Mark 10:41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Introduction
Focus on the Cross
We’re ten chapters into the Gospel of Mark. We’ve covered Jesus’ whole life, his whole ministry—we’re just days now from the crucifixion. And now, near the end of chapter 10, for the first time, we finally find out the mystery of why Jesus had to die. He’s prophesied his upcoming suffering 5 times. The first one was vague—back in ch.2 he just made this cryptic remark about how the bridegroom would be forcibly taken away and his followers would have reason to mourn and fast. Then in ch.8 he explained it with explicit, crystal clarity to his disciples—he would be tortured and die at the hands of the Sanhedrin. Then he said it twice again in ch.9, and now again in ch.10. And most of the rest of the book will be devoted to describing that suffering and death.
The first 30 years of Jesus’ life, Mark just skips completely. When’s the last time you read a biography that begins in the last 2 or 3 years of the man’s life? Then Mark covers Jesus’ entire earthly ministry in 10 chapters, and then devotes 6 chapters to his final week. And 2 and a half of those are his final hours. The other gospels are exactly the same way—they zoom through his earthly ministry, sometimes skipping over as much as a year at a time, then slow way down in his final week, covering it in day-by-day detail, then they slow down even more and give hour by hour detail at the end. These are not typical biographies. There is nothing like them in ancient literature. Mark invented a whole new genre of writing—the gospel genre. The gospels are mainly explanations of the importance of the cross.
The Reason for Jesus’ Death
And with that in mind, it’s fascinating to me that Mark doesn’t reveal the purpose of the cross until here at the end of ch.10. A couple chapters earlier he used the term “must”—he must suffer and die. That hinted at the fact that there was a purpose, but this is the first time Jesus has given any indication of what that purpose was. And not only is this the first mention of it; it’s the only mention. This lone verse—in fact, really just one, single word. A whole book about the fact that Jesus had to die; one word about the reason—what he was accomplishing in his death.
One way to emphasize something is to say it over and over a bunch of different ways. Another way to emphasize something is to say it once, so it stands as a single, glittering jewel set a backdrop of contextual significance so your eyes can’t really go anywhere else and just fix on that one, marvelous truth. So we’re about to see Jesus, in a single word, summarize the message of the entire NT.
Theology in an Illustration
And it comes at the tail end of an illustration. It’s not like back in ch.8 where Jesus had this really important doctrine to explain, and so he sat down, took the posture of formal instruction, and delivered the teaching. No, here he’s actually talking about something else. He’s teaching his disciples how to pursue true greatness and how to handle their leadership the right way—be a servant, don’t lord it over people. And right at the end of his explanation, he throws in this little illustration that lands like an atomic bomb of theology that explodes into the whole rest of the NT. Mark 10:45 is one of the most treasured verses in the entire Bible. It’s one of the most important statements on the nature of the atonement. One of the most studied verses in the book of Mark. And Jesus just throws it out there at the end as an illustration of his point.
This is typical of the way doctrine is revealed in the NT. Some of the richest, most profound theological truths are given to us, not in a context of “Here, let me teach you some theology,” but rather in contexts like this. “Here’s how I want you to live. And one reason why you should live this way is because Jesus did this …” then he drops a theological nuclear bomb. We see the same thing in Philippians 2—the most instructive passage in the whole Bible on the doctrine of the incarnation—God taking on human flesh. Many doctoral dissertations and books have been written on the theological implications of the statement, “Jesus emptied himself.” But the context there was the same as here. Paul’s saying, “I want you to live in humility and serve one another. Do that because, after all, Jesus, being in the very form of God emptied himself and took on the form of a servant …”
Fighting Over Unity
And here’s what’s ironic—both Philippians 2 and this verse, Mark 10:45, have become the subject of endless fighting and arguing among theologians about the implications for systematic theology. Here in Mark 10:45, the arguments are about the nature of the atonement, which I’ll get into in a minute, and whole churches and denominations divide over this verse. Brothers and sisters have separated fellowship over the interpretation of this verse. But in the context, what is the purpose of the verse? Jesus said these words in a context where the disciples were fighting, and he was bringing about unity through humility. These words are meant to unify us, and instead, many theology buffs use it as a battle axe to bludgeon brothers and sisters in Christ they disagree with.
