Mark 15 begins with the continuation of the mock trial of Jesus, this time before Pontius Pilate, who releases the prisoner, Barabbas, which ironically means “the son of the father.” Jesus, the only true Son of the Father, is mocked and beaten and forced to carry His cross to the place of the skull, where He was crucified. Next, the mocking continues from every direction, even from the criminals crucified with Jesus, who cites Psalm 22 with His dying breath. Finally here, we see the numerous people who watched Jesus’ death, even Joseph of Arimathea, who entombs Jesus in the place where His body would remain for a couple nights. Let’s take a look:
Jesus Before Pilate
1Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.
2"Are you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate.
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.
3The chief priests accused him of many things. 4So again Pilate asked him, "Aren't you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of."
5But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.
6Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9"Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate, 10knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
12"What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked them.
13"Crucify him!" they shouted.
14"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"
15Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
We see first in v1 the conspiring of the religious leaders, something they’ve been doing for much of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and probably for generations before that regarding other matters. In this case, they have jurisdiction to carry out a death sentence, and so they – the Jewish leaders – must turn to their enemies, the Gentile rulers from Rome there governing Jerusalem, to crucify Jesus. According to Wikipedia, “Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 AD.” The Bible certainly agrees with this testimony, but we must remember to check it the other way around for utmost importance. Where other sources agree with the Bible, they become truthful. They are trustworthy only so far as that agreement is maintained.
In v2-5, Pontius Pilate has some time to question Jesus and learn as much as he can about this situation. While Mark speeds right through these minutes or hours in just a few verses, this was likely a very challenging time for the governor, as well as for Jesus. Pilate was warned by his wife to have nothing to do with Jesus (Matthew 27:19). He made efforts to release Jesus, as nothing he could perceive merited holding or punishing Him. Pilate practically begged Jesus to defend Himself, so that he could justify releasing Him. V6-10 reveal that it was customary for the Romans to release a convict annually to satisfy the Jews and keep them from rioting. This policy of amnesty offered pardon during Passover to gain some political respect. In most cases, the prisoner released was hostile to the Romans but not a significant threat. In this case, Pilate wanted to release Jesus, for He was clearly harmless as a political insurrectionist. “But,” v11 declares, “the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.” This was a surprise. Barabbas, perhaps even “Jesus Barabbas,” whose name ironically means, “the son of the father,” was no godly, innocent man; he was a true menace to society. In Matthew 27:16 Barabbas is called a “notorious prisoner.” In Luke 23:19, he was “in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection” against the occupying Roman forces. John 18:40 calls him a revolutionary. When presented with the choice to release one of two men with the same name, the crowd chose the wicked and cruel, yet impotent sinner, rather than the righteous and innocent, powerful, true Son of the Father.
The crowd, just days earlier, once saw Jesus as their coming King. But He wasn’t active enough for them in the moment. Barry Cooper says, “We need more than forgiveness for breaking God’s law. We also need to have perfectly obeyed God’s law. It’s one thing to have our guilt removed, but we also need to be credited with perfect righteousness.” Therefore, “Jesus’ active obedience is His perfect obedience to God’s law. Jesus’ passive obedience is His paying the penalty for our failure to obey God’s law.” John Murray says, “It is our Lord’s whole work of obedience in every phase and period that is described as active and passive, and we must avoid the mistake of thinking that the active obedience applies to the obedience of his life and the passive obedience to the obedience of his final sufferings and death.” The crowd didn’t see Jesus as being active enough. They thought He was too passive. Thanks be to God that Jesus was both extremely active in perfect, God-honoring obedience over His entire life and also perfectly passive as a man of sorrows who endured the suffering of this sinful world for thirty plus years. Jesus was more than enough, but not for this crowd. Not on this day. It was God’s will to crush Him.
In v13-14, we really see Pilate struggle with the crowd, as he simply can’t understand why they want so badly to kill Jesus. It begs the question, “Why did they kill Jesus?” It comes down to a couple things. First, the Romans killed Jesus to keep the crowd at bay (v16), because of His threat to peace in the region, and perhaps because of His claim to be King (v2). As we know, the Romans so often declared, as the Jewish religious leaders even did in their final plea to have Jesus executed in John 19:15, “We have no King but Caesar!” But the Jews killed Jesus too. And Kevin DeYoung says about this fact, “In the end, it was the implicit and explicit claims Jesus made to authority, Messiahship, and God-ness that ultimately did Him in… True, the Jewish leaders objected to Jesus’ far-reaching compassion, but they wanted Him dead because He thought Himself the Christ, the Son of the living God… Without His claims of deity, authority, and Old Testament fulfillment, He would not have been murdered.”
The Soldiers Mock Jesus
16The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" 19Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
The Crucifixion
21A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 23Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.
