Matthew 20:28
I haven’t been able to trace the origin of the description of Jesus as “the man for others.” It may have been the writings of Loyola in the sixteenth century. This former soldier became a priest and founded the Society of Jesus. He called his disciples to a new way of living, pointing to Jesus as the supreme example of that manner of life. A few years ago, James Somerville wrote a biography of Jesus using the phrase in the title.
Even before that, J.N.D. Anderson described the character of Jesus, saying, “He was unique in his life and character, as supremely the ‘Man for others’, with an infinite compassion for the poor, the outcast and the sinful.”[1]
You can’t imagine phrases like “look out for number one,” “toot your own horn,” and “every man for himself” coming out of his mouth.
His whole manner of life revealed a commitment to the glorification of his Father, on the one hand, and meeting the needs of humanity on the other.
Though the courts of heaven were his natural home, here even the foxes and the birds had homes but, as he said, “the Son of Man doesn’t have a place to call his own.” (Mt. 8:20) Wherever he wandered he gave of himself, teaching, healing, listening, mentoring. His famous conversation with Nicodemus took place because he made himself available at night, when others were resting.
Mark tells a story of how Jesus, being human, needed rest—but he denied himself even that.
…so many people were coming and going that Jesus and the apostles did not even have a chance to eat. Then Jesus said, “Let’s go to a place where we can be alone and get some rest.”
They left in a boat for a place where they could be alone.
But many people saw them leave and figured out where they were going. So people from every town ran on ahead and got there first.
When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw the large crowd that was like sheep without a shepherd. He felt sorry for the people and started teaching them many things.[2]
They left in a boat for a place where they could be alone.
But many people saw them leave and figured out where they were going. So people from every town ran on ahead and got there first.
When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw the large crowd that was like sheep without a shepherd. He felt sorry for the people and started teaching them many things.[2]
Were these incidents all we knew of Jesus, we would say he had earned that designation “a man for others.” But the Bible tells us more. He lived as a man for others in a way that no one had ever lived before or since.
Shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus summed up his mission: “…the Son of Man…didn’t come so that others could serve him. He came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many people.”
To a degree, the first part of that verse seems like a worthy goal for anyone wishing to live selflessly. If I may recast it in a familiar form, we should ask not how we may be served but how we may serve. Lots of good people—Christian and non-Christian—have expended themselves on behalf of others. The world is better because of them.
But when we look at the second part of the verse—“to give his life a ransom”—we enter another category. Now, many a courageous “first responder” has died to save others but when you put this in the context of all the Bible says about Jesus you realize that something more is involved here.
Look at the word “ransom.” We’re familiar with it in English. While some words describing Jesus’ work, propitiation or justification for example, require explanation. We can get at the core of what Jesus is saying with a little thought. A “ransom” is given to secure another’s freedom. It is the same with the various Biblical words translated ransom. They all refer to the price paid to free another. We might use the world to speak of the monies demanded to free hostages, the people in the first century often used the word for the money paid to buy a man or woman out of slavery.
Jesus didn’t say, “I’m going to dig into my money bag and get the ransom money.” No, he said his very life was going to be that ransom.
The idea is that we are somehow enslaved. The Bible pictures us as slaves to sin, slaves to the fear of death, slaves to destructive habits, slaves to guilt, even slaves to meaninglessness. Jesus offers freedom from this slavery. In fact, the word “salvation” involves the notion of deliverance. Jesus would provide that freedom, that deliverance, that ransom on the cross.
Confusion has sometimes come from trying to answer the question, “To whom was the ransom paid?” Some Christian writers have imagined it was paid to God, others have even suggested the ransom was paid to Satan. Most Bible scholars have said this is pressing the word-picture too far. The emphasis is on the liberation Jesus provides, not who gets the ransom.
Those hearing Jesus may not have fully understood but that ransom would be paid on the cross. How?
As the writer of Hebrews explains, Jesus took on a dual role at the cross. In an unprecedented action, he became both the High Priest and the sacrifice. The typical high priest, being sinful, had to first offer a sin-offering for himself, before he could offer up the sacrifice for the people’s sins. Not so Jesus, the sinless one. The typical sacrifice had a limited effectiveness so that it had to be repeated. Not so the sacrifice Jesus made.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest…he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh,
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.[3]
For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh,
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.[3]
Writing to an audience not so familiar with the Jewish sacrificial system but still familiar with the idea of ritual sacrifice, Paul explained what happened on the cross: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”[4]
Over the two thousand years of Christian history, there have been many attempts to explain what happened on the cross. Some of these explanations seize one aspect of the Jesus’ death and build an elaborate theory upon it. The problem is not so much that the viewpoint is wrong as it is incomplete. One example is, well, the Example Theory.
