Audio
Transcript
Sermon text: Mark 1:9–11
[9] It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. [10] And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. [11] Then a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
The Gospel According to Mark presents to us the Good News of Jesus Christ, explaining what God has done in the Person and through the work of His Son to save sinners for the praise of His glorious grace. It teaches us that the gospel is not something we do, but something Christ has done.[1] It’s the shortest of the Gospel accounts, but its conciseness contributes all the more to the density with which it testifies to the truth about Jesus.
It introduces us to Jesus’s titles, His teachings, and His deeds. It presents Jesus as the Lord, the Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Man, and as the Servant of YHWH spoken of by Isaiah the prophet. Here we see a specimen of flawless humanity, fleshed out in our fallen world, buffeted with temptation yet never tainted. And here we see perfect deity, cloaked in a veil of flesh, with a peculiar glory that shines through the humanity, discernible to the eye of faith, yet invisible to the eye of the flesh. Here we see perfect deity unified with perfect humanity, two distinct natures conjoined inseparably yet without mixture, constituting the matchless Person who is the “one and only Mediator between God and man” (1 Tim. 2:5). Mark is saying to us, “Come and meet Jesus Christ. Come and see who He truly is. And confess with me that He is the Son of God to the salvation of your soul and the satisfaction of your heart.”
Last week we met John the Baptist and we considered his prophetic background, his peculiar baptism, and his preparatory message. John was, as Jesus put it, “a burning and shining light” (John 5:35). But his light was like that of the moon compared to the sun.[2] John’s was a reflective light, not the source of light. As John 1:6–9 says, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” John’s testimony was meant to reflect the Son’s glory, to point everyone beyond the forerunner to the King who would come after him. So as Jesus begins His ministry, John quickly, willingly steps into the background and concedes the center stage to Jesus. John’s ministry lasted only about six months, and then he was imprisoned, beheaded, and graduated to glory. And the transitionary movement from John’s role on the center stage of salvation history to Jesus’s role on the center stage—that transitionary moment formally took place at the baptism of Jesus.
As Mark introduces us to Jesus starting in verse 9, He makes no editorial comment about who Jesus is beyond that made in verse one where He called Him, “the Son of God.” We would almost expect him to expound on that, much like the Apostle John does in his own Gospel account, but Mark is not big on theological commentary. Instead, he relays the historical deeds of Jesus and intends for the history to speak for itself. The reader must make the theological connections. And these connections must be made by comparing Old Testament Messianic expectation with the facts about the historical life of Christ. The text that we have before us is masterful in its manner of jam-packing Christological truth within the matrix of succinct, concise historical narrative. As Jesus abruptly shows up on the scene and is baptized, the text provides us with a flood of revelation concerning who He really is. The purpose of this text is to disclose to the reader, who has eyes to see, the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth.
So our outline will follow Mark’s intended purpose. I have three points, each of which coincides with each of the three verses of our text. Speaking of Jesus, let’s consider: (1) His vicarious identification (v. 9); (2) His Messianic identification (v. 10); and (3) His divine identification (v. 11).
I. His Vicarious Identification
Verse 9: “It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” This was the initiation rite marking the formal commencement of Jesus’s public ministry. And right at the outset, our Lord begins His ministry by formally identifying with the sinners He came to redeem. Hence the significance of Jesus’s baptism can be summarized in this: His vicarious identification with sinners as the sin-bearer.
“Vicarious” means “performed, exercised, received, or suffered in the place of another,” or “taking the place of another person, acting or serving as a substitute.”[3] Jesus’s participation in baptism was His voluntary, formal, public assumption of the penalty of sin and death upon Himself, in the place and stead of sinners, in anticipation of His death and resurrection on their behalf. The text of Mark’s Gospel indicates that there is vicarious identification taking place. I’ll explain.
We will recall that John’s baptism, according to verse 4, was “a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Yet Jesus comes out to be baptized, and He has no sins to repent from. First Peter 1:22: “[He] committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth”; Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin”; and Hebrews 7:26: “For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” We are conceived and born in sin, but Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit. In Luke 1:35, the angel said to Mary, “that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.” He was born holy, impeccable in His divine nature.