25It was the third hour when they crucified him. 26The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. 27They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.[1] 29Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30come down from the cross and save yourself!"
31In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! 32Let this Christ,[2] this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
In this passage we see Jesus tortured, due to His claim to be King. It begins with Him being fully given into the hands of the Gentile Roman soldiers, where He was clothed in a purple robe and made to wear a crown of thorns. He was beaten, spit upon, and mocked. Once again, Mark moves quickly through this session of Jesus’ suffering, but it was undoubtedly grueling and painful for a lengthy duration. We simply can’t fathom the mental anguish and physical affliction and torment. Though there was a helper, Simon of Cyrene, called upon to carry the cross of Christ, Jesus struggled to endure the half mile course that would have taken between one and three hours to complete. The beginning of v24 simply acknowledges the beginning of Jesus’ hanging on the cross, which would occupy the final 6 hours of His earthly life (v25). And the claim to the throne was publicized, written on a sign at His cross, “The King of the Jews.”
Jesus’ unbelievable claims threatened the Jewish religious leaders and the Gentile Roman government. A threat to their power and authority, He was dangerous and had to be dealt with accordingly. Jesus doesn’t say a word in this passage, despite the cruel mockery and wicked taunting. He was treated like a false prophet, like a fraudulent king, but their behavior was so foolish. Unbelief can be actively hostile, explicit as we see here. But unbelief can also be passive and shameful, implicit like we saw with Peter and the other disciples, who fled from Jesus and denied Him repeatedly in this moment of need (Mark 14:50,71). In the end, it is the sin of unbelief that so greatly offends our Creator God. All sin stems from unbelief. And all humanity is guilty of it at times. It is so foolish! And Jesus suffered the consequences for us all.
The Death of Jesus
33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"[3]
35When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah."
36One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down," he said.
37With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
38The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and[4] saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son[5] of God!"
40Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.
In v27-32, we have Mark’s account of the first half of Jesus’ six-hour crucifixion. V27 is just a brief mention of the thieves on either side of Him. Of course, Luke’s account shares their interactions, but Mark only summarizes that in v32. V28 is absent with a footnote acknowledging that some manuscripts include language akin to Luke 22:37, which reads, “For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in Me, namely, ‘He was counted among the wicked’; and indeed what is written about Me is coming to fulfillment.” That would be Jesus’ won words describing His predicament. V29-32 comment on the insults and mockery that Jesus faced from all varieties of onlookers as He hung from the cross. “Were you there when they crucified My Lord? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?”
In v33 is the halfway point, “At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.” This darkness is a fulfillment of Scripture, as in Exodus 10:22 and Amos 8:9-10. It’s symbolic, a glimpse of the judgment of God upon Jesus for the sins of His people. And Jesus feels it as He cries out in v34, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Isaiah 59:2 urges us to recognize that our sin separates us from God and makes it so He doesn’t hear. We lose fellowship with God in our sin, and Jesus bears that in full right here. The thing Jesus loved to do most was retreat to commune with His heavenly Father, with Whom He shared a full and perfect blissful relationship from eternity past, and here in this moment, He, in His emptied humanity, experiences the worst thing imaginable, the silence of His Father as He bears His wrath toward our sin. As bad as the physical torture was – and it was bad – this pain was truly excruciating. And just a moment later, He breathed His last (v37). Why did He stay on the cross? He could have come down! He could have exonerated Himself and ended the suffering, but He chose to stay – for love. “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.”
While Mark records only the words of Jesus in v34 from the cross, we know from the other gospel accounts that Jesus spoke seven times from the cross, the semblance of all of which can be found in Psalm 22, which begins with the words from v34. So many scholars believe that by reciting this first verse of the Psalm, it is a call to the entirety of it. It’s remarkable to read the Psalm in light of the seven statements that Jesus makes from the cross. I envision Him reciting the Psalm in His mind with His final difficult breaths and pausing to speak audibly as cued by the words of that Scripture. One preacher reminds us here not to take for granted the inevitability of history. It’s easy for us to reflect and recognize that it couldn’t have been any other way. But we risk reducing or even eliminating the heroism of those involved in the historical moment. Jesus was truly courageous and heroic and victorious in this inevitable historical moment.
