Because they asked to sit in the important seats in the coming kingdom, Jesus tells James and John are thinking like the Gentiles. James and John are trying to gain an advantage so that they are more honored than the other disciples.
The gentile rulers “lord it over them” (20:25). The verb translated “lord it over” (κατακυριεύω) refers to having mastery or dominion over another. 1 Peter 5:3 says the elders are to be shepherds of the flock, rather than domineering over their charges. The Greco-Roman world was an honor/shame culture. Any Roman elite pursed his own honor at the expense of everyone else. You did what you needed to do to get ahead of your rivals, just as James and John did by asking for prominent seats when Jesus’s kingdom arrives.
Jesus requires his disciples to completely reverse the pursuit of honor common in the ancient world. Matthew 8:11-12 refers to Pharisees pursuing the best seats at meals and doing things which brought honor to themselves. In that context Jesus reverses the expectation most people had: Jews like the Pharisees would be the first to enter the Kingdom of God and sit at the best table along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But Jesus says they will not even get into that banquet, but rather they will be left on the outside in the darkness.
In Luke 14:7-11 Jesus reverses the common Greco-Roman and Jewish practice of trying to sit in the best seats at a wedding banquet. It is better, Jesus says, to sit in a humble seat and have the host upgrade you to a better seat than to take a better seat and be sent down to a less honored seat.
If you want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, you must be a servant (Matt 20:26-27). Jesus will say something similar in Matthew 23:11-12, contrasting the attitude his disciples ought to have with the hypocritical Pharisees. Contemporary American Christian culture has the same pursuit of honor like the Greco Roman world. Pastors routinely ask, “How big is your church?” Can you imagine Joel Osteen helping set up the chairs in the fellowship hall? Mowing the church lawn?
Jesus himself is the model for serving one another. The Son of Man came to be a servant and a ransom for many (Matt 20:28). Jesus regularly uses the phrase Son of Man to refer to himself, likely evoking Daniel 7:13-14. The Son of Man is about to arrive in Jerusalem, and many expected him to begin to rule with the authority of the Ancient of Days (and do some serious smiting of those who deserve to be judged).
But Jesus connects the (messianic) Son of Man with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. The son of man is not coming to be served as a conquering king rendering judgment, but as a servant of God who will suffer on behalf of many. Isaiah 53 describes the suffering of the servant of the Lord. The identity of that servant was open to interpretation for Jews in the first century. In Acts 8:30-35 the Ethiopian eunuch asks Philip whether the Isaiah 53 referred to the prophet himself or someone else.
The word ransom also evokes several passages in the Old Testament. In Psalm 49:7–9, “no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life.” The noun λύτρον and the verb λυτρόω refer to “deliverance by payment, is used in non-biblical Greek primarily of the manumission of slaves and release of prisoners of war” (Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:95).
The word is translated either “ransom” or “redeem.” In English, a ransom is a price paid to obtain the release of someone who has been kidnapped (mostly in movies!) But the word in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint and the New Testament has the sense of a price paid to obtain a slave, to set them free from their old master and become the possession of a new master.
In Exodus 6:6 the word is sued in the context of God rescuing his people out of their slavery in Egypt, “I will redeem (translating גאל) you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.” The Hebrew verb as the sense of reclaiming something as one’s own (in this case, Israel is God’s people enslaved by the Egyptians, the Exodus events reclaim them as his own people). Similarly, Exodus 15:13 God has redeemed his people because of his steadfast love. In Romans 6:15-18 Paul uses the metaphor of slavery to describe salvation, we were once slaves obedient to a master (sin), but we have been set free from that service and now are slaves to righteousness.
Many in Second Temple Period Judaism thought Messiah will redeem Israel. Luke 24:21, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus thought Jesus was about to “redeem Israel.” In 1 Maccabees, Judas prays before the battle at Emmaus, evoking the memory of God rescuing his people from Egypt and asking God to act favorably and “crush out enemies” so that “Then all the Gentiles will know that there is one who redeems and saves Israel” (1 Macc 4:11). Psalms of Solomon 8:30 asks the Lord to “turn your mercy upon us and be compassionate” (v. 27) so that the Gentiles do not “devour them as if there were no redeemer.” Psalms of Solomon 9:1 looks back to the Exodus events as when the Lord redeemed them.
Psalms of Solomon 8:30 Do not neglect us, Our God, lest the gentiles devour us as if there were no redeemer.
Psalms of Solomon 9:1 When Israel was taken into exile to a foreign country, when they neglected the Lord, who had redeemed them
Matthew 20:28 anticipates what Jesus is about to do as he arrives in Jerusalem. Although his disciples and the crowds are expecting a messiah who conquers, he will be the suffering servant who defeats the real enemy of humanity, sin and death.
