TWELVE
THE RANSOM
Jesus does not leave any doubt about what he came to do: He came to die. He tells his disciples repeatedly that this is the case. In fact, by the time of the incident that Mark records below, Jesus has already predicted his death twice: first in Mark chapter 8 after Peter had said, “You are the Christ”:
[Jesus] then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this. . . .
(Mark 8:31–32)
Then again in chapter 9:
Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”
(Mark 9:30–31)
But just in case the disciples (or we) have missed it, Jesus repeats it in chapter 10:
They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. “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, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.”
(Mark 10:32–34)
This time, Jesus gives us more details about his death than he had previously. For the first time, we are told that his death will be in Jerusalem, and that both Jews and Gentiles will reject him. Chapter 8 speaks only of the Jewish religious leaders, and 9 speaks more generally about being delivered into the hands of “men.” In chapter 8 he had said he would be “rejected” by the priests and scribes, but now he reveals that they will “condemn him to death.” This legal term indicates that he will be tried and executed within the criminal justice system. His depiction of his final days also becomes more graphic and violent: They will “mock . . . spit . . . flog” him.
Jesus predicted his death three times in just three chapters—he knew his death was not incidental to his mission. Rather, it was absolutely central to both his identity and his purpose on earth. But the major advance in Mark 10 is that, for the first time, Jesus tells us not only that he will die but why he will do so:
“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.”
(Mark 10:45)
Jesus Christ came not to be served but to die, to give his life. That sets him apart from the founder of every other major religion. Their purpose was to live and be an example; Jesus’s purpose was to die and be a sacrifice.
Jesus’s choice of the word come is a strong giveaway that he existed before he was born: He came into the world. By saying “did not come to be served,” he assumes that he had every right to expect to be honored and served when he came, though he did not exercise that privilege.
The final phrase, “to give his life as a ransom for many,” sums up the reason why he has to die. Jesus came to be a substitutionary sacrifice. Consider the little preposition for in the phrase “a ransom for many.” In Greek it’s the word anti, which means “instead of,” “in place of,” “substitute.” What about ransom? In English we don’t even use that word nowadays except in relation to kidnapping. But here it translates a Greek word, lutron, that meant “to buy the freedom of a slave or a prisoner.” The ransomer would make a huge sacrificial payment that matched the value, or paid the debt of the slave or the prisoner in order to procure his or her freedom.
Jesus came to pay that kind of ransom. But since the slavery he is dealing with is of a cosmic kind—that is, cosmic evil—it required a cosmic payment. Jesus is saying, “I will pay the ransom that you couldn’t possibly pay, and it will procure your freedom.” The payment is Jesus’s death on the cross.
A Willing Sacrifice
This will be hard for you if you’re among those who struggle with the Christian teaching about the cross. It’s natural to assume that the Bible is giving us one more example of those ancient, primitive, bloodthirsty gods worshiped by those ancient, primitive, bloodthirsty societies. In The Iliad by Homer, for example, Agamemnon didn’t get fair winds to Troy until he sacrificed his daughter. That appeased the wrath of the gods, and then they let him go to Troy. What Jesus says in Mark may seem to be just another variation on that theme: a savage ancient culture, ruled over by an irritable god, demanding blood sacrifices for the release of innocent slaves and prisoners.
But that’s not what’s going on here at all. And why not, you may say? If God is really a loving God, why doesn’t he just forgive everybody? Why did Jesus have to go through suffering into death? Why did he have to be a ransom?
Here’s the beginning of an answer: Jesus didn’t have to die despite God’s love; he had to die because of God’s love. And it had to be this way because all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice.
Think about it. If you love a person whose life is all put together and has no major needs, it costs you nothing. It’s delightful. There are probably four or five people like that where you live. You ought to find them and become their friend. But if you ever try to love somebody who has needs, someone who is in trouble or who is persecuted or emotionally wounded, it’s going to cost you. You can’t love them without taking a hit yourself. A transfer of some kind is required, so that somehow their troubles, their problems, transfer to you.
There are a lot of wounded people out there. They are emotionally sinking, they’re hurting, and they desperately need to be loved. And when they are with you, you want to look at your watch and make a graceful exit, because listening to them with all their problems can be grueling. It can be exhausting to be a friend to an emotionally damaged person. The only way they’re going to start filling up emotionally is if somebody loves them, and the only way to love them is to let yourself be emotionally drained. Some of your fullness is going to have to go into them, and you have to empty out to some degree. If you hold on to your emotional comfort and simply avoid those people, they will sink. The only way to love them is through substitutionary sacrifice.