Okay, so with all that as introduction, let’s take a look at this amazing verse—Mark 10:45. I’ll start back in v.42 so we can remember the context. James and John just tried to make a move on the 1 and 2 spots in the kingdom.
The other 10 find out about it and get mad at James and John, and so …
Mark 10:42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The Suffering Servant Son of Man
Do you remember when I told you the outline of the book of Mark is that it divides into two parts? The first half of the book focuses on who Jesus is. The second half, on what he came to do. Verse 45 sums up both of those in an amazing way. First, who is Jesus?
Suffering Servant
The way Jesus described his suffering in the previous paragraph points us, once again, to the book of Isaiah.
Mark 10:33 "We are going up to Jerusalem," he said, "and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise."
Isaiah 50:6 says the suffering servant will mocked and spit upon. Isaiah 53:8 says he will be killed. Isaiah 53:11 says after he dies he will see the light of life (so he’ll rise from the dead). So Jesus is identifying himself as the suffering servant of Isaiah who will bear the sins of the people.
But then look at what he calls himself in v.45—the son of man. That’s the highest, most exalted messianic title there is. The Son of Man is the one who, in Daniel 7:14 was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
The most glorious, exalted being in the universe made himself a lowly, suffering servant.
Ransom
That’s who Jesus is; what did he come to do?
45 … to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
What does it mean that Jesus gave his life as a ransom? When I said he summarizes the whole NT in a single word—that’s the word. Ransom. We don’t really use that English word, except to refer to a rabnsom demand in a kidnapping situation. The Greek word translated ransom refers to any price that is paid to secure someone’s freedom or release from trouble or captivity. So it’s not just kidnapping situations. The OT background begins in Exodus 6.
Exodus 6:6 "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will ransom you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.
God says, “I’m going to pay the price necessary to free you from slavery in Egypt.” And for the whole rest of the Bible, that stands as the model of how God rescues his people spiritually.
So what would the disciples hear when Jesus said this? How would they have understood the purpose of Jesus’ death? They don’t have the book of Romans yet, and Jesus gives no explanation here. He just drops this comment about how the reason for his death will be to serve as a ransom for many. So you’re one of the 12, you hear Jesus say this, and afterward you’re talking it over with one of the guys. “Hey Philip, what do you make of that—a ransom for many?”
“Well, it sounds like many—some large group of people—are in bondage, or some kind of real trouble. And Jesus’ suffering, humiliation, and death will secure release for those people.”
“Who? Who are the people?”
“Not sure. Although—one thing comes to mind. He said this is why he came, right? He came as a ransom to rescue many. I remember one other time when Jesus told us why he came into this world. Remember a couple years ago, right after he called Matthew and we were having dinner at his house with a bunch of his friends? The Pharisees had their britches in a bunch over the fact that Jesus was eating with a bunch of tax collectors and sinners—do you remember what he told them about why he came?”
“Oh, yeah. He said ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
“Yeah. So if he came into this world to call spiritually sick people and sinners, and he came into this world to give his life as a ransom to rescue many—the ‘many’ must be the sinners. Jesus is going to rescue a whole lot of tax collectors and sinners and spiritually sick people out of their bad situation, and doing that is going to cost Jesus his life.”
Now, obviously the disciples didn’t go that far in their reasoning because they had already ruled out the whole idea of Jesus dying, so whenever he talked about dying they just got really confused. But if they had been willing to accept what he was saying—that’s what they could have figured out with the information they had at the time.
So that’s the basic idea of ransom. But how would it happen? How will Jesus’ death rescue many sinners from their bondage to sin? That’s where we get into the controversy. But this is so close to the core of the gospel, that it’s really important we have a very strong handle on what Jesus meant here, so I wanted to devote a whole message just to this.
Substitutionary
One of the debates is over the word for. When he said he would give his life as a ransom for many, that word translated “for” is the Greek word anti which normally means in place of. The first time that word appears in the NT is in Matthew 2.
Matthew 2:22 … Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod.
