.21:46; 26:4; Mk.12:12; 14:1; Lk.20:19; Jn.7:30; 7:44; 10:39). Their thinking is best summed up by the report John gives us of the council held just prior to our Lord's triumphal entry, where the priests, Pharisees and Sadducees equate themselves with “the nation”:

(47) Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. (48) If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” (49) Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! (50) You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
John 11:47-50 NIV

Shortly following this conference, orders were given for informers to be cultivated in order that Jesus might be arrested “on the sly” in order to avoid any confrontation with the crowd (Jn.11:57: cf. Matt.26:4; Mk.14:1). This explains why they were so “delighted” when Judas responded to the appeal (Mk.14:11; Lk.22:5). For, once armed with “inside information” about our Lord's whereabouts and habits when not surrounded by the crowds, they were confident of arresting Him without instigating a possible insurrection.

What Judas' original motivations were we can only speculate. Part of his motivation was certainly financial, seeking to make a profit out of this new phenomenon in the manner of Balaam (Jn.12:6; cf. 2Pet.2:15). In part he may also have been attracted to the excitement and the clearly miraculous nature of Jesus' ministry. But without any question Judas was deep into apostasy and open to all manner of satanic influence – otherwise he would not have betrayed the Lord of life (1Cor.2:8), and otherwise he never would have been open to possession by the devil himself (Lk.22:3; Jn.13:27). Therefore we may be sure that Satan had his hand on Judas from the beginning, seeking to place a infiltrator into our Lord's midst (and fulfilling a prophecy in the process: Jn.13:18). Judas had never believed in Jesus as our Lord knew only too well (cf. Jn.6:64; 6:70; 13:18), but the other disciples apparently suspected him least of all as we can surely discern from the fact that he does not even come under suspicion even after our Lord gives John and Peter such a clear sign in the dipping of the sop (Jn.13:26-28), and then essentially names him in response to his question “Is it I?”: “You have said [yourself]” (Matt.26:23-25). We may take from this that Judas put on a much more pious and respectable appearance than any of the other twelve, and it is often the case that those with the most intense corruption within have taken the greatest care to “whitewash” the outside of the tomb (as in the case of the scribes and Pharisees: Matt.23:27).

5) The Last Supper: The final Passover the night our Lord was betrayed also did much to foreshadow both His impending sacrifice on our behalf and the significant changes His victory on the cross would effect in God's administration of His grace and His plans for His Church on earth. Passover, of course, is the premier ritual of the Old Covenant, and our Lord's transformation of it into the one legitimate ritual of the Church Age known to us as “communion” or the “Lord's supper” demonstrates in a most vivid and concentrated way the change of covenants which the cross was about to produce. Partaking of the Passover lamb is clearly symbolic of belief in the Lamb of God. But while this and all of the other Old Covenant rituals which made use of animal sacrifice foreshadowed the death of the Messiah for the sins of the world, Jesus' transforming of Passover into communion transforms the shadows of ritual into a partaking of the soon to be completed reality of salvation. For by eating the bread, His body, we express our faith in His Person – who He is, the God-man, undiminished deity and true humanity in one person forever. And by drinking the wine we express our faith in His work – what He has done for us, dying for the sins of the world and washing all our transgressions away by that death on the cross in Calvary's darkness. Thus by partaking of “communion”, we demonstrate our faith in the “oneness” we have with Jesus Christ on the basis of what He did for us and what only He could have done for us as the perfect Messiah.

This new ritual therefore proclaims in a brilliantly simple way the essence of the difference between the two covenants. For while both the old and the new are essentially promises from God made to all who would seek Him, the old made use of shadows which looked forward to a future reality whose exact details of fulfillment were not entirely yet made clear (1Pet.1:10-12; cf. Job 17:3). But the new is completely open and perspicuous, being founded upon a reality that is already eternally set in place – indeed, the cross is the reality of human history, for it is the ultimate purpose and the power of all that God has ever done or will ever do in this creation (cf. Rom.1:16-17). The cross is “the good news”, because through it we have eternal life, not merely a promise from God of future deliverance (as wonderful as that was), but the proclamation from God of His satisfaction with the Person and work of His Son, through faith in whom we possess that deliverance even now as we wait for our salvation “to be revealed” (1Pet.1:5; 5:1). By giving the disciples this tangible sign of the salvation He was about to accomplish and the eternal fellowship that was about to be theirs then and is our now through faith in Him – demonstrated to the world each time we “eat of the bread and drink of the cup” – Jesus illuminated all that had gone before, and explained the new and wondrous reality of the “better promises” of the New Covenant (Heb.8:6), better because they are based upon the actual sacrifice of Christ rather than its anticipation. It is precisely because Christ has now actually and historically paid the price for sin that Spirit could be “given” (Jn.7:39), resulting in all the marvelous Church Age gifts, the explosion of the family of God to the gentiles, and the revelation of all the precious new truths of scripture embodied in the New Testament.

