The Suffering Son of Man, Matthew 20:17-19

When we look at these verses we might just say they seem pretty simple, just another one of these statements that Jesus makes where He is warning the disciples of what is about to transpire. But there is a lot more to it than that. As I was studying this week, looking at this entire section going down to verse 28, which will end our study of this section of Matthew that began in 18:1, I began to ask certain questions. Why is this here? Why did Matthew put this here? One of the important questions that we should all ask when we read the Bible is, why this? Why here? Why now? Why didn't he put this at the end where there is clearly a shift? It really doesn't seem like this is a statement that necessarily has to go here.

What does this have to do with the flow of the main theme that we have been study in Matthew 18 down through 20, which deals with this issue of trying to be somebody, trying to have status in the kingdom; this thing that just keeps going on and on again and Jesus is confronting the disciples with the fact that they have their eyes on the wrong thing? They are looking forward to being somebody in the kingdom, looking to have some sort of position of prestige. That is their focal point and that is not the mentality of a disciple. They need to be like a child. And as we have studied, being like a child did not mean that they weren't self-absorbed or focused on other things, but they did not have position because a child in that culture had no position, no status; they were a nobody.

And this is what keeps being repeated here, along with Jesus' teaching that certain characteristics needed to be present in the disciple; he needed to be someone who forgave. One of the things that is a roadblock to forgiving people is we are so concerned about our own feelings, how we have been treated and what has been done to us, that we are so involved in who we are that we can't forgive somebody else. All of these things are wrapped around the same principle.

Last time we looked at how the parable of the workers in the vineyard relates back to the rich young ruler, and in all of these Jesus is teaching about being a disciple, that it requires humility in the sense that you are not concerned about your agenda at all or your own status in the kingdom, but the focal point is on service. It is all about service and not status.

All of this is going to be brought to a conclusion in this last episode recorded in verses 20-28 when Salome asks that her boys sit on Jesus' right and left hand when He has His kingdom. We are going to get to that but it is interesting how Matthew sets this up and structures it. There are a lot of things we need to talk about here. We have the doctrine of the Son of Man, the doctrine related to the death of Christ but that is a sub-category of the doctrine of the suffering of Christ. We have doctrines related here in terms of the baptism of the cup and what that means, and also statements related to leadership and authority and how that is to be exercised by a believer. We also have an emphasis on the focus of service and serving one another as Christ has served us.

Now we are going to focus on a key doctrine that is brought out at the opening (vv. 17-19) and is returned to in vv. 27, 28: the suffering of the Son of Man.

Matthew 20:17 ^NASB “As Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve {disciples} aside by themselves, and on the way He said to them, [18] 'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, [19] and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify {Him,} and on the third day He will be raised up'.”

I want you to look at this as a necessary transition in Matthew between the parable of the workers in the vineyard and the next event that happens which is Salome coming to Jesus to see of she can get Him to give a high place to her sons James and John. But as we read this section from v. 17 to v. 28 we have an emphasis on the suffering and the death of Christ on the cross at the interim, and then at the end of the section we are returned to that them when Jesus says, “and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

In both verses 18 and 28 we have the use of this term “Son of Man” and both of those sections focus on what is going to happen in terms of the sufferings of Christ and His death in Jerusalem. We get a specific understanding of what that is about in v. 28. This serves to bracket this section.

At the beginning here we simply see Jesus on His way to Jerusalem. We are told at the beginning of chapter nineteen that Jesus and His disciples left Galilee and travelled south. This would be in the vicinity of Jericho but they were in the region of Judea that is beyond the Jordan. So they are in this area that is probably about 8 or 9 miles to the east of Jericho and are leaving this area beyond the Jordan and headed up to Jerusalem.

Some time in this area (John chapter eleven) Jesus is ministering at roughly the same time that He hears that Lazarus is sick and may die. He tells His disciples that that sickness is for the glory of God so they were going to stay around here and continue to minister for the next couple of days. So perhaps these events that we are talking about in 19 and 20 take place at that particular time or close to that time, and then Jesus was going to go to Bethany. But when we get to chapter twenty-one on this particular trip that is described they end up entering Jerusalem on the triumphal entry on the Sunday before His arrest and crucifixion.

We are not going to get to the crucifixion and resurrection until chapter twenty-seven, so everything that occurs in the next six chapters all takes place during that period from the Sunday before the cross, Palm Sunday, until the cross which is described in chapter twenty-seven. So now we are really going to slow down and narrow our focus on a lot of things that go on within a very short period of time. Jesus probably went to Bethany, came back, and now is on this last trip to Jerusalem.

