Mark: An 8-Day Devotional Reading PlanSample

The Way of the Cross

Traveling from point A to point B often involves working out the best way to go and whether there are options. Is there a faster way? Is there a way without tolls? Is there a more scenic way?

When we think about the way to God, there may be similar types of questions: are there different ways, and is one way easier than the other? For all of us there is a point A, sin and separation from God; and a point B, peace and reconciliation with God. How do we get from point A to point B? The Bible tells us that there is only one way: the way of the cross.

Mark 14:32–42 places the reader at the night before Jesus’s crucifixion. Jesus would soon experience the horror of separation from his Father. The desolation of the cross and the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) will echo out over Calvary. The “hour” (14:35, 41) had come, and it was not a matter of going through the motions or just getting it over and done with. On this night, the night that Jesus would be betrayed into the hands of sinners (v. 41), Jesus was “greatly distressed and troubled” (v. 33).

His disciples were with him in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus took Peter, James, and John further with him, and telling them of his distress, he asked them to watch and pray. Sadly, even after three years of witnessing Jesus’s ministry, these disciples failed to do what Jesus asked and failed to understand what Jesus had come to do: take upon himself the sin of the world. For Jesus, the way of the cross was submission to his Father—“Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (v. 36).

The failure of the disciples to watch and pray as Jesus asked highlights just how significant the work of the cross is. These men had glimpsed the glory of Jesus at his transfiguration (9:2–13). They had heard him teach about his mission (Matt. 16:21). And yet they failed to understand what Jesus was about to do. From our perspective it seems far more obvious, but we are just like them. Following Jesus, knowing peace with God through faith in Jesus, does not guarantee that we will always trust and obey God. All of us fail in this regard.

What is the way forward? The only way is the way of the cross: keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). How comforting to know that the way to God does not depend on what we do, but on what Jesus has done at the cross.—Jenny Salt