(23) For [on this matter] I received [directly] from the Lord what I passed on to you, namely that on the night on which He was betrayed He took bread, (24) and having blessed it He broke it and said, “This is my body which is [offered up] on your behalf. Keep on doing this in order to remember Me.” (25) And in the same way [after eating] He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant [made] by my blood. Keep on doing this as often as you drink [it] in order to remember Me.” (26) For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup (i.e., partake of communion), you are proclaiming the Lord's death [on our behalf] until He returns.
1st Corinthians 11:23-25 (Matt.26:26-29; Mk.14:22-25; Lk.22:15-20; cf. Jn.6:51-59)

When they had finished, Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn and went out into the night toward the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane (Matt.26:30; Mk.14:26). There in the garden our Lord offered up His last prayers of preparation before the ordeal of ordeals He was about to endure. The details of these prayers as recorded in John chapter 17 show that our Lord was most concerned about His disciples – and about us who would one day be so as well (Jn.17:6-26). The shorter versions preserved by the synoptic writers are often misunderstood. Jesus' request for the “cup” of the cross (cf. Matt.20:22; Mk.10:38) to be taken away “if it be thy will” is made for our benefit, not for His. Peter's previous protestations (Matt.16:22-23; Mk.8:32-33; Lk.4:7-8) and many heresies since necessitated that our Lord make very clear that this cup could not be taken away – not if we were to be saved. The unmistakable distress our Lord demonstrates is also for our benefit and should be carefully contrasted with the remarkable coolness under pressure He demonstrated throughout the trials and the torture that preceded the crucifixion. For our Lord Jesus was anticipating the death He was about to die for sin (Rom.6:10) in the darkness on the cross, a weight of suffering we cannot even begin to comprehend or imagine, and one which made the sufferings He would endure prior to the redemption about to be achieved by this spiritual death light affliction in comparison. This is the message of the Gethsemane prayers, namely, to show us the necessity of Him going through what He was about to go through if we were to have eternal life, and to emphasize that it was His death for sin that would be the truly impossible task He was about to make possible.

k. The Trials of Christ: When He had finished praying for the third time, Jesus came again to Peter, James and John, found them sleeping, and woke them up, for He knew full well that the time had come (Jn.18:4; cf. Matt.26:36-47; Mk.14:40-43; Lk.22:46-47). Led by Judas to whom the chief priests and Pharisees had detailed them (Jn.18:3), a large multitude of Jewish irregular troops (Matt.26:43; Mk.14:43; Lk.22:47), and an entire cohort of Roman soldiers (a unit whose regular T.O. and E. complement was 600 soldiers), all armed with torches and weapons, came upon our Lord and His small group of disciples, whereupon Judas identified our Lord as the object of this illegal raid by greeting Him as “master” and embracing Him (Matt.26:49; Mk.14:45; Lk.22:48; and cf. 2Sam.20:9).⁽⁷⁰⁾ In the middle of the night and in darkness, set upon by overwhelming hostile forces with malicious intent, we can only imagine what fear may have risen in the hearts of our Lord's companions. But in what then occurred, Jesus demonstrated through His perfect walk with the Father that He was beyond intimidation. He possessed true “four o'clock in the morning courage” founded upon unshakeable faith as can be seen from every aspect of His handling of this crisis, and there can be no surer demonstration that the pressure our Lord felt as demonstrated for our benefit in the Gethsemane prayers had to do with bearing our sins alone. Since as followers of Jesus we truly have nothing to fear from man (Ps.56:4; 118:6), beyond all doubt the Son of God did not, and our Lord's responses to all of the events of that night and indeed to all of the events that preceded His judgment in the darkness of Calvary on our behalf show this most perspicuously. God's will would be done and no human being or group of human beings were going to be able to thwart Him.

(4) Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?” (5) “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “I am He,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) (6) When Jesus said, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.
John 18:4-6 NIV

(51) With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. (52) “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. (53) Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? (54) But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”
Matthew 26:51-54 (cf. Jn.18:11) NIV

Despite the impending burden of the cross and the death for the sins of the world He was about to endure, our Lord's actions and comments above reveal His complete confidence in who He was, the Son of God Himself. The mere mention of His deity caused the entire groups of attackers to fall before Him, and but a word from Him was necessary to summon an irresistible angelic force to His aid. But our Lord was determined to die on our behalf, and nothing in this world could dissuade Him from accomplishing the Father's will to our great and eternal benefit.

