The Role Of Suffering In The Gospel Of Mark 18

By understanding the suffering that our Lord Jesus went through during his death one can truly appreciate the privileges that we Christians have. The suffering of our Christ is seen throughout the Gospel of Mark chapter 15 verse sixteen to the end of the chapter. This can be seen in Verse 17 when the soldiers of Rome ridiculed and humiliated Jesus. “They put a purple robe on him…a crown of thrones and set it on him”(Verse 17 721). During these times the purple robe was worn only by the ruling elite of the land. By forcibly placing the purple robe on our savior during his torture was a way to belittle and insult him. The humiliation does no end their, since when they were finished with their humiliation the Roman soldiers changed him back to his regular clothes, “They took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him.”(20 721). One as a mere human cannot begin to understand the experience of complete humiliation.
One can’t help but notice some similarities between the sacrifice of Jesus and the old rituals that the Hebrews of the Old Testament era would perform. In the Old Testament whenever the Hebrews would communicate with God they would have to sacrifice animals in order to be cleansed. Also only certain individuals were able to directly communicate with our heavenly father, such as the decedents of the tribes of Israel. Our heavenly father sacrificed his son in order to save us from our sins and in a sense he was the ultimate sacrifice. Due to the humane death of our Christ we are now able to communicate directly to God without any intermediaries. We are also able to worship him in any place as long as the teachings of the Bible are followed. This can be seen in Mark Chapter 15 Verse 38, “The curtain of the temple was torn into two from top to