22 saying, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
According to Luke’s more chronological narrative of events, Jesus has just fed the five thousand Israelites and Peter has made his confession of faith. Both a demonstration of Jesus’ divine identity and an acknowledgement of it. The further mystery is what is to happen to the God-Man. The reason it is a mystery is because as Saint Paul says it is folly to the pagans and scandalous to the Jews. Jesus outright says what is to happen and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves testify to it. The Messiah must be “cut off” as the Prophet Daniel tells us.
The title Son of Man itself is a call-back to the Prophet Daniel as well, further cementing this point. The old wineskins will break if they are filled with new wine so the old must be replaced. How could the Old Covenant be replaced, destroyed even without infringing on free will though? That’s a good question. You have to take on an ancient worldview, what we would call the “natural model”. In the natural model, a nation is a body with figures in its elite operating as the head. When a head rejects something, the body rejects it, it has no will of its own. God the Father provides an ultimatum, his Son. If they accept well all is good but we know from history that they didn’t and thus rejected God himself. This is why when the elders, chief priests and scribes reject Jesus, the Old Covenant people reject it. These are the heads of the body of Israel, even though some members accept Jesus, when the head says no, the body is forced to comply.
It might seem odd to explain all of that in this section but this is why Jesus explains it in these terms, if we do not take on their worldview we’d be left stumped at why their rejection does anything. Their rejection and command to kill Jesus enables Jesus to conquer death. God uses the wickedness of man to demonstrate the Good News. There is a New Covenant, a new body and the head of it conquers death by rising on the third day.
23 And he said to all, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Although he is explaining essentially everything, conversion is an act of the heart. So Jesus explains what it will take in order to comprehend, at least in human terms, what he is doing. They will have to deny themselves, meaning to submit entirely unto God, not their inclinations. In order to follow him they have to take up their cross daily.
Although in our time the cross is a symbol of love and holds many positive connotations, in Jesus’ time it was the most horrific, humiliating and torturous death known to man. Successively “improved” over many centuries in various cultures it finally landed in the hands of the Romans as the perfect method to publicly humiliate and execute someone in the most painful way possible. Your dignity was removed as your clothes were stripped from you, then you are whipped to near death, forced to carry the cross beam through the public square to your execution spot and then nailed to or hung from the beam until you slowly asphyxiate to death in front of everyone. Barbaric to the gentiles, rejected by the Greeks for being to cruel it was kept by the Romans explicitly for slaves and rebels. To the Hebrews, on top of all this horror it was also the symbol of a curse. As scripture says any man hung from a tree is cursed.
When we take all of this in, and re-read the what Jesus is saying, we can understand just how extreme this is. This is what they must willingly endure daily in order to follow him.
24 For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.
In the context given previously, these sayings make a lot of sense. If imitating Christ, laying your life out like him who is raised from the dead then if you try to avoid doing that, you do not get eternal life. If you run away from the cross you will die permanently but if you lose your life for him you will gain life in the resurrection. This level of loyalty Jesus is expecting is, as we have noted else in these commentaries is unique. No king or general ever speaks in these extremes yet Jesus does. Suddenly the “just believe you’re saved” folks seem a little lack lustre and the “Jesus is just a wise teacher” crowd go very quiet at these words.
25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
All the material things you gain in this life you will not carry with you when you die so if the cost of having those things temporarily is your eternal soul, what does it profit you? By turning mortality into a simple financial question, the true answer becomes very clear.
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