So why was Jesus baptized? Mark wants us to put the pieces together and make the appropriate theological connections, because they point to Jesus’s identity and mission. Mark is relating the history; it’s up to the reader to discern the significance.
The fact is, Jesus is God’s vicar before men, and He is the sinner’s vicar before God. As the God-man, He represents God to men, and He represents men before God. And there are three clear indications in the text that Jesus assumes the place of sinners as their substitute and vicariously identifies with them by undergoing baptism. Each one is a contrastive parallel, or what we call an antithetical juxtaposition.
First, there is a parallel yet a contrast between the multitudes confessing their sins and the Father’s affirmation that implies that Jesus is without sin. Mark 1:5 says that all those who went out to the Jordan were baptized “confessing their sins.” And then Jesus goes out, and is baptized in verse 9, and there is no record of any sin confessed. To the contrary, in verse 11, the voice of the Father confirms that Jesus is well-pleasing to Him as the perfectly obedient Son. So by being baptized, Jesus is the sinless One who assumes the place of the many sinners.
Second, there is a contrastive parallel between the places of origin (where they come from). The sinful multitudes come out from Judea and Jerusalem (in v. 5), whereas Jesus comes out from Nazareth (in v. 9). Jerusalem was the place of God’s favor. Psalm 135:21 says, “Blessed be the LORD out of Zion, who dwells in Jerusalem!” Jerusalem was the place of God’s special presence and favor. Nazareth, on the other hand, was a despised city, associated with sinners and rebels and political outcasts. This is reflected in Nathaniel’s attitude initially when he heard Jesus was from Nazareth, and he said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Galilee, where Nazareth was located, was on the outskirts of the Promised Land, far to the north. So in Mark 1, we see sinners dwelling in Jerusalem where they didn’t deserve to dwell; and Jesus from Nazareth who had His rightful throne in Jerusalem yet dwelled in the city of sinners. The sinless One was is portrayed as the outcast while sinners are permitted to dwell in the place of God’s house. Vicarious identification.
Third, the grammatical construction of the Greek places the two in parallel by using a similar construction. First there is the subject undergoing baptism (the multitudes, and Jesus); then there is a verb of motion (they “went out” and Jesus “came”); then there is the passive verb, they “were baptized” and He “was baptized”; then there is the agent performing the baptism specified (“by John”) followed the object into which they were baptized (“in the Jordan”). So, the same parallel construction is used to point to a theological parallel: (1) subjects of baptism, (2) verb of motion, (3) the verbal action, (4) the administrator of baptism, and (5) the object of baptism. The parallel is too neat to pass over. Mark is teaching by his syntax that Jesus repeats the precise pattern of the multitudes because He is assuming their place vicariously.
The Gospel of Matthew adds weight to this. Because there, we read this in chapter 3, verses 13–15: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent Him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?’ But Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he allowed Him.” Jesus’s submission to John’s baptism was His seal of approval on John’s message. But even more than that, it was Jesus’s obedience to the commandment of God that Israel should be baptized by John. Jesus fulfilled the law in order to establish righteousness on behalf of those He came to save.
Every believer knows that Jesus had to die on the cross to pay for our sins. But what we often fail to realize is that He had to keep the law on our behalf by living a full, righteous life. That’s why He was born under the law. Galatians 4:4–5 says, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Romans 5:18–19 describes Christ’s active obedience in establishing the sinner’s justification before God: “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”
So in justification, God doesn’t only forgive our sins, leaving us in a state of neutrality. He imputes to us the perfect, flawless righteousness that Jesus Christ established through His own obedience. To use the language of Zechariah 3, He removes our filthy garments, but He doesn’t leave us naked, like Adam before the Fall. He clothes us with “rich robes” (Zech. 3:4), which are priestly garments of spotless and holy righteousness so that we may dwell in the presence of God in the beauty of perfect holiness in His sight. So in Christ is fulfilled what Isaiah 61says: Christ was sent “to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them…the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,” so we can say, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
Jesus’s baptism shows that He took our place before God so that we may assume His place of favor and glory before the throne. Second Corinthians 5:21: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” This is the glory of justification; it’s based on a twofold imputation: our filthy sin to Christ, and His beautiful righteousness to us. All that is possible because of Christ’s vicarious identification with sin and death on our behalf.
