How Jesus Used His Trial To Teach Christology: The Mark Series pt 62 (14:53-72)

Mark is one of the favorite books of skeptics of Christianity. They will sometimes say that it has “low Christology” (a low view of who Jesus was) and suggest that this is evidence that belief in the deity of Christ came not from Jesus and the apostles teachings but from other people “developing” Christianity afterward. Others will claim that orthodox Christian teaching about how Jesus died on the cross to suffer the just punishment of our sins so that we could be forgiven, as an atoning sacrifice, is an invention of Christians coming centuries after the time of Christ and the apostles. One of the reasons I love the book of Mark is because a careful study of it shows that all of those claims are false. In today’s study we will look at Jesus on trial before the high priest and we’ll see that there are two major lessons that Jesus wants to teach everyone about the nature of the Messiah. The Messiah is divine and the Messiah must suffer and die for the sins of others. Not only do these two teachings refute how some have distorted the Gospel of Mark, these teachings are actually central to the whole Gospel. They come at the climax of Mark’s message and they reveal that the divine nature and the atoning work of the Messiah are absolutely essential in the Gospel of Mark.