To Give His Life

The time had approached when the Lord Jesus would be delivered into the hands of the enemies. The Lord Jesus had spoken much, also by parables and in performing miracles, to prove that He was the promised Messiah that should come.

In this portion of Scripture, we read that the Lord Jesus went up to Jerusalem with His disciples for the last time to celebrate the Passover and also to be slain as the true Paschal Lamb which was part of the purpose of His coming upon earth and the assuming of His human nature. More than once Christ taught His disciples concerning His suffering and death, His resurrection, and His going to His Father. All this was substitutionary for all the elect, to reconcile them to God.

Despite all the instruction the disciples received concerning His suffering and death, they lacked understanding. This is clearly evident from verses 20&21, where the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to the Lord Jesus and said to Him, “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on the left, in Thy kingdom”; and from the answer which was given in verse 22 where the Lord Jesus said, “Ye know not what ye ask.” He pointed them to His cup of suffering and His baptism of suffering. Therefore, we read in verse 28, “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

“Came not to be ministered unto”—what a lesson for the disciples and for all who, by grace, are brought into the school of the Holy Spirit. Certainly, as God, being coessential with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He has a right to be ministered unto, and that perfectly. Through our deep Fall this has become impossible. Moreover, we have become unwilling also. If Christ was sent to be ministered unto, it would have been a lost case. Then He, as Judge, would have to condemn man who is serving sin, but now the wonder: Christ has come to this earth as Saviour and Mediator to minister as God and Man in unity of person.

What a lesson it is for God’s people that He was not come to be ministered unto. Think of Martha who was cumbered about much serving, but look also at Mary who was allowed to sit at Jesus’ feet. She had chosen that good part.

Oh, that wriggling from out of a broken covenant of works, trying to bring something along for the Lord with our works. What a privilege it is, as well as necessary, to be placed outside of our works by the uncovering ministry of the Holy Spirit. Then we will have nothing left except a heaven-high guilt and will cry out, “Lost, justly lost.” Then the secret of salvation may be revealed, “I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” Oh, then for someone who has come to an end with his works and servitude, it becomes such a wonder that there is One, namely Christ, who has done and merited everything for an entirely guilty and damnworthy sinner, One who can reconcile him to God. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” He came to minister. He did not come to do His own will but the will of His Father in heaven.

Christ is the Servant of the Father to reconcile the elect to God through His suffering and death. For transgressors of the law, He fulfilled the law with His passive and active obedience. On the cursed tree of the cross, Christ redeemed all His own from the curse of the law and bore away their punishment by satisfying the justice of the Father. “To give His life a ransom for many.” Oh, yes, He gave Himself completely. He bore the full wrath of God against sin under which man, the sinner, should sink away forever. He has given Himself as the only Substitute in the place of His own. Christ has given His life, and the Father has given His Son to that end, to make His soul an offering for sin.

Thus, all God’s people receive a given Saviour, who gave Himself, who gave His life, that Zion might be redeemed with judgment with an eternal redemption. Blessed is the man who may thus come to know Him by faith, in the beginning and in the continuation. The ransom which Christ had given was accepted by the Father. He died because of our sins and was raised for our justification.

May the Holy Spirit thus teach and lead His own, by grace, to learn that mystery of salvation with Paul, “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” Oh, that we might lose everything, yes, die to everything that must die in order to receive life from Him who is the only Fountain of Life. “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

Oh, that something of this might be learned when we again have entered the Passion weeks. May the God of all grace yet place many upon the path that leads to life. Christ did not come for all, but may we learn by grace to belong to the many—blessed knowledge!

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