Jesus has been a faithful son in the old creation, taking it as far as possible. John records this in his Gospel as Jesus performs the first seven of eight signs. These signs were mighty acts, much like the signs and wonders Yahweh worked in the land of Egypt to deliver his people. From turning the water into wine to raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus faithfully executed his mission as the new and last Adam to take dominion over the creation and rule it in wisdom.
Raising Lazarus from the dead was the seventh sign. It was a mighty act, to be sure. It was good, but there was also something not good about it: Lazarus would die again. This was as far as the old creation could go. To bring the world into the place the Father desires, where sin’s death-sting will no longer have a stranglehold on man, the Son must have more power and wisdom.
Jesus seeks and prays for this glory in John 17, and in John 18, the Father begins to answer his prayer. The cross is the answer to Jesus’ prayer. Though it is not the final answer, it is necessary for the solution to death.
Since the Garden, death has always been the path to greater glory. From the creation of the woman to eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, man must go through death to enter glory. God created the man in the beginning, planted a garden, and then placed man in the Garden to work it and guard it. Eventually, the man and his progeny would move out of the Garden to develop the entire world, but for now, he must remain in the Garden. The man must cultivate wisdom and rule well where he is before moving out to the rest of the world. His Father will give him what he needs to go out into the land beyond the Garden to rule the earth when he is found faithful in his Garden rule.
Once the man matured, having his senses exercised to discern between good and evil, God would give him the solid food of the knowledge of good and evil (see Hebrews 5.14). Man would eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, go to sleep, and, when he awoke, he would have all that he needed in wisdom to rule outside the Garden.
God did something similar to this in the creation of the woman. Following God’s own declaration of it being “not good” that he should be alone, the man recognizes that he can’t complete the task of dominion God gave him as a single individual. He needs a helper that corresponds to him. So, God puts him into this death-sleep, rips him in half, as it were, and he soon awakens with all that he needs for the next stage of his God-given task.
The man should have learned from this that God would give him what he needed in due time. He should have also learned that God would take him through this sleep-death to glorify him.
The man wants to move to the next stage of rule too soon, so he willfully allows the woman to negotiate with the serpent, eat the fruit, and then he joins her. The fruit was able to make one wise (Gen 3.6), and man grasps for that wisdom before the time and disorders the whole world to the point that it can’t be put in order as it should be.
His rebellion against God corrupted everything. Nothing is right. He rips his relationships apart so they can only be a shadow of what they could have been. When he falls into his death-sleep, he won’t wake up to greater glorification as he did when the woman was created. Sin will hold him in death until sin itself is overcome.
Sin and Satan take full advantage of this and rule tyrannically over man, keeping him in the bondage of the fear of death, attacking him through others who threaten death. Instead of telling man, “You will not surely die,” the serpent says, “You will surely die, never to be raised again. You will suffer for all eternity in death. There will be no glory on the other side of death.”
To gain rule over sin, Satan, and death, a man will have to eat of a particular Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that will take him through death to have the wisdom to rule them. If man can get to the other side of death in resurrection, never to die again in the corruption of sin, he can rule death, taking away its sting. Sin is the sting of death (1Cor 15.56). If a man can do this, he can restore order the way God intended from the beginning and remove the fear of death by the promise of a resurrection on the other side of death. If this man can endure this death and be resurrected in this way, the righteous will rule as intended. Even death itself will be subject to man.
But getting to that place will be difficult because of sin. Gaining wisdom to rule this way is an arduous trek that ends in tasting death that is now the bitter fruit of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. John records the final stages of this journey toward the Tree in his passion narrative in John 18—19.
Jesus has been a faithful son up to this point, taking dominion over the old creation as much as possible. He has done what Adam failed to do. He has turned water into wine, healed the sick, subdued the waves of the sea by walking on them, subdued animals, and even raised the dead within the old creation. He has been a faithful king who has grown in wisdom. Now he must go past the original Adam in every respect.
He is ready for more. Having proven that he is willing to take on death, the Father is prepared to give him rule over it. He will have to taste death, succumbing to its power to do that. Only after he experiences death will he be ready to rule over it and use it for his own purposes. Only after he experiences death will he be qualified as a king to make judgments concerning who lives and who dies eternally.
Jesus will be ready to rule sin, Satan, and death when he takes on all of them and wins. This is what the king must do. This is how he will be “perfected through suffering,” as the writer of Hebrews tells us he was (Heb 2.10).
The theme of kingship is prominent throughout John’s Passion narrative. References to kingship occur no less than thirteen times when you include talk about a kingdom. As he was acclaimed king upon his entrance to Jerusalem, now in his passion, he is proclaimed king, not to joyful shouts of praise and prayers for deliverance, but rather as a condemnable accusation. Jesus is declared “King of the Jews.” He doesn’t deny the title. He accepts it even though somewhat enigmatically.
In his acquiescence to those who would put him to death, the king is doing what a faithful king does: laying down his life for the sake of his people. His people need him to rule over sin, Satan, and death so they can come into the inheritance promised to them. So, Jesus, the king, will go to his death to rule over all of these opposing powers for the sake of his people. In this way, he is serving them.
Up to this point in creation, any king that grew in wisdom only did so to rule a bit more of the old creation. Suffering was real and intense for many, but it was limited, never conquering the root problem of sin. Jesus’ mission was to re-make the world, putting everything in its proper order, including sin, Satan, and death itself. Jesus endured suffering beyond any king until now because he is being exalted to a greater position than any king before him. He is betrayed by one of his closest counselors, Judas. His friends forsake him in his hour of need. At the point of death, where many kings were rescued from the plots and devices of the enemy, God did not rescue Jesus. The Father hands Jesus over to death. He is forsaken by the Father. He knows death to the greatest degree, a death that no one up to this time has experienced.
The Father led him to this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the cross, and instructed him that the eating of this bitter fruit was the only way the world would be put right; it was the only way he would be a fit king to rule over the nations, administering life and death as the Father desires. Jesus willingly eats the fruit of the Tree and tastes death for the sake of man (Heb 2.9).
The question is, Will the Father declare him to be a fit King by glorifying him through resurrection? Will he be proclaimed as ruler over them after suffering the tyranny of sin, death, and Satan? Does this death experience give him the right to be king over everything in the created order?
That announcement will come Sunday morning loud and clear.