When our Lord had said these things, the flush of mis-directed bravery exhibited by Peter in taking up the sword ebbed away, and the disciples reacted with predictable and prophesied panic (Matt.26:31; Mk.14:27; cf. Zech.13:7), leaving our Lord to be arrested and dragged away, an eventuality He did not resist (Is.53:7-8).

(55) At that time Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. (56) But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.
Matthew 26:55-56 NIV (cf. Mk.14:48-52; Lk.22:52-53)

"It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors' (Is.53:12); and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”
Luke 22:37 NIV

The Seven Trials of Christ: In biblical symbolism, while seven is the number of perfection and thus the number of God (e.g., the seventh day, the Millennium, and the seven Edens), six is the number of Man (i.e., created on the sixth day and being incomplete without the addition of the One, Jesus Christ). It is thus no accident that our Lord was made to undergo six trials at the hands of human beings before being judged in the darkness on the cross by the Father in our place. In each of these trials, Jesus was irrefutably innocent but nonetheless condemned, the perfect Lamb of sacrifice without spot or blemish being condemned to death as a substitute for our sins. And in each of the trials conducted by human agency, our Lord was not only condemned but also abused physically and mentally. Nonetheless, though we would be hard-pressed to endure any one such of these six trials, for our Lord they were but a prelude designed to demonstrate His mettle and His perfection before the trial of trials began on the cross itself.

This gauntlet of abuse, unprecedented in human history and never to be remotely duplicated, constitutes the final prophesied humiliation of the Messiah. The suffering and humiliation of our Lord Jesus is a recurrent theme in Old Testament prophecy, and an unmistakable one at that (cf. Is.52-53), even though, because it was so “uncomfortable”, it was rejected by Jesus' contemporaries as they rejected Jesus Himself, an outcome which was itself part of His suffering and humiliation (Ps.22:6; 118:22; Is.53:3; Mk.9:12; 1Pet.2:4). Thus the portions of scripture which prophesy this were later occasionally obscured deliberately as in the case of the incorrect traditional vocalization of Psalm 118:21 (covered in fn. #66 above under “Triumphal Entry”). We have already discussed the betrayal of our Lord (prophesied: “my companion, my close friend” Ps.55:13-14; cf. Ps.41:9), His abandonment by the disciples (prophesied: “strike the shepherd”: Zech.13:7; and see below on Peter's three denials), and are about to consider the trials our Lord would have to endure which in terms of process and outcome could not have been further removed from any notion of basic justice (prophesied: “they hated Me without cause”: Jn.15:25; cf. Ps.35:19; Ps.69:4; Is.52:13-53:12). All of these things contributed greatly to the suffering or “passion” of our Lord to a degree that is easy to miss when merely reading about them in the comfort of our homes. Being betrayed unto death by someone you have cared about and sought to help for years is no small matter, nor is being abandoned and denied by your entire inner circle of closest companions in your hour of greatest need.

Finally, before coming to the crucifixion itself, the six trials of Christ were unquestionably a heavy load beyond anything any of us could ever hope to bear – and especially beyond anything we could hope to bear up under with perfectly sanctified behavior in the manner of our Lord. For beyond the physical suffering, the beating and the scourging, and beyond the mental anguish from the slander, blasphemy, spitting and mocking, the very fact of being condemned by a judicial proceeding, being found to be a wicked person, a lawbreaker and someone to be shunned by any decent citizen, to be set upon by an angry crowd maligning you and calling for your death, are terrible things to have to suffer, especially if completely untrue, unfair and unjust. For any of the rest of us, complete innocence in any matter is problematic, sinners that we are, but no one was ever more completely and demonstrably innocent of all wrong doing or of even of the appearance of it than was our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet He was condemned six times, rejected even from the consideration of clemency in favor of a genuine criminal (Barabas) by those He had come to save.

We probably will never be able to appreciate fully the emotional suffering of our Lord in all that He endured before the cross, for in addition to the physical suffering to which He was subjected throughout those final hours before Golgotha, forced also to bear up under the temptation to indulge in extreme bitterness and anger, rejected, abandoned and abused by everyone as He was. When we add to this His mental anticipation of dying for the sins of the world, a consideration which His prayers in the garden of Gethsemane demonstrate as being out of all proportion to any of these other considerations to the point where they are not even mentioned therein (i.e., His death for sin on the cross is the “cup” to which He refers; see above under “The Last Supper”). Nevertheless, as we consider this part of our Lord's “passion”, it is absolutely critical for us who call ourselves Christians to understand that all these things which Christ suffered before the cross and which constitute His prophesied humiliation did not expiate our sins. It was the judgment of our Lord Jesus in the darkness on the cross which washed those sins away, and not the unimaginable physical and emotional sufferings that preceded the cross, the event which, from the proper divine point of view, is history.

