Jesus now took His disciples and was about to proceed
to Jerusalem to fulfil the crux of His mission. So He revealed what would soon be
taking place. He told them about His impending suffering and death. Jesus knew that he was going to be
delivered into the hands of the chief priests and the scribes, and that he
would end up in the hands of the Romans, and would be condemned to death. He
gave them three vivid details of what would happen. They would mock him, and
spit upon him, and scourge him.
Just
imagine what must have been going through the Lord’s mind, knowing where He was
heading to. He was living under the shadow of the cross. The disciples were
already thinking of what they could get out of all that Jesus would soon be going
through. James and John started to act. Although it was the mother that
approached the Lord. The desire was really theirs. They wanted to sit one at
the right hand and the other at the left hand of Jesus. Essentially what they
wanted were pre-eminence, proximity and power. What they were asking was not
wrong, for the Lord had earlier promised in Matthew 19:28 that they would be
seated on 12 thrones to judge the 12 tribes of Israel.
Notice
that the Lord did not rebuke them for their ambition but for their failure to
understand what would be involved to get there. He asked if they were able to
drink the cup that he was about to drink. The fact is that they had failed to
realize the price needed, to be in that position. They were looking at the
whole thing from a very secular and worldly perspective. What they wanted was
exactly what people in the world would do to be there. That model operates on a
very artificial, superficial level. They don’t give much weight to loyalty. But
the Kingdom operates on a different scale. Like the Lord, they would certainly
have to pay the price to attain what they desired for, but the right to
apportion position, power and prestige belongs to God.
When the other ten disciples learned of the two brothers’ requests, they
were angry with them. It was not because they were pure-minded but were angry
because John and James had beaten them to make their request. All of them had
become arrogant. They had forgotten all that Jesus had taught concerning humility
and all that He had taught on the Sermon of the mount.
Jesus hit home that message derived from Isaiah 53:10-12. It’s the kind
of Biblical model of a rulership that Jesus had in mind. It’s a case where the
king becomes the servant to give His life as a ransom for his subjects. A
ransom is a price that one would pay for the freedom of a slave. Jesus saw His impending
suffering and death as the price needed to pay to set people free from sin and
wickedness. What He would soon go through would also set people free from the grip
of their lust for power and prestige. Yes, for people like James and John.
We all like to enjoy victory and we will certainly enjoy wearing a crown.
The Lord’s direction is clear: how can we wear the crown if we won’t bear the
cross. Let’s allow what Jesus had said in another place to reverberate within our
soul. He said, “If anyone
wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and
follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose
it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.
For what is a man profited if he gains
the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?”
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