Or think of an even more dramatic example—parenting. When you have children, they’re in a state of dependency. They have so many needs; they can’t stand on their own. And they will not just grow out of their dependency automatically. The only way that your children will grow beyond their dependency into self-sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for twenty years or so. When they are young, for example, you’ve got to read to them and read to them—otherwise they won’t develop intellectually. Lots of their books will be boring to you. And you have to listen to your children, and keep listening as they say all kinds of things that make for less than scintillating conversation.
And then there’s dressing, bathing, feeding, and teaching them to do these things for themselves. Furthermore, children need about five affirmations for every criticism they hear from you. Unless you sacrifice much of your freedom and a good bit of your time, your children will not grow up healthy and equipped to function. Unfortunately, there are plenty of parents who just won’t do it. They won’t disrupt their lives that much; they won’t pour themselves into their children. They won’t make the sacrifice. And their kids grow up physically, but they’re still children emotionally—needy, vulnerable, and dependent. Think about it this way: You can make the sacrifice, or they’re going to make the sacrifice. It’s them or you. Either you suffer temporarily and in a redemptive way, or they’re going to suffer tragically, in a wasteful and destructive way. It’s at least partly up to you.
All real, life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice.
Remember Lily Potter, the mother of Harry Potter? In the first book of the series, the evil Lord Voldemort tries to kill Harry, but he can’t touch him. When the Voldemort-possessed villain tries to lay hands on Harry, he experiences agonizing pain, and so he is thwarted. Harry later goes to Dumbledore, his mentor, and asks, “Why couldn’t he touch me?” Dumbledore replies that “Your mother died to save you. . . . love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign. . . . [but] to have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever.”51 Why is Dumbledore’s statement so moving? Because we know from experience, from the mundane to the dramatic, that sacrifice is at the heart of real love. And we know that anybody who has ever done anything that made a difference for us—a parent, a teacher, a mentor, a friend, a spouse—sacrificed in some way, stepped in and accepted some hardship so that we would not get hit with it ourselves.
Therefore it makes sense that a God who is more loving than you and I, a God who comes into the world to deal with the ultimate evil, the ultimate sin, would have to make a substitutionary sacrifice. Even we flawed human beings know that you can’t just overlook evil. It can’t be dealt with, removed, or healed just by saying, “Forget it.” It must be paid for, and dealing with it is costly. How much more should we expect that God could not just shrug off evil? The debt had to be paid. But he was so incredibly loving that he was willing to die in order to do it himself.
That’s where the God of the Bible is most radically different from the primitive gods of old. The ancients understood the idea of the wrath of God, they understood the idea of justice, the idea of a debt and a necessary punishment, but they had no idea that God would come and pay it himself. The cross is the self-substitution of God. That possibility would not have entered into Homer’s imagination in a million years, let alone the imagination of Jesus’s disciples.
The only way that Jesus could redeem us was to give his life as a ransom. God couldn’t just say, “I forgive everybody.” In the creation, God could say, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God could say, “Let there be vegetation,” and there was vegetation. God could say, “Let there be sun, moon, and stars,” and there were sun, moon, and stars (Genesis 1). But he couldn’t just say, “Let there be forgiveness.” That’s simply not the way forgiveness works.
God created the world in an instant, and it was a beautiful process. He re-created the world on the cross—and it was a horrible process. That’s how it works. Love that really changes things and redeems things is always a substitutionary sacrifice.
C. S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe puts it like this: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”52
A Humble Sacrifice
You would think that by this time the disciples would have grasped the reason Jesus had come and the reason he was going to suffer and die. After all, he’d told them enough times—and Mark records that “He spoke plainly about this.” But in the following story it becomes clear that such is not the case. James and John and the other people following Jesus were hearing for at least the third time about his impending and necessary death. Immediately these two disciples have a request for Jesus:
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
(Mark 10:35–36)
James and John say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” That’s a great way to start a prayer, don’t you think? “Oh Lord, I have a humble request, and I want you to do exactly what I say.” Jesus puts up with them graciously—that’s the way he was. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asks. He doesn’t say, “Um, would you care to start over?” Or “How dare you talk to me like that? Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who you are?” He simply says, “What do you want?”