Why, then, did Jesus have to go through this gauntlet of gauntlets even to get to the cross where He bore our sins “in His body on the tree” (1Pet.2:24)? Without question all of this preliminary suffering fulfilled a whole host of Old Testament prophecies (cf. Acts 13:27-29). And without question the devil did all that he possibly could to prevent Jesus from reaching the cross, for that was where the victory in the unseen conflict raging around us was finally and definitively won with eternal results (Jn.16:33; Rom.14:9-10; Eph.1:19b-23; Phil.2:9-11; Col.2:15; Rev.5:5-14; cf. Eph.4:8-10).⁽⁷¹⁾ What we can also say, moreover, is that our Lord's resolute and unwavering negotiation of this final gauntlet serves to provide a vivid demonstration of His boundless love for us, and for the entire world.

Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.
John 13:1 KJV

For God loved the world so much that He gave [up] His only Son, [with the purpose] that everyone who believes in Him should not be lost [forever], but have eternal life [instead].
John 3:16

But short of Satan's physically prevention of our Lord (something he was clearly not allowed to do), nothing could stop Him from carrying out the Father's will to the end, no matter how hard, how painful, how emotionally or physically searing it proved to be, and not even when what lay beyond the gauntlet of pain and humiliation was something so incredibly impossible and horrifying that we are incapable of even dimly understanding it this side of heaven – standing judgment and dying for our sins, and for those of the entire world. In this as in everything important, Jesus is our role model, and just as He did, so we too are to carry our cross and do whatever God puts in front of us. But we can rest assured that whatever this may be it will never approach what Jesus went through, and that on the other side of whatever gauntlet we may face, even if martyrdom be our lot in the midst of the Great Tribulation to come, rather than undergoing anything like the ultimate sacrifice made by our Lord, we instead will be liberated from any further suffering and find ourselves standing before Him there in the third heaven with a “well done” for following Him and His example, “sharing the sufferings of Christ” (1Pet.4:13; cf. Rom.8:17; 2Cor.1:5; Phil.3:10; Col.1:24).

(13) Behold, My Servant will embrace the truth. He will arise on high, be lifted up, and be greatly exalted, (14) to a proportional degree that many had [previously] been appalled at Him. For His appearance had been marred beyond human [likeness], and His form more than [that of any] other man. (15) As a result, He shall sprinkle [with salvation] many gentile [nation]s. Kings will shut their mouths at [the sight of] Him. For those [gentiles] who had not been told shall see, and those [gentiles] who had not understood shall hear. (1) [But] who has believed our report? And to whom has the Arm of the Lord (i.e., the Messiah) been revealed? (2) For He grew up before Him like a suckling plant, like a root [springing up] from dry ground. He had no [particular] handsomeness that we should take note of Him, no [obvious] charisma that we should be taken with Him. (3) [On the contrary,] He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering. Like a person people hide their faces from, He was despised, and we did not hold Him of any account. (4) For He took away our torments, and He shouldered our weaknesses. And yet we considered Him as [the One who had been] punished, smitten and afflicted by God. (5) But [in fact] He was made subject to torment on account of our transgressions, and He was crushed because of our collective guilt (lit., “guilts”). The punishment [required] for making peace [with God] on our behalf [fell] upon Him. Because of His wounding, we have been healed. (6) We have all gone astray like sheep. Each of us has turned to his own way. And the Lord caused the guilt of us all to strike Him. (7) Though He was oppressed and afflicted, like a lamb led to slaughter He did not open His mouth, and like a ewe before her shearers He did not open His mouth. (8) By repressive judgment He was taken away, and who gave any thought to His posterity? For He was cut off from the land of the living. He was punished for the transgression of my people. (9) And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked (pl.) and with a rich [man] in His deaths (sic). Not for any violence that He had done. Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. (10) For it was the Lord's good pleasure (i.e., “will”) to crush Him, to subject Him to torment. But though you make His life a guilt offering, He will see His seed, He will lengthen His days, and the good pleasure (i.e., “will”) of the Lord will prosper in His hand. (11) [Released] from the trouble [inflicted] upon His life, He will [again] see [the light of life] and be satisfied (i.e., in resurrection). My righteous Servant will provide righteousness for the great [of heart] (i.e., believers) through the[ir] acknowledgment of Him, and He Himself will shoulder their guilt (lit., “guilts”). (12) Therefore I will allot the great [of heart] to Him [as His portion of the plunder], and He will apportion plunder to the[se same] mighty [of heart]. Because He bared His life to death and was numbered with the transgressors, thereby He took away the sin of the great [of heart] and substituted [Himself] for the transgressors.
Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12

(6) I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting. (7) For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
Isaiah 50:6-7 KJV

