God’s Word for You
Mark 11:18-19 His passive obedience
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, December 21, 2021
18 The chief priests and the experts in the law heard this and were looking for a way to kill him. Indeed they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
In almost all cases, when we read that the chief priests and the scribes (also called “teachers / experts in the law”) were together, this is a reference to the Jewish ruling council known as the Sanhedrin. A question about this comes up later in Mark, where we are told that “the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin” decided to hand Jesus over to Pontius Pilate (Mark 15:1). However, the “and” in that series should be taken as explanatory, meaning “that is” rather than “also.”
The Sanhedrin had concluded that Jesus needed to be done away with, but now they decided that it had to be done soon. The idea of governments silencing people that are judged to be inconvenient is nothing new, and still happens in our time. The reason for the Sanhedrin’s fear is laid out clearly and simply by Mark: “Because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” The Sanhedrin saw Jesus as their rival. No one could match his teaching or the way he answered every question and accusation. His miracles were one thing, but his teaching was what they truly feared. The nation might have turned completely against them. In this way, they saw Jesus in the light of the Old Testament prophets whose preaching and teaching toppled kings and councils from their places of power, like Micaiah who brought down Ahab (1 Kings 22:17-40), Jehoiada who brought down Athaliah (2 Chronicles 23:1-15), and the unnamed prophet who brought down Amaziah for his idolatry (2 Chronicles 25:15-16).
19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples would leave the city.
Here the EHV translation does us a good service, showing that this was Jesus’ regular practice each night of Holy Week. They always left and stayed somewhere outside the city. We already know that Sunday night he went to Bethany. Thursday night was spent out on the Mount of Olives until his arrest. Where did he go on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday? Jesus was avoiding being arrested until Thursday. Due to the conspiracy of the Sanhedrin, he found other places to lodge, and it’s doubtful that he would have spent more than two nights in a row in Bethany. There are caves west of the city, and besides Bethany, another village to the east was the Bethphage mentioned in verse 1 of this chapter. There was also Nob, which had been on Jesus’ mind in Mark 2:26 (compare 1 Samuel 21:1-6 and the heading of Psalm 52), some twenty or thirty minutes’ walk to the east and going around the north side of the Mount of Olives.
So ended Monday of Holy Week. The next day would earn the name Busy Tuesday because of how much teaching Jesus did.
This carefulness in Jesus is part of his obedience to the Father; he was about to lay down his life, but at the proper time, and on his terms and in his own way. This obedience of Jesus is divided into his active obedience and his passive obedience. His active obedience is shown by those things he did to keep God’s will and law perfectly. Man cannot do this (Ecclesiastes 7:20). To satisfy God’s will under the law, Christ was born under the law as a man (Galatians 4:4-5), and did everything without sin (Hebrews 4:15). This was part of the ransom he made for our reconciliation. The other part was his passive obedience. The Lord “laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6) and God punished Jesus for our sins (Isaiah 53:5). He did this under the full curse of the law, on a tree (1 Peter 2:24), and became the curse in our place (Galatians 3:12). God declared his own righteousness in this act of punishing Christ in our place (Romans 3:25), and God no longer imputes our sins to us (2 Corinthians 5:19). God has forgiven our sins, and no longer remembers them (Isaiah 43:25). In his passive obedience, Jesus paid the other part of our ransom, a ransom for the world (Mark 10:45; 1 Timothy 2:6). Jesus was the messenger from God on our side, the Mediator, to be gracious to us and to tell the Almighty: “Spare them from going down to the pit; I have become a ransom for them” (Job 33:23).
By leaving Jerusalem on these evenings, he was able to choose the moment of his arrest, to lay down his life in such a way that pleased the Father. While the lambs were being slaughtered for the Passover, to remember the day when God’s wrath was turned aside and the plague of his killing angel ended at the doorposts of the faithful, Christ would let his own blood drip down to turn aside the Father’s wrath on all mankind. This is the gift of Jesus to you.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.