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
(Mark 10:37–38)
The brothers propose, “Let one of us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” What are they thinking of? To them, “in your glory” means “when you are seated on your throne,” in which case the people on the right and the left are like the prime minister and the chief of staff. John and James are saying, “When you take power, we would like the top places in your cabinet.” Here’s the irony of their request. What was Jesus’s moment of greatest glory? Where does Jesus most show forth the glory of God’s justice? And where does he reveal most profoundly the glory of God’s love? On the cross.
When Jesus is at the actual moment of his greatest glory, there will be somebody on the right and the left, but they will be criminals being crucified. Jesus says to John and James: You have no idea what you’re asking.
He speaks to them of the cup and the baptism. In the Hebrew Scriptures cup is almost always a metaphor for the just judgment of God against evil. Similarly Jesus uses the word baptism in the older sense of an overwhelming experience, an immersion. Jesus is saying, “I am paying that ransom. I am going to drink that cup. I am going to bridge that gap. I will take the just judgment on all human evil. I will take the overwhelming experience of being condemned so that you can be free from all condemnation.” But they don’t get it. The story continues:
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” “We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.” When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 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. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 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.”
(Mark 10:38–45)
For the disciples, this is yet another lesson on substitutionary sacrifice. But when we read this, we’re not supposed to say, “How can these fools keep missing it?” We’re supposed to be saying, “What are we missing right now?”
Richard Hays, a New Testament scholar, has the following observation about this section of the Gospel of Mark:
Mark’s vision of the moral life is profoundly ironic. Because God’s manner of revelation is characterized by hiddenness, reversal, and surprise, those who follow Jesus find themselves repeatedly failing to understand the will of God . . . [therefore] there can be no place for smugness or dogmatism. . . . If our sensibilities are formed by this narrative, we will learn not to take ourselves too seriously; we will be very self-critical and receptive to unexpected manifestations of God’s love and power.53
When you see how John and James respond, and you realize how hard it is for anybody to take in the magnitude of what the cross really means, you will be on your way to attaining the gift of humility. At some level, your normal assumptions, your pride and your egotistical way of thinking, are blinding you to the truth. One prime example of this is worry. Naturally, if you love people, you’re going to worry about them. But do you know where constant worry comes from? It’s rooted in an arrogance that assumes, I know the way my life has to go, and God’s not getting it right. Real humility means to relax. Real humility means to laugh at yourself. Real humility means to be self-critical. The cross brings that kind of humility into our lives. When Jesus sees that his followers still don’t get what he came to do, he gathers them and says, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you.” Jesus is talking about how most people try to influence society, to get their way. They lord it over others. They seek power and control. If I have the power, if I have the wealth, the connections, then I can get my way.
When Jesus says “Not so with you,” what do you think he means? Is he saying we must withdraw and have nothing to do with society? No. Actually the principle that he’s laying out rather explicitly here was already laid out earlier, in the book of the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 29. The Israelite nation had been destroyed by the Babylonian empire, and many of the people had been taken by force to Babylon. What was their attitude supposed to be toward Babylonian society, in which they were exiles? They could have tried to just keep to themselves and have nothing to do with it. Or they could have tried to infiltrate Babylon and use guerrilla tactics to take power. But what did God say to them? In Jeremiah 29:7, God said, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” That is, I want you to seek the prosperity of Babylon. I want you to make it a great city to live in. I want you to serve your neighbors—even though their language is different and they don’t believe what you believe. And I don’t want you to do this merely out of a sense of duty. “Pray for it” is another way of saying “love it.” Love that city, pray for it, seek to make it a prosperous, peaceful city, the greatest place to live. If Babylon prospers through your service to it, you prosper, too.
“For you,” God says, “the route to gaining influence is not taking power. Influence gained through power and control doesn’t really change society; it doesn’t change hearts. I’m calling you to a totally different approach. Be so sacrificially loving that the people around you, who don’t believe what you believe, will soon be unable to imagine the place without you. They’ll trust you because they see that you’re not only out for yourself, but out for them, too. When they voluntarily begin to look up to you because of the attractiveness of your service and love, you’ll have real influence. It will be an influence given to you by others, not taken by you from others.” Who is the model for that way of gaining influence? It’s Jesus himself, of course. How did he respond to his enemies? He didn’t call down legions of angels to fight them. He died for their sins, and as he was dying he prayed for them. And if at the very heart of your worldview is a man dying for his enemies, then the way you’re going to win influence in society is through service rather than power and control.