That’s the normal meaning of the preposition anti. The way Jesus uses the word here is a lot like the way he used it in Matthew 5:38—an eye anti an eye and a tooth anti a tooth. Your eye is the price for their eye; your tooth is the price for their tooth. Here Jesus said he came to give his life as a ransom as the price for the lives of many.
This answers the question Jesus asked back in ch.8—"What can a man give in exchange for his soul?” What is the price to free a soul? Nothing less than the very life of the Son of God.
Penal
So why is that controversial? It’s controversial because some people don’t like the idea of God requiring the life of his Son in order to secure our forgiveness. They call it divine child abuse. They say it makes God look like some primitive, angry deity who can only be appeased by death. And instead we should think of God as being only soft and friendly and harmless, never punishing evil in any way, never getting angry, never bringing justice. They say God should just forgive us as an act of his will without anybody paying any kind of price. They say a God who would require death for sin is a terrible God.
I can’t relate to that argument. From my point of view, a god who didn’t carry out justice would be a terrible god. A deity who just winked at sin would be evil. There was a woman in the news the other day who didn’t know what to do with her 6 year old grandson during the lockdown, so she locked him in a shed for 2 months, until she got caught. She gave him food, gave him plastic bags to use for going to the bathroom, and periodically just hosed him off with her garden hose. 6 years old, locked in a shed for 2 months because Grandma can’t be bothered. And you know that’s just one of thousands and thousands of cases of child abuse. You think of the sex traffickers who kidnap young girls, beat them, then sell them into prostitution where they are raped 50 times a day for years and years. If there’s no punishment for those people—no justice—I can’t imagine worshipping a god like that.
Not only that, but think of how unjust and cruel God would be if Jesus’ death wasn’t in our place and wasn’t punishment for our sin. If not for sin, why did he suffer and die? Why would a father do that to his son?
Isaiah 53:10 It was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.
Acts 4:27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
It was God who made the decision that Jesus would suffer and die. Jesus was innocent. If it wasn’t as a sacrifice for our sin, then it was just the greatest miscarriage of justice in all human history. Talk about child abuse and cruelty—to kill your son on a cross for no good reason?
So that’s my point of view—if Jesus’ death wasn’t in our place to pay for our sin, then God would be unjust in leaving sin unpunished and he would be unjust in killing his own Son for no good reason. That’s my point of view, but neither my point of view nor their point of view matters. The only thing that matter is what God tells us is true, and he tells us that justice is part of his nature, it is good, it is essential, and injustice is evil. Justice is so important to God, that it was worth the sacrifice of his own Son to bring it about.
Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption (that’s our same word ransom with a preposition on the front—that which ransoms from) that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement (that word means to appease or satisfy God’s wrath), through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished--26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Why did Jesus die? Because for thousands of years before Jesus, God the Father had been forgiving sins—showing mercy, showing kindness, and letting sinners off the hook. So for thousands of years it looked like God was unjust, letting evil go unpunished. And showing his justice was so important, it was worth the death of his Son.
Example?
Now, if you want the seminary jargon for all that, the two key words are substitutionary and penal. I believe in the substitutionary, penal view of the atonement. Substitutionary means Jesus died in my place, and penal means what Jesus suffered was a penalty. It was the legal punishment for our sin.
It used to be just liberals who objected to that, but now there are scholars within evangelicalism who are rejecting it. And their argument is usually this: Jesus didn’t die as a punishment from God. He died as an example for us, that’s all.
My question is, example of what? I could maybe buy that theory if Jesus died by jumping in front of a bullet for someone or diving on a hand grenade. That would be a good example. But what’s so noble about dying for claiming to be God? How is that an example for me to follow? How am I going to be freed from my bondage to sin by following that example?
If I said “I love you so much, I’m going to die for you,” and then I went out and committed suicide, how would that help you? I wouldn’t be dying for you; I’d just be dying.
Limited or Unlimited?
An even bigger debate about the atonement is over whether it is limited or unlimited—that is, did Jesus die for the whole world or just for the elect? The TULIP acronym used to describe Calvinism, the “L” stands for “limited atonement.” It’s probably the most controversial of the traditional 5 points (if you talk to a 4-point Calvinist, this is usually the point they reject). Those who argue for unlimited atonement point to verses like John 3:16—Jesus died for the whole world.
