Mark 12:36. David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’
In Mark 12:36 Jesus is making one of the boldest claims to his deity and messiahship in all of scripture. He is uniting himself to the prophecy of Psalm 110. This was a prophecy that every Jewish scribe and scholar knew was about the son of David, Messiah. But what they missed from Psalm 110 is that the Messiah would also be the Son of God. The Messiah is not only greater than David (my Lord) but also invited to co-rule with God himself.
Now it is important that we read this amazing claim by Jesus in the light of the entire gospel of Mark. We must especially focus on where the story has come from and where it is headed. And the answer to this is the humiliation of the cross. Jesus has already predicted that, as the Messiah, he must suffer and die. And by the end of this gospel Jesus will be tortured, humiliated and put to death on a criminal’s cross.
The exalted Christ of Psalm 110 is also the humiliated crucified Jesus of history.
But why is this important to us? One way is that it informs us that all of the amazing spiritual blessings that we received from our union with the exalted Christ must NEVER be separated from the call to live in the humiliation and self-sacrifice of the crucified Jesus. We are given every spiritual blessing in Christ so that we can be a “living sacrifice.” So that we can have the “mind of Christ” which brings us to “considering others more important than ourselves.” So that we can “share in the fellowship of his suffering becoming like him in his death.” So that we can “fill up in our flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” So that we can “love one another as Christ has loved us.”
Have you separated blessings from the life of crucifixion? If so, then you have separated Christ from Jesus.