Which may be more difficult than it looks. On January 7, 2007, the New York Times Magazine ran an interesting article called “Happiness 101.” It described positive psychology, a branch of psychology that seeks to take a scientific, empirical approach to what makes people happy. Researchers in this field have found that if you focus on doing and getting things that give you pleasure, it does not lead to happiness but produces what one researcher has dubbed “the hedonic treadmill.” You become addicted to pleasure, and your need for the pleasure fix keeps growing: You have to do more and more. You’re never satisfied, never really happy. According to the article, scientific studies have shown that the best way to increase your happiness is actually to do acts of selfless kindness, to pour yourself out for needy people. The main researcher’s goal was to show that “there are ways of living that (research shows) lead to better outcomes.” Some of these better outcomes were “close relationships and love,” “well-being,” and “meaning and purpose in life.”
The researcher pointed out that when you are leading an unselfish life of service to other people, it gives you a sense of meaning, of being useful and valuable, of having a life of significance. So naturally, he argued that you should live this way in order to achieve these “better outcomes.” In other words, he is saying, live a selfless life because it will make you happy—not because you ought to, or because it is moral to do so. In fact, the researcher said, “I never use the word morality.”
But you see, if I lead an unselfish life primarily to make myself happy, then I’m not leading an unselfish life. I’m not doing these acts of kindness for others; I’m ultimately doing them for myself. We are being encouraged, then, to live unselfish lives for selfish reasons, which doesn’t make sense.
So perhaps we should respond that the only way to live an unselfish life is to try to be moral people. But this doesn’t produce true unselfishness either. Several weeks before the “Happiness 101” article, the New York Times Magazine had published a piece by bioethicist Peter Singer about why billionaires ought to give their money away, and it included a section about “the religious impulse.” Singer noted that religious people give their money away because they feel they ought to, because then God will bless them and they’ll go to heaven. I did not agree with much of the article, but I liked that he pointed out that this is selfish. When you decide to give away your money to meet the needs of the poor so that you can go to heaven, you’re caught in the same paradox that the positive-psychology people are caught in. You want to be unselfish because there are benefits to you—in this case eternal benefits. But again, you are trying to live an unselfish life for selfish reasons, which will never work.
The preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards, in his book The Nature of True Virtue, addressed this a long time before Peter Singer. If you don’t believe the gospel of grace, says Edwards, if you believe you’re saved by your works, then you’ve never done anything for the love of others or for the sheer beauty of it; you’ve done it for yourself. You haven’t helped the proverbial little old lady across the street just for her sake—or in the end, for God’s sake. You’ve done it because then you can look at yourself in the mirror and know that you’re the kind of person who helps little old ladies across the street and you expect to go to heaven someday because of it. It’s all selfish; it will become drudgery, yet you’ll believe yourself superior to others.
How can we escape this self-referential trap and truly become unselfish? If secularism, psychology, and relativism on the one hand and religion and moralism on the other don’t actually give us what we need to be unselfish, what does? The answer is, we need to look somewhere else besides ourselves. We need to look at Jesus. If he is indeed a substitutionary sacrifice, if he has paid for our sins, if he has proved to our insecure, skittish little hearts that we are worth everything to him, then we have everything we need in him. It’s all a gift to us by grace. We don’t do good things in order to connect to God or to feel better about ourselves. What a meager upgrade to our self-image these good deeds would bring, compared with what we receive from understanding why Jesus died for us and how much he loves us. If you really understand the cross, you are blasted out into the world in joyful humility. Now you do not need to help people, but you want to help them, to resemble the One who did so much for you, to bring him delight. Whether you think they are worthy of your service doesn’t come into it. Only the gospel gives you a motivation for unselfish living that doesn’t rob you of the benefits of unselfishness even as you enact it.
Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, a German nobleman who was born into great power and privilege and lived from 1700 to 1760, was one of the founders of the Moravian Church. Over the years he spent his wealth down to practically zero doing good deeds, pouring himself out for others. Why? What happened that motivated him so radically? As a young man of nineteen, he was sent to visit the capital cities of Europe in order to complete his education. One day he found himself in the art gallery of Düsseldorf gazing at Domenico Feti’s Ecce homo, a portrait of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.54 This image of the suffering Lord was very moving to Zinzendorf. Underneath the painting the artist had penned an inscription, words that Jesus might say to any one of us: “All this I did for thee; what doest thou for me?”