II. His Messianic Identification
Mark 1:10 says that when Jesus was baptized, “immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. “Immediately” is one of Mark’s favorite words. It occurs 11 times in chapter one and 37 times in the Gospel as a whole. “Immediately” calls attention to the action-packed, dramatic development of the Gospel, and conveys the events with more graphic vividness. Never in the history of the world has so much meaningful action occurred in such a short time. The coming of Jesus marks the era of the rapid fulfillment of prophetic expectation: one thing happens right after another in rapid succession. Before Peter and the apostles had time to process one thing, immediately, another thing was already transpiring! And verse 10 gives us the next major event of our text. Before we can process the fullness of what happened in Jesus’s baptism, immediately, the heavens split open!
Here we have the heavenly attestation of Jesus’s Messianic identity. The Messiah, our Savior, was promised ever sin man’s fall into sin. The first promise of His coming was Genesis 3:15. He was anticipated by Adam and Eve and Seth and Noah and Abraham and David. And like David, He would be God’s anointed one. That’s what Messiah (מָשִׁיַח) means: “the Anointed One.” In Greek it’s Χριστός, cognate to the verb χρίω, which means “to anoint.”
The name derives from the symbolism of that ancient practice of the Hebrews, whereby they would fill a horn with olive oil and pour it over the head of a king when his reign was inaugurated. The horn represented authority or power, and the oil represented the Holy Spirit, poured out to empower for service. The symbolism pointed to spiritual reality: that God invested His king with authority and power and enabled him to perform the duties of kingship by the supernatural enablement of the Holy Spirit.
But when Jesus begins His ministry, He is not anointed as king by a prophet with a horn of oil. Rather, He is anointed as the Christ-King directly by God straight from heaven. The purpose of verse 10 is to point to Jesus as the true and ultimate Anointed One, the Messiah who came as Servant-King to set captive Israel free. First John 3:8: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” As the Messiah, Jesus wasn’t just the Son of David but the Lord of David. As David himself said, “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’” David calls him his Lord, because He was greater than David and He was anointed to do what David could not. David could destroy the Philistines, but he was powerless to destroy the devil.
Now in this scene in Mark 1:10, there is a manifold significance to it. A manifold significance. There is at least a six-fold significance to what is happening in this verse.
First, it is significant for Christ’s office as Messiah and Savior. The Spirit anoints Him to function in a ministerial capacity as the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King. Isaiah 61:1–2: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” The acceptable year of the Lord refers to the year of Jubilee, when all slaves would be freed in Israel, and all debts would be wiped out. In Jesus’s baptism, He was anointed to bring to us the ultimate redemption from sin and the pardon of all our debts before God. He came to bring the eternal jubilee, the perfect and eternal redemption.
Second, the Spirit enables Him as the perfect Man to perform His work with the power of God, without diminishing His perfect Manhood. Jesus did not deify His humanity, but He willingly subjected Himself to the limitations and frailties of humanity as our Mediator. He did His mighty works therefore by the power of the Spirit. Isaiah 42:1 says, “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice [or righteousness] to the Gentiles.” He was endowed with the sevenfold Spirit, the fullness of the Spirit. Isaiah 11:1–2 says, “There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.” John 3:34 describes Christ: “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.” In fact, His endowment with the Spirit by the Father in time was a reflection of His eternal relationship with the Father and the Spirit in eternity; so in Jesus’s baptism we see a glimpse of the Trinity.
With the fullness of the Spirit, Jesus cast out demons as with the finger of God. He worked miracles, combated Satan, and preached the Good News. Peter preached to the household of Cornelius, saying, “The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ—He is Lord of all—that word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:36–38). The Spirit’s empowerment did not mitigate or lesson His sufferings; rather, the Spirit upheld His humanity so that it wouldn’t collapse under the weight of sin and God’s wrath. That’s why Hebrews 9:14 says, “through the eternal Spirit [He] offered Himself without spot to God,” as He died on the cross. The Spirit anointed Him as our Priest to suffer infinite wrath for us.