In the sixteenth century, Faustus and Laelius Socinus suggested Jesus lived and died as an example for us. Millard Erickson explains:
The ideal of love for God is so lofty as to seem virtually unattainable. The death of Jesus is proof that such love does lie within the sphere of human accomplishment. What he could do, we can also![5]
Now, in many ways Jesus is our example. But the theory—popular among modern Unitarians—ignores a great deal of Scripture and fails to acknowledge that sin puts perfect love for God beyond our capacity to accomplish. We didn’t need to be inspired; we needed to be redeemed.
The explanation for what happened at the cross that most often is echoed in the New Testament is that which says Jesus was our substitute. The man for others died for us.
Being truly God, his actions could have an impact beyond the actions of any human.
Being truly human, he could represent us on the cross. Only one who was truly human could do this. A sheep couldn’t represent us—not in any final sense. Only one who was like us.
Being sinless, he did not need to be punished for his own sins and was free to take the place of others.
At the cross, sin is punished—as everyone expected it to be. But, also at the cross, reconciliation with God was made possible—something which few would have expected.
This was accomplished by the Man for others.
Consider just a few of the implications.
Because Jesus lived and died as a man for others, we have a new freedom.
I’ve already mentioned this but let me say something more.
Some fifteen hundred years before Jesus went to the cross, his people—the Jewish people—were slaves in Egypt. They were abused and misused; at times their very existence seemed threatened. Then, in a serious of miraculous acts God set them free. God’s final act of liberation was known as the Exodus. For centuries Jews have remembered the Exodus in the Passover.
Good Jews, Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Passover. They were joining thousands of Jews celebrating Passover. Everyone knew what the Passover recalled. It’s important to keep that in mind when we realize that Jesus died as the great Passover sacrifice was being made at the temple. Just as the Passover recalled God’s liberating the Jewish people from slavery, so does the Lord’s death remind us of Jesus’ liberating activity.
The first Passover brought freedom for the Jewish people, Jesus was about to win new freedom for all of us. Through him we have freedom from sin’s power, freedom from the fear of death, freedom from whatever keeps us from being all God wants us to be.
It’s crucial to remember that Jesus was able to give this new freedom because he had given himself.
Because Jesus lived and died as a man for others, he has given us a new relationship with God.
You’ve probably seen one of those movies or TV shows where the police successfully rescue a kidnap victim. Maybe it’s a young girl. In a dramatic moment we see here running to her parents to be embraced by them as they shed tears of relief and joy.
That little girl had been taken from her parents and placed in jeopardy. According to the Scripture, we fled our loving Parent and placed ourselves in jeopardy. Our sinful rebellion estranged us from God. As long as our relationship with God was based on our goodness or our keeping the law, we were doomed to alienation.
William Barclay’s translation of words I read earlier today captures an important element in what Jesus did on the cross, “In the same way, after the meal, he took the cup and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant and it cost my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, so that you will remember me.’“
Barclay explains that the preposition usually translated as “in” can, when translating Aramaic—the language Jesus was speaking—mean at the cost or price of. He goes on to say:
With Jesus a new relationship is opened to man, dependent not on law but on love, dependent not on man's ability to keep the law--for no man can do that--but on the free grace of God's love offered to men.
Under the old covenant a man could do nothing other than fear God for he was ever in default since he could never perfectly keep the law; under the new covenant he comes to God as a child to a father. However you look at things, it cost the life of Jesus to make this new relationship possible.
God cared enough to become involved in the lives of his creatures. He is not remote, far-off, or unapproachable.
Conclusion
The supreme illustration of Jesus as “the man for others” was his death on the cross.
Why a cross?
Crucifixion is a terrible way to die but there are other terrible ways to did. Some of these ways to die might even prolong the agony longer than crucifixion—where the crucified usually took two days to die. Jesus’ weakened condition and the fact that his real work was done shortened his time on the cross.
Crucifixion was as mode of death decreed by the ruling authorities. They reserved it for those they most wanted to humiliate and punish, hoping that humiliation and punishment would serve as a deterrent to others. Jesus did not die because those who were appointed “to serve and to protect” arrived too late to stop the mob. His death had a seal of approval. The representatives of this world said to the Representative of another world, “We don’t want you.”
Ironically, through the crucifixion, the Romans became the unwitting agents in both fulfilling Old Testament prophecy and in enabling Jesus as the sin-bearer.
Some of those prophecies are found in a series of poems the prophet Isaiah wrote about God’s Servant. This figure would be “a man for others.” Listen to the most famous.
Isaiah 53
Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm?
My servant grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.
He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.
He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.
Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream. But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.
He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.
But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in his hands.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.
Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm?
My servant grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.
He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.
He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.
Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream. But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.
He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.
But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in his hands.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.
****
From the very earliest days of the church, Christians have looked at that poem and said, “Now we know who he was talking about.”[6]
As Christians our sins are forgiven, we have hope in this life and hope of a life to come.
All of this is ours because Jesus was the man for others.
[1] Ferguson, S. B., & Packer, J. (2000). New dictionary of theology (electronic ed.) (699). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
