The child of God is much advantaged to come to grips with the life lived by his Savior. I would suggest that the insights to be listed here are essential to a proper understanding of that most wonderful of all lives, and thus that the believer is well advised to consciously and deliberately include these realities in his conception of that life.
#7 – Although Jesus came to die, He never spoke explicitly of His death until almost three years into His three and one half year ministry. He hinted at the idea obliquely just once – the reference to the temple to be rebuilt in three days; but John states that His disciples did not understand this until after Jesus’ resurrection (Jn 2:19-21). Indeed, Jesus claimed to be Messiah, and according to the Hebrew Scriptures the Kingdom to be established by the Messiah is an eternal kingdom (Dan 2:44); it seemed to those who accepted Jesus’ claims that there is no room for a dying Messiah in that. When Jesus finally contrived to get the twelve to a place called Caesarea Philippi and for the first time told them that He was going to die (Mt 16:21), those disciples were scandalized (:22). Although Jesus foretold His death and resurrection at least four more times after Caesarea Philippi, nobody was willing to believe those words, especially the apostles (Lk 18:31-33, cf. :34). (The one possible exception: Mary, sister of Lazarus; cf Jn 12:7.) This unwillingness to accept Jesus’ plain and oft-repeated predictions of His death and resurrection seems to have been a function of two influences: first, the apostles were crippled by the popular rabbinic misperception of the Messianic hope, which had little or no room for a suffering or dying Messiah; second, the apostles were greedy for the chief places in the kingdom which Jesus had promised them, and they didn’t want to hear about suffering by Him or by them.
(Insight #8 will be posted soon!)