Third, cosmically redemptive significance. Mark 1:19 says that Jesus, “coming up from the water,” that is, emerging from the water into which He was immersed, “He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending.” In the Greek the heavens didn’t merely open; the word used is σχίζω. It’s a violent word. It literally means “to divide by use of force, split, divide, separate, tear apart.”[4] One scholar notes that this word “appears in Jewish literature for cataclysmic demonstrations of God’s power, such as the dividing of the Red Sea (Exod 14:21), Moses’ cleaving the rock (Isa 48:21), the splitting of the Mount of Olives on the Day of the Lord (Zech 14:4).”[5] There is only one other place Mark uses the same verb, in chapter 15:38: when Jesus died on the cross, He cried out and breathed His last, and we read, “Then the veil of the temple was torn [σχίζω] in two from top to bottom.” Both tearings—that of the heavens and that of the temple veil—are followed immediately in the next verse by a declaration that Jesus is the Son of God, first by the Father and then by the Roman centurion attending His crucifixion.
The temple itself had cosmic and redemptive significance. It signified God’s dwelling place and it was an archetype of heaven. To go beyond the veil was to enter God’s immediate presence, as if in heaven itself. And when Jesus died, the veil was torn, not so much so that we could in. Rather, it was so that the divine presence within could get out and be unleashed on a cosmic scale. In Numbers 14:21, God had sworn, saying, “truly, as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.” Habakkuk 2:14 says, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 52:10 says, “The LORD has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” And speaking to Messiah, Isaiah 49:6 says, “I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.” The Messiah unleashes God’s glory and heaven’s presence upon the earth. “Through Jesus a new connection between heaven and earth, between God and humans, is established.”[6]
So when Jesus was baptized, Mark is showing that the prayer of the prophet in Isaiah 64:1 began to be fulfilled, where he prayed, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence.” That prayer in the Book of Isaiah is followed by the introduction of the new creation, by the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and the introduction of a new heavens and new earth as God’s cosmic temple! That’s what Jesus came to do!
So God rended the heavens asunder and He came down in the Spirit. And in Mark 1:10, the Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove and rested upon Jesus. The Spirit here is portrayed in avian (birdlike) imagery. This harks back all the way to Genesis 1:2, when God created the heavens and the earth, and “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” That too is avian imagery. The word “hovering” can be translated “fluttering,” like a bird.
The same word appears in Deuteronomy 32:11, which reads, “As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so the LORD alone led him [Jacob, Israel], and there was no foreign god with him.” This means that the Lord in the exodus “fluttered” over Israel with His Spirit, with His glorious shekinah presence, and created a new nation out of them. It was a type of the new creation. Like the Spirit in the beginning fluttered over the great deep and brought creation out of chaos. So Jesus is endowed with the avian Spirit, the efficient Agent of the creative power of God, because Jesus will become the Agent whose work brings about the new creation. The chaos of the curse will be reversed, the destructive and de-creational power of sin will be overturned, and Jesus will make all things new.
Fourth, Jesus’s baptism has gospel significance. In the events of these verses, we see the gospel in a nutshell. It’s a picture of what Jesus would do when He died and rose again and opened up heaven so that the Spirit descended at Pentecost and His body, the church, received divine approbation on account of His work. You see the parallels? Baptism is a death, a burial. Romans 6:3–4: “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” In Noah’s time, the old world died by the flood of a great baptism. And Noah emerged into a new world, cleansed from sin as a type, as a type of the new creation. Well Jesus was plunged into the water of the Jordan to symbolize his commitment to undergo death on behalf of the sinners He vicariously represented there. And when He emerged from that water, it was a type and picture of His resurrection. And it was upon His actual bodily resurrection that He was invested with the Spirit-Comforter to pour out on His church.