(1) My God, My God, why did You forsake Me? [Why were You so] far from saving Me, [so far] from [answering] the words I roared forth?
Psalm 22:1

(6) But I am a worm, not a man, the reproach of mankind and One rejected by the people. (7) All who see Me, mock Me. They open wide their mouths. They shake their heads [at Me]. (8) “He relies on God. Let Him rescue Him! Let Him deliver Him, if He takes pleasure in Him” (cf. Matt.27:39-43; Mk.15:27-32; Lk.23:35-37). (9) For You are the One who cut Me out of the womb. You are the One who made Me trust in You on my mother's breasts. (10) I was cast upon (i.e., made to rely upon) You from the womb (i.e., immediately after birth). [Since the moment I came] from out of the womb You have been my God. (11) Be not far from Me, for trouble is near, for there is no one [else] to help [Me]. (12) [Like] many bulls they have encircled Me. [Like] strong bulls from Bashan they have surrounded Me. (13) They open their mouths against Me [like] roaring lions about to pounce on their prey. (14) I am poured out like water, and all My bones are being stretched apart. My heart has become like wax. It is melting inside of Me. (15) My strength is evaporating like a broken piece of pottery, and My tongue is sticking to the roof of My mouth [with thirst]. For You (cf. vv.1-2) have set Me ablaze in the dust of death. (16) For they have surrounded Me [like] dogs. [This] congregation of evil-doers has encompassed Me. They have pierced My hands and My feet. (17) I can count all My bones. [While] they look on and stare at Me, (18) they are dividing up My clothes for themselves, and for My garments they are casting lots. (19) But You, Lord, be not far off! O My God, hurry to My help! (20) Deliver My life from the sword, My precious [life] from the power of [these] dog[s]! (21) Save Me from the mouth of the lion! Answer Me from amid the horns of these wild oxen!
Psalm 22:6-21

Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.
Psalm 41:9 NIV

(12) If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. (13) But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, (14) with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship as we walked with the throng at the house of God.
Psalm 55:12-14 NIV

For they mixed gall with what they gave Me to eat, and for My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.
Psalm 69:21 (cf. vv.19-21; Matt.27:34; 27:48; Mk.15:23; 15:36; Lk.23:36; Jn.19:29)

(50) Remember, Lord, how your servant has been mocked, how I bear in my heart the taunts of all the nations, (51) the taunts with which your enemies have mocked, O Lord, with which they have mocked every step of your anointed one.
Psalm 89:50-51 NIV

The Stone which the builders rejected has become the Cornerstone.
Psalm 118:22

For they have struck on the cheek with a rod the Judge of Israel.
Micah 5:1b

In addition to the beating, spitting, mocking, lying, cursing, betrayal, rejection and all of the other things He had to endure, it should be noted as well that besides being a particularly painful form of execution, the fact that our Lord was crucified (as opposed to being stoned to death or beheaded), constituted a part of His humiliation as well. For there was a certain amount of shame involved in this type of death (cf. Heb.12:2), since it proclaimed the person in question as being “under a curse” (Deut.21:23; Gal.3:13).

He made Him who had no [personal] experience of sinning [to be] sin (i.e., a sin offering) for us, so that we might have God's righteousness in Him.
2nd Corinthians 5:21

. . . [Moses] considered the reproach [suffered on behalf] of Christ greater riches than the treasure vaults of Egypt. For he was looking to his reward.
Hebrews 11:26

Since then we too [like the believers of chapter 11] have such a large audience of witnesses surrounding us [both men and angels], let us put off every hindrance – especially whatever sins habitually affect us – and run with endurance the race set before us, turning our gaze unto Jesus, the originator and completer of our faith, who, for the joy set before Him, endured the shame of the cross, treating it with despite, and took His seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Keep in mind all the terrible opposition He endured against Himself at the hands of sinful men, so as not to grow sick at heart and give up.
Hebrews 12:1-3

So let us go outside the camp to Him, bearing His reproach.
Hebrews 13:13

He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, in order that we might die to sins and live to righteousness. By His wound you are healed.
1^st Peter 2:24

But before the ultimate trial of the crucifixion itself and the death for sin He would die on our behalf in the darkness while hung on the cross, our Lord, though completely innocent, would be made to undergo six prior trials at the hands of sinful human beings, and be abused, rejected and condemned by mere men for whom He was about to die.

1) The Trial before Annas (Jn.18:12-24): In our Lord's day the high-priesthood had become a largely political office. Annas, though no longer holding the office, was Caiaphas' father-in-law and the apparent power behind the throne, so it was to him that our Lord was first brought after being arrested in the garden of Gethsemane. Under intense interrogation, Jesus refused to answer questions about His disciples and remained unintimidated in spite of physical abuse (cf. Jn.18:21-23 with Is.50:8-9).

