The Suffering Savior

MEMORY VERSE: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” —Isaiah 53:5

MARK 8:27-38

THE apostles, as well as the vast majority of the Jews, believed that the Messiah would be a man accomplished in the ways of the world, and that God would give him the wisdom and power to deliver them from Roman bondage and to establish the long-expected kingdom. The apostles believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore when he “began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31), Peter especially objected. This was contrary to all that he and the apostles had been taught.

But after these things had been accomplished in Jesus, and on the third day after his death on the cross, two of his disciples were on their way to Emmaus, discussing the momentous events of the past three days, when a stranger joined them and began to talk with them. (Luke 24:13-17) And after the events had been recounted to the stranger (who was the risen Lord) he said, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”—Luke 24:25-27

We do not know the scriptures that Jesus used in his discussion with the two disciples, but we can be quite sure that one of them was Deuteronomy 18:15-19. In this text the Prophet was God and the mouthpiece was Moses. The prophecy predicted that God would raise up a Prophet like unto Moses and that God would put his words into the mouth of the Prophet, and that he would speak all that he commanded. “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.”—vs. 19

Moses was the mediator between God and the Jewish nation under the Law Covenant; the foretold Prophet was to be the Mediator of the New Covenant, and under this New Covenant relationship God’s laws will have to be obeyed in order for anyone to gain life and receive its promised blessings.—Deut. 18:19

But the Scriptures clearly teach that this promised Messiah must first suffer and then come into his glory. Our memory selection reads, “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isa. 53:5) And continuing in the 10th verse the prophet says, “He hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.”

The first advent of Jesus was primarily for the purpose of giving his life as a ransom for Adam. (I Tim. 2:5,6; Heb. 2:16,9; Mark 10:45; I John 2:2; I Pet. 1:18,19) He came to die, and this fact was well understood by Jesus. In Mark 10:45 Jesus says, “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” But it was also necessary that in the process of laying his life down in “ministering” to the apostles, the disciples, and the Jewish nation, he be found faithful under trying and difficult circumstances. In Hebrews 5:8 the Apostle Paul says, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” And again in Hebrews 12:2,3, “Looking unto Jesus … who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. … For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.”

These experiences were for the purpose of developing in Jesus a maturity of mind that could be developed in no other way, and at the same time provided a testing under circumstances that would prove his loyalty under any conditions throughout eternity.

Because of the faithfulness of Jesus in suffering and death, God was able to raise him out from death and exalt him to the divine nature to sit on David’s throne in the promised kingdom.—I Chron. 17:11-15

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