When they leave Jericho at the end of this chapter we are told that there is a mob that goes with them. Jesus needs to take His disciples aside in order to give them a little more personal instruction. Mark gives us a little more information about this. Mark 10:32 ^NASB “They were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking on ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were fearful. And again He took the twelve aside and began to tell them what was going to happen to Him.”

We are told in Matthew 16:21 ^NASB “From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.” This is the first of His warnings and as we look at this we should also notice that in Matthew 16 what follows it is Jesus then challenges the disciples with this same question that He is going to phrase another way in the next section. Matthew 20:22 ^NASB “But Jesus answered, 'You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?' They said to Him, 'We are able'.” The point there is: Are you willing to suffer as I am going to suffer? He ties the idea of His suffering to what is going on and that the disciples are going to be a part of this.

Matthew 16:24 ^NASB “Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me'.” We saw that taking up his cross was an idiom for submitting to authority, and what He is saying is not about justification and getting into heaven, it is about discipleship. Are we really willing to submit to the authority of God? Submitting to the authority of God is humility. In Philippians 2:5-11 we are told that Jesus humbled Himself by being obedient even to the point of the cross. Jesus is constantly emphasizing here that to follow Him means that we have to be humble. That is the same idea that He is teaching all through this section. It is not about our plans and our ambitions or our status; it is about serving the Lord.

Matthew 16:25 ^NASB “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” The question that is embedded there: Are you willing to lose your life so that you can have real life? This is not eternal life, living forever and ever in heaven, but living a really good life on earth no matter what the circumstances. This is what the Bible refers to as the abundant life.

So the first time that Jesus announces what is coming we learn four things, and we learn that He must do these four things: He must go to Jerusalem; He must suffer many things from the religious leaders; He must be killed; He must be raised from the dead.

Chapter seventeen adds a little bit. Matthew 17:22 ^NASB “And while they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, 'The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men; [23] and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.' And they were deeply grieved.” So what we learn in this chapter is that He refers to Himself as the Son of Man, He will be betrayed, and He will be raised the third day.

Then in chapter 20:18 He changes from “He must go up” to “We are going up”. He is now including the disciples in His destiny; His destiny is their destiny. “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death”. The word there for death is KATAKRINO, which means that this is a judicial decision. It is referring to the fact that there will be a formal legal condemnation of Him by the chief priests and the scribes.

Matthew 20:19 ^NASB “and will hand Him [delivered] over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify {Him,} and on the third day He will be raised up.” This is the same word that is used for betrayal. He is betrayed to the Gentiles, so it is not just the Jewish religious leaders who are responsible but it is also the Gentiles. Now He introduces how He is going to die, and that is through crucifixion.

He is going to suffer. He will be mocked; He will be scourged; He will be crucified. This introduces another interesting idea that we have to understand as a backdrop to what Jesus is going to say about taking this cup and then being baptized with the baptism with which He is going to be baptized.

In Reformed theology they have a doctrine about the sufferings of Christ so that there are two categories of suffering: passive sufferings and active sufferings. The active sufferings are what happened when he was on the cross; the passive sufferings are whatever Jesus in His humanity suffered living in the devil's world, whether it was just the inconvenience of living with a lot of sinners to the more active suffering where He was mocked and scourged and that sort of thing. One of the areas of Reformed theology I disagree with is that in Reformed theology all of the sufferings are redemptive—so that the passive sufferings are also redemptive. But that theology isn't biblical and it messes up a lot of understanding because Jesus goes through physical suffering that is not redemptive. That is important for us to understand.

The point here is that Jesus is going to end up drawing an analogy between the fact that He is suffering and that if we are willing to follow Him are we willing to suffer also? But He can't be talking about redemptive suffering because we can't suffer redemptively. It is only during those three hours on the cross when God the Father imputes to Him the sins of the world that redemption takes place. It doesn't take place at any other time.

The term Son of Man is used in several of these passages and it is used again by Jesus in verses 18 & 28. This is the most common title that is used for Jesus in the Gospels and it is the most common title used by Matthew. It is used 29 times in Matthew, 13 times in Mark, 26 times in Luke, and only 12 times in John.