2) The Trial before Caiaphas (Matt.26:57-68; Mk.14:53-65): From comparing the accounts of John and Matthew, it seems likely that Annas' residence shared an inner courtyard with the official residence of the high priest. As in the first interrogation, this trial must have taken place on the portico of the residence, for Peter is able to observe its progress, and our Lord is able to see Peter immediately after his third denial (Lk.22:61). While the first trial seems to have been focused upon gathering intelligence in order to round up all of our Lord's followers, this second trial seems to have served a probouleutic function, having the purpose of concocting an appropriate charge for a death penalty at once acceptable to and persuasive for the Roman governor. None of the witnesses interviewed provided anything convincing, however, and it was only when our Lord affirmed His status as the Messiah under direct questioning that His accusers became satisfied that they had enough evidence to convict Him. In the process of this trial, Jesus was spit upon, slapped, beaten, blindfolded, and mocked.

3) The Trial before the Sanhedrin (Matt.27:1; Mk.15:1a; Lk.22:66-71; cf. Jn.18:28): While the first two trials took place in close geographic proximity, probably just before dawn our Lord was marched to the council house where the Jewish senate or Sanhedrin met. All four of the gospels indicate that this third trial, coming very shortly after the second and, with Peter's denials sandwiched in between them, that it took place at day break. The purpose of this trial before the most politically powerful individuals in Jerusalem and Judea (outside of the Roman governor and his staff) was merely to place a formal “rubber stamp” on the charge prepared by the high priest. The details of this trial are recorded only in Luke and the only accusation about which our Lord is asked is the same one which caused Caiaphas to rend his garments:

And they all said, “Are you the Son of God then?” And He said to them, “Yes I am.”
Luke 22:70 NASB

The outcome of this apparently very short trial was a rapid sentence of condemnation, after which our Lord was led, bound, to the praetorium or headquarters of the Roman governor (Matt.27:2).

4) The Trial before Pilate: First Phase (Matt.27:11-14; Mk.15:1b-5; Lk.23:1-5; Jn.18:28-38): Bringing our Lord before Pilate was necessary inasmuch as that in Judea, being a Roman protectorate, the power of capital punishment was reserved for the Roman governor (Jn.18:31).⁽⁷²⁾ That was the sole purpose of the change of venue. For inasmuch as the rulers of Israel had determined that Jesus should die, the only thing left was effecting this decision, and that required persuading the Roman governor to acquiesce in their sentence of death. For this purpose, the priests, elders, scribes and Pharisees were willing to resort to any sort of falsity, and were clearly irritated that they had to provide any sort of rationale for a decision they had already reached (“If this man were not doing wrong, we would not have handed him over to you”; Jn.18:30). Luke records a threefold indictment in response to Pilate's demand for a reason to execute Jesus:

“We discovered this man [1] misleading our people and [2] preventing [us from] paying taxes to Caesar and [3] saying that he is Messiah, [that is,] king”.
Luke 23:2b

The idea that they had only just now “come upon” our Lord acting in a criminal way is designed to prejudice the entire proceeding (by removing any suspicion of jealousy for one thing). “Misleading the people” is an entirely generic charge and meant to give Pilate a reason to agree in case he might be inclined to give them a blank check without further ado. “Preventing the paying of taxes” is, of course, a complete canard, for the command of our Lord to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's” had unquestionably become very well known. Resentment over the paying of tax to gentile occupiers and conspiring to avoid and resist such taxation was actually a crime of which these men were likely to have been guilty themselves. This second charge did, however, furnish Pilate with an appropriate rationale for granting an execution in case he were inclined to do so but not without at least a fig leaf of respectability. Finally, almost as an afterthought, they include the charge upon which the Sanhedrin had actually agreed: Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.⁽⁷³⁾ This was blasphemy in their unbelieving eyes, and they add the word “king” by way of explanation, no doubt because they knew very well that any claim of kingship as an alternative to Caesar, and especially one which claimed a divine mandate, was likely to be viewed as a traitorous threat by the Roman administration. They did not, however, count on Pilate's seeing through and dismissing the first two charges out of hand and concentrating on the third.