Finally, in v38-39, we have 2 images that show us the significance of the moment. First, in v38, with the curtain in the Temple town from top to bottom, Jesus is established as the only mediator between God and mankind. He expires the Old Testament system and becomes the only High Priest, who intercedes for humanity before the Creator and who alone provides access to God the Father. This particular curtain is not your typical window dressing; rather, this was 4 inches thick, 60 feet tall, and 30 feet wide. For it to tear at all was quite a miracle, not to mention that it happened from top to bottom. This was the Lord’s doing! And in v39, we have the testimony of the Roman Centurion, who surely was no Jewish, or precursor to Christian, theologian; but he recognized the unique death of Jesus and expressed His identity as the Son of God. This same man witnessed the earthquake mentioned with the death of Jesus in Matthew 27:54; likewise in Luke 23:47, he is the one who praised God, recognized Jesus as innocent, and called Him a righteous man. He may have recognized that Jesus’ final breath was not like those who normally died in crucifixion, by suffocation. Perhaps the last breath, which came with a loud cry, “It is finished!”, led the centurion to believe Jesus died of a less natural cause – maybe blood loss or even supernatural means. One commentator says, “The centurion may be saying Jesus is more divine than the emperor. In whatever way the centurion means his statement, he echoes Pilate’s inadvertent validation of Jesus’ identity in the form of the sign on the cross. That Jesus is the King of the Jews and the Son of God is officially and spontaneously acknowledged by Gentiles, even if the meaning is not fully understood.”
Mark’s gospel begins in v1 identifying Jesus as the Son of God. Then God’s voice is heard as Jesus’ baptism identifying Jesus as His Son. Even the demons acknowledge Jesus as God’s Son despite their hatred for Him. But no human prior to this pagan Roman soldier identifies Jesus correctly in Mark’s gospel. So it’s important to see Mark’s point – that, no matter who says it, Jesus is the Son of God!
The Burial of Jesus
42It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, 43Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. 44Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. 45When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. 46So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
The mention of women witnesses of Jesus’ death is surprising. But as we concluded the comments on the previous passage, “No matter who says it, Jesus is the Son of God!” Perhaps at least one of the messages of God here is that women matter. Neither the Roman government nor the Jewish community thought that was true in Biblical times. Certainly, much of history sides that way as well. But that was never true for God. Women have value, dignity, worth, and intelligence, and God proves that by making several of them the first witnesses to the most important event in history, the resurrection of Jesus. These women were a select few of many (v41) who were deemed to be followers, or disciples, of Jesus. Certainly they served in roles that were commonplace, providing for the needs of many with no intention of gaining self-recognition. And perhaps that’s why God finds it so right to identify them in such a place as this.
We know from Luke 8:2 that Mary Magdalene was rescued from seven demons that tormented her. That number could be literal, or it could be used to describe the severity of her condition. Some suggest that she was a prostitute, but there’s no evidence of that in Scripture. Furthermore, the rumor that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene is found in fiction alone. Mary the mother of James and Joseph (or Joses) has nothing else noted regarding her backstory or further identity, but it should be acknowledged that perhaps some in Mark’s audience would have known of her children mentioned by name. The woman named Salome is considered to be the mother of James and John, the Zebedee brothers (Matthew 27:56), the sons of thunder. All of these women took great risk in identifying with Jesus, a convicted criminal in the sight of Rome. And we too are called to identify with Him, the righteous Who stands in for the guilty.
In v43, we see another surprise, that Joseph of Arimathea, a socially elite and respected member of the Sanhedrin, “boldly” approached the Roman governor and requested the body of Jesus. It turns out that he was a secret follower of Jesus (John 19:38), and he wasn’t the only one! Nicodemus, the Pharisee who questioned Jesus in John 3, and later gently stood up for Him in John 7, was also a secret follower. It’s surprising that they would choose the time of His death as the moment to publicly make known their devotion to Jesus. This was surely a risk to their reputation, and Joseph even entombs this convicted criminal in his own burial site! When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Sometimes it takes a very trying circumstance – or clearly unrighteous act – to bring someone to show their true colors, or do what they can to bring peace and justice to an otherwise awful moment. If we find ourselves being secret followers of Jesus, we should determine what it would take to bring us out into the public view, for Jesus says that He will be ashamed of those who are ashamed of Him in the end. May we be unashamed.
In v44, Pilate was surprised that Jesus’ was already dead. Normally, crucifixion would take many hours, even days, but Jesus died quickly. One reason was that He chose when to give up His Spirit and breath His last. No one took His life from Him, but He gave it up at the time of His choosing. His work was finished, so there was no reason to delay the next step, which was the burial. The concluding verses of this chapter offer the basic facts of Jesus’ burial, and again it was the women who saw where He was entombed. Of course, that burial needed to happen on the Friday, as the Saturday Sabbath prohibited any work. And after that would come the most surprising element of Mark’s gospel, which we will consider in the next chapter, the resurrection of Jesus!
Footnotes
- 15:27 Some manuscripts left, 28 and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "He was counted with the lawless ones" (Isaiah 53:12)
- 15:32 Or Messiah
- 15:34 Psalm 22:1
- 15:39 Some manuscripts do not have heard his cry and.
- 15:39 Or a son
Bible text from
Gospelcom.net. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by
International Bible Society.