Those who argue for limited atonement point to passages like John 10, which emphasize the fact that Jesus gave his life specifically for his sheep. Although my experience has been that most advocates of limited atonement don’t argue from specific Bible verses as much as from logical deduction. (Which I find common among Calvinists) They say, “If Jesus paid for everyone’s sins, then it would be double jeopardy for unbelievers to go to hell and pay for them again.” Or they say, “If Jesus paid for everyone’s sins, then everyone would be saved, because as soon as Jesus dies for your sins, you’re saved.”
Those kinds of arguments fail because the premise is wrong. First, regarding double jeopardy, it’s not double jeopardy for a sinner to be punished for his own sin if Jesus’ payment was never credited to his account. Jesus paid the price 2000 years ago, but it doesn’t apply to an individual’s account until the moment that person believes. You’re not saved just because Jesus died for your sins—even if you’re one of the elect. And that’s very easy to prove.
Ephesians 2:3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-- it is by grace you have been saved.
That passage is clearly talking about the elect—people who have been made alive in Christ. And yet, even though they were elect, prior to their conversion they were objects of God’s wrath. Sometimes people get so carried away with their Calvinism and human reasoning about the doctrine of election that they think conversion is really just a formality. You were saved from the moment Jesus chose to die for your sins, he knew you would be saved all along, and so you never really were on your way to hell. That’s pure human wisdom and a total contradiction of what the Bible says. Every one of us was on the way to hell before we believed, which means Jesus dying for your sins is not enough to save you. In order to be saved, his payment of the price has to be applied to your account, and that doesn’t happen until you believe.
As for whether Jesus died for the elect or died for the whole world, there’s truth on both sides. Here’s how I would say it (and I think a lot of people on both sides would agree with this statement): Jesus died for the everyone in one sense, but there is an even greater way in which he gave his life for his own people. And that’s exactly what the Bible says.
1 Timothy 4:10 … we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.
1 John 2:2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
Why are there passages like John 10 that emphasize the fact that Jesus died for the church? Not because his death was only for them, but because his death was “especially” for them. He gave his life for us in a special way.
And why are there passages that talk about Jesus dying for the whole world? Because the offer of salvation goes to the whole world, and it’s a legit offer. It’s because God gave his Son for the whole world that he can go on to say, in John 3, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. The offer can legitimately be given to everyone because Jesus died for everyone.
Even the most strident Calvinists will typically admit that God’s common grace—his kindness to all of man kind in making the sun rise on all humanity every morning—even gifts like that had to be purchased by Christ’s death on the cross. So at least in that sense Jesus died for all.
So all the limited vs. unlimited debate does is take something that we really don’t disagree on that much, and couch it in terms that make it sound like we strongly disagree. That happens frequently in theological debates. One side screams a bunch of their catch phrases, the other side screams theirs, but if you drill down to what each side means by what those phrases, very often there isn’t even that much disagreement because they are talking about different things. That’s why it’s so much better to discuss specific passages of Scripture rather than whether this “ism” or that “ism” is right.
Healing
Okay, one final controversy about the atonement. Is there healing in the atonement? When Jesus died, did he only die to save us from our sins? Or did he also die to save us from sickness and disease? One side points to Isaiah 53:5 (“By his wounds we are healed”) and says, “See, Jesus’ was wounded not just to save us from sin, but also so we could be healed.” The other side says, “No, that’s talking about spiritual healing, not physical.”
So, is there physical healing in the atonement? My answer to that is, “Yes, but the question isn’t whether salvation includes physical healing, but when do we get that healing?” Of course part of the promise of salvation is that we will be delivered from sickness and sorrow and disease and death. But when? Now, in this life? Or in heaven?
What about deliverance from sin? Do we have that now? Somewhat. There is some deliverance from sin here and now in this life. But is there total deliverance? Not until we get to heaven.
And it’s the same with physical deliverance. We get some taste of it now, but mostly that’s a promise that will be fulfilled in heaven. If it were a promise to be fulfilled completely in this life, Christians wouldn’t die. But we all die—the Apostles died, all the greatest men and women of faith throughout history—all died. So yes, there is healing in the atonement, but we only enjoy that in a partial way in this life.
