Summing Up As we have seen, Jesus not only predicted his death, but also spoke of it as being necessary (e.g. Mark 8:31). Why? Why did Jesus think he needed to die? Jesus provides several different answers to this question. They include: Jesus believed that his death was the will of his Heavenly Father, so…

The Blood of the New Covenant As the Last Supper draws to a close, Jesus refers to the cup of wine as “my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24). This is an allusion to the story in Exodus 24, where the people of Israel endorsed God’s covenant. Then, having…

The Last Supper: Megalomania or Mission? In my last post I discussed Jesus’ statement that he came, as Son of Man, to give his life as “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Here we begin to grasp Jesus’ sense of destiny. He sees himself as the Son of Man (from Daniel 7) who fulfills the…

A Ransom for Many In my last post, I discussed the statement of Jesus: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). I talked about how this idea of the serving Son of Man was radically inconsistent with first-century…

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