“Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His works. We must next consider the end of His earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very centre of our faith, and everywhere you hear men speak of it; by it, too, no less than by His other acts, Christ is revealed as God and Son of God.”
Saint Athanasius, On The Incarnation (p. 17)
Jesus’ Impending Death
Even though Jesus had told his followers he was going to Jerusalem to die, they hadn’t been able to take it in. They may have assumed Jesus was speaking in another parable they couldn’t understand. From their Jewish perspective, the Messiah was a military conqueror, who would free them from foreign rulers once and for all. That revolution was just getting rolling; God would never allow Jesus to die.
Some of Jesus’ words about his coming death had been vague, and easily misunderstood, especially the statements recorded in John:
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
John 2:18-22 NIV
“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
John 12:7-8 NIV
“You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.
John 14:28-29 NIV
(See also John 12:31-32 and John 13:33)
At other times Jesus was unambiguous, but the disciples just couldn’t accept it. The first time was probably early during his ministry.
Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
Luke 9:21-22 NIV (also in Matthew 16:21-22 and Mark 8:31-33.)
And a little later, Jesus warned them a second time:
He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.
Mark 9:31-32 NIV (also in Matthew 17:22-23 and Luke 9:43-45.)
And a third time, as they were on their way to Jerusalem for Jesus’ final Passover:
Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”
Matthew 20:17-19 NIV (also in Mark 10:32-34 and Luke 18:31-34.)
The thought that Jesus would, or even could die made no sense to the disciples.
They had been with Jesus during his ministry for the past three years. They had been eyewitnesses to all of Jesus’ miracles and teaching. They knew his power over nature, his power over demons and disease, even over death. They had seen what the kingdom of God would be like, in a way no other people ever had. For Jesus to die was unthinkable; they expected their Messiah to summon the armies of heaven, free them from their foreign rulers, and set up the kingdom of God with Jesus as leader. It wouldn’t begin to make sense to them until much later, after Jesus’ resurrection.
When Jesus knew his time was very close, he didn’t sit his disciples down and explain it to them one more time, slowly and logically. Instead, he invited them to celebrate a final Passover Seder with him. Jesus was giving them, and us, a lens through which to interpret his death. In the process, he revealed much of the meaning held in the Bible’s symbolism.
We visited the first Passover in chapter 6, Pictures of Redemption in Living Parables. Pharoah had refused Moses’ requests to free the Israelites nine times already, even though each request was accompanied by a miracle that was increasingly painful to Pharoah and his people. This tenth request came with a warning that God’s Angel of Death would take every firstborn male in Egypt that night unless Pharoah set the Israelites free.
But God told Moses how the Israelites could be protected from the Angel of Death. Each family was to sacrifice a lamb in the doorway of their home, then paint its blood on each doorpost and the lintel. If you connect these points, it forms the shape of a cross. That night, all the Egyptian first born males died, but the Israelites were safe, protected behind the symbol of a cross of blood on their doors. The next day Pharaoh surrendered, and they were free. Every year since that first Passover, each Jewish family has celebrated the event with a Passover Seder. There are minor variations from family to family, but the word Seder means order and that order has always been followed.
To see the whole picture Jesus was painting for his disciples, we need to review another of the living parables. Jesus’ disciples, like all Jews in that time, were very familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac, found in Genesis 22:1-14. God told Abraham to go to the region of Mount Moriah and sacrifice his son, Isaac. As Abraham and Isaac were carrying the wood for the sacrifice up to the peak, Isaac asked his father, “but where is the lamb for the offering”? Abraham replied, “God will provide himself a lamb for the offering”. Of course, God stopped Abraham before he killed his son, and provided the ram to take Isaac’s place, just as Abraham trusted that he would.
Fast forward to Jesus’ baptism. In the Gospel of John, John the Baptist identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” And in 1 Corinthians 5:7, the apostle Paul called Jesus “our Passover lamb” who “has been sacrificed.”