III. His Divine Identification
Mark 1:11: “Then a voice came from heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” Time fails us to unpack this as we ought, but we’ll return to it again when the Father makes this same declaration on the Mount of Transfiguration. Suffice to say for now that this is an open declaration of the Father’s infinite love and perfect delight in His Son, as well as the divine testimony concerning the identity of Jesus as the Son of God.
You may be surprised to hear that the Father’s voice actually combines three Old Testament passages into one. The first is Psalm 2:7, which reads: “I will declare the decree: The LORD has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.” This was a coronation Psalm, indicating the inauguration of Messiah’s reign. The second is Isaiah 42:1: “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!” All the Father’s delight is in the Son because of who is the Son in eternal relationship with the Father. He is the eternal Son “in the bosom of the Father,” dwelling within the divine essence of the Godhead (John 1:18).
And the third text will surprise you more. When He says, “beloved Son,” there is only one Old Testament passage that uses that language. You know what it is? Genesis 22, where God said to Abraham to take his only beloved son and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah. And we know what the lesson was from that story! Substitutionary atonement. The Lord provided the lamb. Thus by incorporating the language from Genesis 22 into the declaration of Mark 1:11, there is an implicit expectation that substitutionary death might be in the purview of the mission of this Son.
Finally, we ought to ask ourselves: have we embraced Jesus Christ as the Bible presents Him to us? Have we received Him as our vicarious sin-bearing Substitute? Have we trusted in Him as our Messiah-King? Have we received the Holy Spirit through faith in Him to be made a new creation by His grace? Have we confessed that He is the divine Son, not only in whom the Father delights, but also in whom we delight? There is salvation in no other way.
The Son is not a beggar asking for our permission; He is our King to whom every knee must bow. God doesn’t ask us our opinion, if we will be kind enough to accept His King or not. You may have heard, “God is a gentleman and never forces himself on anybody; He leaves it up to man’s almighty free will and is basically impotent before the almighty will of man.” That’s not what Psalm 2 says, from which the Father is quoting. Listen to Psalm 2:8–12:
Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’” Now therefore, be wise, O kings; be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.
You see, the King who came as the meek and dove-like Messiah is coming again with the ferocity of a lion. I love that in the Book of Revelation chapter 5 where John is introduced to the Lion! “’Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.’ And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.”
The Son has been appointed to reign on Zions holy hill. Right now you can know the Lion as your Lamb. Right now he is reigning in grace. But he’s coming again to reign in power. He doesn’t need our permission!
In our modern day we have lost the knowledge of what kingship entails. Don’t look at King Charles for the image. He’s pathetic. I can say that because I’m an American and I haven’t forgotten 1776. But the real concept of kingship stems from the ancient world.
The kings were the makers of history. They were the lords, they were the sages, they were the providers, they were the judges, they were the warriors, they were the saviors who rescued their people from their enemies. The worst thing you could have done in the ancient world was to offend a king and fall under His displeasure. But the best thing that could happen to you was to have a good King. Brothers, sisters, and friends, God has given us the best King of all. A King who is Almighty in power, full of grace and truth, compassionate and longsuffering toward sinners, and who never makes a mistake. The King of kings and Lord of lords.
Submit to Him as your Lord and He will be your Benefactor. Acknowledge Him as your sage and you’ll be truly wise. Realize He is your judge and come to terms with Him now before you stand before His bema seat. Petition Him to be your warrior and defeat your greatest enemies, to break the yoke of the sins that bind you, to cast out demons and regrets that haunt you, to shut the mouth of the accuser who condemns you, to subdue the grim reaper whose sickle is pursuing you. Receive Him as your Savior and let Him rescue you from a fallen cursed earth doomed to futility and destruction. Believe in Him, and you’ll know the joy of the torn veil, the blessed presence and glory of God that’ll give your soul heaven on earth now, and in the age to come, heaven on earth forever.
———————
Notes:
[1] See 1 Cor. 15:3–4.
[2] Cf. John 5:36a.
[3] Definitions from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vicarious.
[4] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 981.
[5] James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2002), 35–36.
[6] Hartman; quoted in David E. Garland, A Theology of Mark’s Gospel: Good News About Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, Biblical Theology of the New Testament, ed. Andreas J. Kostenberger (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 214.