“Are you the king of the Jews?”
Matthew 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 23:3; John 18:33

“You say [so].”
Matthew 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 23:3; John 18:37

Only John records Jesus' more extended explanation. He is indeed a king, but His kingdom is not of this world. He has come to testify to the truth, not to replace any earthly rule (at this time). Pilate's infamous answer, “What is truth” (Jn.18:38), indicates that he understood quite clearly that our Lord was not instigating any sort of earthly rebellion. As a result, Pilate's first and just verdict was an easy one for him to render:

“I find no guilt in this man.”
Luke 23:4 (cf. John 18:38)

But this verdict was met with a vigorous appeal by the accusers against the acquitted. Contrary to every standard of justice, Pilate allowed this verbal onslaught to continue for some time and was “amazed” that our Lord did not respond to any further charges (Matt.27:14; Mk.15:5): Jesus had cooperated with all the prior legal process to which He had been subjected despite its overwhelming unfairness. But having been officially acquitted, He was not longer bound by any standard of justice no matter how perverse to answer further, thus giving Pilate no further avenue of approach (despite his attempt to elicit one: “Don't you hear what terrible things they are accusing you of?”; Matt.27:13; Mk.15:4). This explains why Pilate seized on the fact that Jesus' ministry had begun in Galilee as soon as he was apprised of that fact (Lk.23:5-7).

5) The Trial before Herod (Lk.23:8-12): Sending our Lord to Herod must have seemed to Pilate a perfect solution. It was a marvelous way of passing the responsibility off. Herod's father, Herod “the great”, had, after all, ruled Judea as king under a Roman protectorate which had only been dissolved upon his death (following the malfeasance of the eldest son, Herod Archelaus), and we may well imagine that this other son also had some hopes of regaining his father's position. If anyone was likely to take offense at someone else proclaiming themselves “king”, it was surely Herod. Herod's father had attempted to kill Jesus, and had killed the male children of Bethlehem (Matt.2:1-19), while his son, the present Herod (Antipas), had executed our Lord's herald, John the baptist (Matt.14:3-12; Mk.6:17-30; Lk.9:9). Thus, sending Jesus to Herod was far from a benign act, and that fact was surely not lost on our Lord. But while Herod was pleased to be provided with this entertainment and questioned our Lord at length (to no effect, since our Lord did not respond to this illegal proceeding), he apparently had no desire and no intention of becoming involved in any legal process. After subjecting Jesus to more abuse, he sent Him back to Pilate.

6) The Trial before Pilate: Second Phase (Matt.27:15-26; Mk.15:6-15; Lk.23:13-25; Jn.18:39 - 19:16): Pilate interpreted Herod's return of our Lord to him as ratification of his own previous acquittal (Lk.23:15). Upon that return, Pilate made several further attempts to prevent our Lord's crucifixion. There are no doubt several reasons for this, but we need not attribute any deep respect for justice on his part as one of them (cf. Jn.18:38: “What is truth?”). The witness of our Lord and the power of His presence caused the Roman governor some serious foreboding (cf., Jn.19:7-12), and it is also likely that his wife's warning to him not to have anything to do with our Lord had been the source of some further unease (Matt.27:19). But Pilate is also likely to have been motivated to spare Jesus out of 1) his desire not to lose this “contest of wills” between himself and the Jewish authorities, and 2) a further desire to avoid becoming implicated in any way in what he clearly saw as a political murder – not out of a sense of justice but rather out of a desire to stay above the fray of Jewish party politics in order not to alienate any faction unnecessarily (i.e., he recognized that Jesus had been arrested “out of envy”: Matt.27:18; Mk.15:10; this also explains why he literally “washed his hands” of the matter after being unable to convince the crowd otherwise: Matt.27:24-25).

When his attempt to proclaim Jesus innocent based upon his own and upon Herod's examination failed to persuade, in order to relieve himself of this situation which was growing increasingly tense Pilate tried to find an acceptable alternative to crucifixion, first by making use of his politically astute custom of releasing some well-known prisoner every Passover. But the crowd, egged on by the chief priests and the elders, shouted for Barabbas instead (Matt.27:20; Mk.15:11). He also tried humiliation and abuse, having our Lord beaten and whipped further and ridiculed by the soldiers (Matt.27:27-30; Mk.15:16-19; Jn.19:2-3), then presenting Him to the crowd dressed in purple but wearing a crown of thorns (symbolic, though unbeknownst to Pilate, of the curse He was about be made for the sake of the whole world: cf. Gen.3:18)⁽⁷⁴⁾, and providing the comic introduction himself: “Look, here's the man [now]!” (Jn.19:5). When this overture too was refused, and when a further interview with our Lord provided no insights or help to his dilemma (“Don't you know that I have the authority to release you and the authority to crucify you?” – “You would have no authority over Me unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me up to you has the greater sin”; Jn.19:10-11 NASB), Pilate finally delivered Jesus over to crucifixion when the people under the guidance of their Jewish leaders played their ace trump: “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar” (Jn.19:12 NASB). Pilate, the ultimate political pragmatist, knew that he had been beaten at this point. Failing to give our Lord over to the people and their will would now be very costly for him (even though it was certainly within his power), and he was unwilling to suffer any possible disadvantage (whether in terms of an immediate riot, future instability, or a possible charge of malfeasance lodged with Caesar) just for Jesus' sake. However, wishing to make it crystal clear that he was only acquiescing in a decision of their making, he first washed his hands to demonstrate his “innocence” (cf. Deut.21:6), and the people responded: “His blood be on us and our children!” (Matt.27:25 NASB). Then, to leave no doubt, and to gain some political capital from this defeat, Pilate referred to Jesus as their “King”, questioning whether or not they really wanted to crucify their own king, until they responded “We don't have a king – except Caesar” (Jn.19:15). Having made the best of a bad situation (from his spiritually blind point of view), Pilate “handed Jesus over to their will” to be crucified (Lk.23:25; cf. Matt.27:26; Mk.15:15; Jn.19:16).