The source of this title comes from Daniel chapter seven where Daniel sees the vision of these four horrible beasts that depict from God's perspective the visual characteristics of four great kingdoms that are going to come in chronological succession. The last kingdom is a horrible beast that can't really be described, and that is a depiction of the Roman Empire in its historic form and its revived form. The vision in Daniel skips over the church age, which isn't mentioned at all in the Old Testament. At the end is when we have this event take place described in Daniel 7:13, 14.

Daniel 7:13 ^NASB “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him.”

Clouds are often used to describe the divine presence, so it indicates that the Son of Man is divine; He is not just human. Often I emphasize that Son of Man emphasizes His humanity, but sometimes it means more than that. There are clearly other things in the passage that He is also divine. He comes to the Ancient of Days (God the Father) in order to be given His kingdom. [14] “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and {men of every} language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.”

We see here that the Son of Man is a figure in the future who is not only human but divine, and who will be given a kingdom. It is not until He is given that kingdom that He will have dominion and glory. So he is not a king now. It is one of the great points of confusion in a lot of contemporary Christianity that they think we are in some form of the kingdom now. But to have a kingdom you have to have a king, and we don't have a king right now. Jesus is like David was in 1 Samuel 16, anointed, but He has not yet been crowned. He doesn't receive the kingdom until just before He returns to the earth. He is currently sitting at the right hand of God the Father on His Father's throne (Revelation 3:21), not on His own.

When He comes “all the peoples, nations and {men of every} language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.”

What Jesus is going to say in v. 28 is that He did not come to be served. That shows that there is a distinction between His coming at His first advent and the coming that is depicted in Daniel 7:14 when “all nations will serve Him”. He came at the first advent to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.

The term Son of Man is a phrase that emphasizes the humanity of Christ but not to the exclusion of His deity. On many occasions Jesus stated and emphasized that He was God. For example, He asked Peter: “Who do men say that I am?” In Matthew 16:16 Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” emphasizing His deity. [17] And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal {this} to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

In John 8:58 Jesus refers to Himself through the present tense verb statement EGO EIMI when He is in confrontation with the Pharisees and they clearly understand that He is making a claim to deity because they took up stones to stone Him for blasphemy.

In John 10:30 Jesus said, “I am my Father are one”. The word for “one” there is not in the masculine case because then it would be one person. He is not identifying as a unity with God in that sort of Unitarian sense, but they are both one thing; they are both God. He uses the neuter there.

There are other things that emphasize His deity. For example, He forgave sins. He did other things as well. He changed water into wine, He still the storm, He cast out demons, He walked on the water; all demonstrating that He is God and He controls His creation. In Matthew 9:6 He heals a paralysed man in order to show that He the power to forgive sins, because when He heals the man He said, “Your sins are forgiven”. Only God can forgive sins, as seen in passages like Isaiah 43:25 cf. Mark 2:7.

Also the term Son of Man was used by Jesus to affirm His deity. In Matthew 26:63, 64 as Jesus is being grilled by the high priest, the high priest said to Him, “I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said it {yourself;} nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.” This is a direct allusion back to Daniel chapter seven. Clearly He is using the term Son of Man here to affirm His deity.

The term Son of Man is also a term that relates to Jesus' work on the cross as the kinsman redeemer. He is the Son of man because a human being has to die on the cross for us. In the Old Testament there are two Hebrew words that are used that relate to redemption: padah and goel.

The goel describes the kinsman redeemer. This is pictured in the book of Ruth. Ruth has to be provided for by Boaz who is a close kinsman. He is able to redeem her. This was part of the responsibility of a kinsman. If someone, for example, go into debt and had to go into slavery the kinsman redeemer could purchase them from slavery. The kinsman redeemer has the responsibility to track down a murderer of a near relative to see that justice was done. He was responsible to see that justice was done in other legal matters, as well as to see that debts were going to be satisfied. This brings in the idea of redemption and a redeemer.

So the term Son of Man is loaded with all of these concepts, and when we get down to the end of this section in verse 28 He is going to unpack that idea. The word ransom has the idea of the payment of a price for something. That “for something” emphasizes substitution. Here we see that Jesus is talking about what He is paying. He is giving His life. An economic transaction takes place on the cross. Paul refers to it as the cancelling of a debt that was against us. That is what redemption is, the wiping out of a debt. It is forgiveness of all sin. The price was paid at the cross but each individual has to trust in Christ. The price is paid at the cross but it is applied only when we each individually trust in Him.

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