Think Wink.

In the next three posts, I want to examine how the evangelist Mark preaches through his Gospel writing that Christ is Christos and υἱὸς θεοῦ but only Mark 14:61-62 is where Jesus explicitly claims this title. Mark 1:1 is where Mark claims Jesus to be the Christ and the Son of God. By Mark 8:29-30 he is hoping that the reader will have confessed with Peter that Jesus was Christ and by Mark 15:39 he is hoping that the reader will confess with the Roman centurion that Jesus is the Son of God. But how does he do this when Jesus is very silent in his Gospel about this. In Mark 8:31 Jesus pushes his disciples from the title of Christ and towards the title of the Son of Man. He avoids being called or calling himself Christ and the Son of God openly in public. So how does Mark convey that Jesus is Christ and the Son of God with only three explicit statements (In one he does not allow the disciples to continue to call him by this title; the second he dies immediately after; in the third he immediately uses the title to pronounce judgment upon the Jewish leadership and Judaism)? He does so by drawing upon Old Testament imagery of offices that were anointed in order to perform them. The offices are obvious to us: Prophet, Priest, and King. In this post, I will look at how the office of King is “anointed” and how Christ is presented as King.

As I stated in the introduction, only in Mark 14:61-62 does Jesus actually explicitly state that he is Christos. So to provide his readers with evidence that Jesus is the Christ while maintaining the Messianic Secret, he uses the life and actions of Jesus to illustrate that he is the long anticipated King of the Jews. The question is how is the King of the Jews the Messiah and how does Mark demonstrate this?

First, how is it that the King is Messiah? We read in 1 Samuel 10:1,

Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, “Has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the Lord and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies. And this shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you to be prince over his heritage.

The verb in this text that the ESV translates as “anointed” is the Hebrew verb mashach. It literally means to smear or rub with oil or liquid, as one can see in this verse. The noun cognate is the Hebrew term mashiyach which means “anointed.” The be the king of Israel is to be mashiyach because the person who becomes King is mashach by God. Hence if Mark can demonstrate Jesus as a king and the Lord of the Kingdom God has appointed him, he has established that Jesus is Mashiyach.

Now Mark does this in two ways. First can be seen in the divine pronouncement at Jesus’ baptism and the second can be seen in the message Jesus preached and the works he did in Galilee. First let us look at the divine pronouncement at Jesus baptism in Mark 1:11 where Mark records for us,

And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

The Father’s pronouncement is a combination of two Old Testament texts, Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1. The context of Psalm 2:7 is of the King whom Yahweh will make a ruler over the nations and this King will rule them with a rod of iron. This King Yahweh has declared to be his beloved Son. So when Mark’s readers see this pronouncement and look back at Psalm 2:7 to see what it means to be God’s Son, they will see him as the King of the Jews, the King of kings and the Lord of lords who rules all of the nations. Jesus is the King and the King of the Jews is Mashiyach.

But pressing this further, look at Jesus’ ministry in Galilee (which is from Mark 1:14-8:30 for in Mark 8:31-16:8 Mark is moving Jesus to Jerusalem to be crucified and so he shifts his focus to Jesus’ ministry of suffering at the hands of Herod, Pilate, and the Jews). Mark opens this section with Jesus’ first words of Mark’s work in Mark 1:14-15,

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Jesus, fleeing Herod’s hostility to the gospel that John preached, moved into Galilee to preach τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ. The message that he preached was that of ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, the kingdom of God. He preaches a kingdom (ἡ βασιλεία) that is not a kingdom of boundary (that is not one that is restrained by territory though this is not excluded from the term) but of rule, namely of God and his anointed King. Then in the ensuing ministry we see the sovereign power of Jesus being displayed. In Mark 1:21-28 we see that Jesus taught with ἐξουσία, authority and that when the demon tried to use Jesus name as the Holy One of God, he rebuked the spirit and commanded him to leave the person he oppressed; Jesus is Lord over the demons. In Mark 1:41-45 Jesus demonstrates his sovereignty over disease and the body by healing the leper. In Mark 2:1-11 Jesus shows that he is Lord by healing the paralytic and then forgiving the man’s sin. In Mark 2:23-27 Jesus is shown to be Lord over the Sabbath. We see Jesus as Lord over nature in Mark 4:35-41 when he stills the storm. And Jesus shows himself Lord over death when he brings Jairus’ daughter back to life in Mark 5:21-43. But this ministry in Galilee, these miracles, are in the context of Jesus preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and that he is the Lord of that kingdom. Hence Mark is showing that Jesus the Lord of God’s kingdom. He is God’s king and therefore he is Mashiyach.

Consequently, as I was preparing this post, I was reminded of several conversations recently at Theology for the Masses about God’s defining characteristic being love. I advocate a balanced view because one can overemphasize one attribute and cause the rest to become out of focus and therefore obscure one view of God and that person cannot worship the true God, but only that attribute. The author of one post was defending God’s love as the definitive attribute of God and one of his proofs for this was that the incarnation of Jesus was an act of love and that Jesus’ life is characterized by love. But in his Galilean ministry, we see that these two are intricately and beautifully woven together. In exercising and demonstrating his sovereignty, Jesus acted in love towards the demoniacs and sick and lame and mute and blind. By loving these people, Jesus clearly demonstrates his sovereignty over all the earth. They cannot be separated and one cannot be stressed over the other. They are both at the center of Jesus actions. To view these miracles through only the lens of one attribute is to miss the fullness of Jesus ministry. Jesus was showing God’s unmerited and unwavering love for the downcast and for those who could not help themselves. God loves to love those who are in need. But Jesus ministry is also demonstrating that Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of God, ὁ βασιλεὺς τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ. Both are the central focus of Jesus’ ministry.

Therefore I exhort all my readers, you precious few, do not minimize the actions of Jesus to your theological bent. I am a Calvinist but I don’t see Jesus’ actions and ministry through the lens of God’s sovereignty. I look at his ministry through the lens of all of attributes of God. I want God not to be out of focus and thus distort my view of Christ. I want to see Christ clearly. I don’t want to be like the blind man in Mark 8:22-26 after the first healing, I want to be like the blind man after the second healing. Do not cloud your vision of God, keep your eyes focus on all of God. View all of his excellencies for Peter exhorts us in 1 Peter 2:9 to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We cannot do that unless we see all of the excellencies of God in Jesus Christ, not just one.

Related posts:

Testifying without Testifying Part 3 of 3

Testifying without Testifying Part 2 of 3

Mark’s King Jesus