One Gospel: Four ViewsSample

JESUS: THE SUFFERING SERVANT (PART 3)

Who is Jesus? This is the question Mark wants his audience to wrestle with. Throughout his account of Jesus’s life, Mark shows different people, including Jesus’s disciples, as they wrestle with the same question: Who is Jesus?

Mark illustrates how people didn’t really know who Jesus was. They figured out He was the Messiah, the Son of God who came to rescue them, but they thought that meant He would rescue them from the oppression of their Roman rulers. They expected Him to lead them in a political uprising, taking back their land in glorious victory.

They failed to realize that, in the kingdom of God, glorious victory comes only through humble self-sacrifice. Jesus, the promised Messiah, would indeed gain victory over evil, sin, and death, but only by becoming the Suffering Servant the prophet Isaiah predicted in Isaiah 53. Jesus’s followers expected Him to become a King, but they didn’t expect His coronation to happen on a cross.

This surprising truth was both a comfort and a challenge to Mark’s audience, who were primarily Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians probably experiencing some level of persecution. It’s a challenge because, if we follow a Suffering Servant King, then we can expect to suffer as well. If Jesus gave up every part of Himself for us, it’s fitting that we daily give up every part of ourselves for Him.

But this challenge comes with a comfort. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus extending love to the marginalized—to people who are suffering. Mark shows us Jesus is deeply, personally acquainted with our suffering. He knows our hurts, and He hurts with us. He cares about us so deeply that, in Mark, we see Him take our sin and suffering into Himself on the cross. And we see Him defeat suffering and death by resurrecting from the dead. The Suffering Servant is infinitely stronger than suffering. So, tell me, who is Jesus?

— Taylor Eising

THINK ABOUT IT

Are you ever surprised by how Jesus—King of the universe—came, or what He did?

When you’re suffering, how could it be comforting to know that Jesus knows your hurts?

What does it look like to live, by the Holy Spirit, in the loving humility Jesus demonstrated?

KEY VERSE

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 (NLT)