l. The Crucifixion:

1) The Events of the Crucifixion:

Ridiculed, rejected, beaten and scourged, our Lord who by this time was nearing the end of His physical strength (but not of His moral resolve) was made to take up His own cross and carry it to the place of execution, “Golgotha”, a Hebrew name meaning “skull”. John tells us that on the initial leg of the journey Jesus was carrying His cross Himself (Jn.19:17). Having received enough physical abuse over the course of the preceding night and morning to kill most lesser men, our Lord was apparently unable to move fast enough to suit the Roman soldiers taking Him to the place of death, and so they “drafted” Simon of Cyrene, father of Alexander and Rufus (cf. Rom.16:13) in order to carry the cross for Him the remainder of the way (Matt.27:32; Mk.15:21; Lk.23:26). As the procession made its way along, with two criminals also slated for crucifixion in the column (Lk.23:32), our Lord at one point turned to the large crowd which was following to address the women who were beating their breasts and lamenting Him:

Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, “Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!” Then “they will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'” For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
Luke 23:28-31

The second quote from Hosea 10:8 is a prophecy of the response of the wicked and unregenerate to the return of Messiah at His second advent. With this quote and with these words our Lord shifts the focus of the mourners from His circumstances to their own spiritual danger. Within a few decades (A.D. 68), Jerusalem would be completely destroyed by the Romans without doubt on account of her overall unwillingness to accept her Messiah. No amount of mourning for Jesus' crucifixion would be able to save Jerusalem from her fate, nor would this mourning save any of the crowd who were also unwilling to believe in Jesus, accepting Him as the Messiah, the one and only Son of God who was about to die for their sins and for the sins of the entire world.

When they arrived at Golgotha, our Lord was offered wine mixed with some sort of additive to deaden the pain. Mark calls it “myrrh” and Matthew calls it “gall”. Both terms are somewhat generic in Greek (i.e., admissive of a wide variety of bitter, aromatic substances). Matthew's choice of the word “gall” is clearly intended to emphasize the fulfillment of part of the prophecy from Psalm 69:21, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” (where the Hebrew word ro'sh [translated here “gall”] actually refers to a specific bitter herb, “wormwood”, but is often used metaphorically for things producing noxious effects). Mark's use of “myrrh” makes this event more understandable for his Roman audience and also demonstrates for us the reason behind Jesus' refusal to drink it: certain types of myrrh were considered to have sedative properties, and our Lord, though without question by now terribly thirsty after this horrendous ordeal, was yet unwilling to drink anything that would in any way compromise His free will decision to take on the sins of the world – He had to be fully conscious when He bore our sins for the sacrifice to count. As in all the events of this gauntlet He ran for us even to get to the cross, everything He did, He did for us – that we might have eternal life.

When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
Matthew 27:35 NIV

And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.
Mark 15:24 NIV

When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left.
Luke 23:33 NIV

Here they crucified him, and with him two others – one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
John 19:18 NIV

What has always struck this author about the actual description of the act of nailing our Lord to the cross is that seems almost to be glossed over by the gospel writers, especially in comparison to the prominence it has been given in Christian art, literature and music over the millennia. I believe that this fact alone should serve to indicate to us that it is not the physical death our Lord which is to be emphasized in considering His sacrifice on our behalf. After all, as we shall see below, Jesus died physically by voluntarily exhaling His spirit, not from exposure or shock or trauma or any loss of blood. He lay down His own physical life once His work on the cross in dying spiritually for us had been accomplished. That “work”, that [spiritual] death, was to be judged in our place, to stand judgment for the sins of the world that the world might be saved through faith in Him.

(16) For they have surrounded Me [like] dogs. [This] congregation of evil-doers has encompassed Me. They have pierced My hands and My feet. (17) I can count all My bones. [While] they look on and stare at Me, (18) they are dividing up My clothes for themselves, and for My garments they are casting lots.
Psalm 22:16-18

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5 NIV

A