The Cross of Jesus, the christ
Mark 15:1-20
How was it that a cult inspired by the execution of an obscure criminal in a long-vanished empire came to exercise such a transformative and enduring influence on the world?
— Tom Holland
Main Idea: The cross of Jesus, the Christ, is the hinge of history and your story.
In the Christian theology of history, the death of Christ is the central point of history; here all roads of the past converge; hence all the roads of the future diverge.
— Bishop Stephen Neill
It is self-evident that everyone involved with what is happening here - except for Jesus - is oblivious to what is really going on.
Equally self-evident in the scope of the Bible’s storyline, what is really going on here is vastly more significant than what is happening, even though what is happening here is horrifying and shocking.
I. What is happening here?
A conspiracy hatched by Judaism’s elite is playing out.
A gross miscarriage of justice is carried out.
Everything Jesus foretold would happen to him is happening to him!
This is utterly astounding on two levels:
First, Jesus knew in graphic detail exactly what was going to happen to Him in Jerusalem days and months before it actually happened and he not only let it happen, but willingly stepped into it.
Second, how did he know? It is abundantly clear that everyone else in this story is being carried along by what is happening. And it is becoming clearer that Jesus is actually choreographing what is going on. As you read the other Gospel accounts, especially John’s, you cannot escape the fact that Jesus was both the architect of his execution and the victim of his execution.
II. What is really going on here?
Here is how the apostle Paul puts it when relaying the bigger story to believers in Corinth: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures…”
In other words, here is what is really going on in this chapter of Mark: Christ is dying for our sins according to the Scriptures.
Who is this man? - He is the Christ. That means Jesus is the One to whom all of the major promises made by God since the Fall have been pointing to.
By the time the Old Testament comes to an end the characteristics and conduct of the Messiah are so clear, that any charlatan could easily be exposed and only the true Messiah would truly fit the bill.
How did Jesus know what would happen to him? - the Scriptures! The early promises in the Bible point to it. The Son born to the woman would crush the snakes head, but in the process his heal would be bruised.
The entire Jewish system of worship was built around bulls and goats, sheep and doves dying in the place of penitent worshippers. Its high and holy days, such as Passover and the Day of Atonement - focused entirely on an innocent animal covering the sins of the guilty ones and standing between them and death.
It is not at all hard to imagine that Jesus, acquainted with the Scriptures and fully aware of who he truly was, knew precisely what was going to happen to him.
Here is the glory of Jesus, the Christ, our Savior. He so fully loved the LORD His God that he willingly stepped into his role so that the Father’s will of saving the world could be accomplished. Not only that, but Jesus so fully loved us, with whom he came to be “neighbor” that he laid down his life for us!
In the events Mark records in this passage of Scripture, no one wants Jesus. But Jesus wants them. So Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.