Well a ransom is something that needs to be paid, somehow. When Jesus died, He paid the ransom for our sins. We were dead to sin, not really having a way to pay it. We had a ransom that we could never pay. Jesus lived a perfect life, and died, being able to pay for us. It wouldn’t ever work if He wasn’t perfect, because something with a flaw, even just 1, can’t replace something perfect.
Jesus’ death is like a ransom because he gave his life for us so that we could be set free from our sins. “Jesus himself is the model for serving one another. The Son of Man came to be a servant and a ransom for many (Matt 20:28).” (Long) A ransom technically means something being given up whether that’s money or some other payment. Jesus’ death was like a ransom because his life was given up so we could be set free from our sins and have eternal life. See we represented a prisoner because we were shackled by our sins and Jesus giving His life set us free. I think it is super powerful to think about Jesus’ death in this way, he cared for and loved us so much that He gave His own life just to save us. I think it is really important to be grateful every day that Jesus died on the cross for us.
The life of Jesus encompasses what it means to be a suffering servant and be an example for those who follow Him. The life of Christ was expected to look different by those expecting Him. Many expected a conqueror to free them from Roman rule. However, when looking at the life of Jesus it is evident that He came conquer the sins for the world. “Jesus the Suffering Prophet. In the same vein, Jesus often spoke of the persecution and murder of the Old Testament prophets and identified himself with them” (Strauss, 2011, Did Jesus Foresee His Death? section). Jesus knew that His life was leading up to His death to be a ransom for many. Jesus came serving those who He came to save and desired for those who heard His words to follow His example. Jesus desires the same thing today as we are a part of the body of Christ. “Jesus himself is the model for serving one another. The Son of Man came to be a servant and a ransom for many (Matt 20:28)” (Long,2022). As the cross approached closer, Jesus becomes increasingly clear about His mission here on earth. He came with the message that He would be a suffering servant for many and be an example to those who desire to be adopted into the family of God.
And the question really is, are James and John ready to serve all people, and drink just a part of the cup Jesus had to bear? to take that one step further, are we ready to do that? To be great in the kingdom of God one must become a servant of all, not be served by all. I struggle with this a lot, whether it’s just something simple like I am too tired to serve somebody right now (Silliest reason not to serve somebody, but I find it is my most common excuse) to sometimes feeling like I am above serving that person, or that person needs to serve themselves before I can serve them.
In all reality, does Jesus call us to serve all people when it is convenient to us? Or does he say to serve all people who you deem are deserving of being served? Obviously, he does not, but we fall into these spaces often. We don’t serve the homeless guy with the sign on the street because he very obviously needs to help himself out a little bit in order for us to truly help him, (I do this one a lot) or maybe we choose to not interact with that very obviously depressed and lonely person in our congregation because we have football to get home to. Are we ready to drink even a small amount of Jesus’s cup?
How is Jesus’s death like a Ransom? I think the phrase used in the first paragraph with the honor/shame culture that the Greco-Roman world thrived on created a mindset of every action being of some effect to a person’s power and ability to control the position. It looks at the need to step on others to gain power and honor. It creates a necessary ability to be cold and ruthless to have power or even live well in a society that is built on mastery. which is why when in Luke 14:7-11 and in Matthew 8:11-12, when Jesus contrasts the Pharisees’ way of life and pursuits of power within the tradition and religion they so highly considered. He contrasts their life style to bring clarity to his goals and how he lived his life in accordance to God’s will and prophecy to be a sacrifice to his people in both life and death like Strauss mentions the “Jesus did not come be served be to serve” idea in Isaiah and talks about the core idea was passed to his Disciples and then in extension his followers and believers so that the gospel and his mission would be worked through our lives by being a ransom for our sins and how his death is not defeat but a atonement and an ultimate win. In Strauss he makes the distinction between how his prophecies his sacrifice and his holiness within the comparison to the Holy temple and the prediction with the Roman centurion when the crucifixion happens.
Like you said in your blog post, typically ransom means to obtain a certain price when someone is kidnapped. It is very interesting that in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the meaning is solely focused on the price paid to obtain a slave and set them free from an old master, to send them to a new master. Jesus’s death is a ransom because Jesus paid the price to free us from slavery (sin) and now He is our master (savior). We always see Jesus as the suffering servant in Strauss. “ The primary theme of the passion narrative is the fulfillment of Scripture, as Jesus the righteous and innocent Suffering Servant remains faithful to God’s purpose and calling” (Strauss, 2020). Jesus put His life down for us to serve us. He broke away the chains of sin and served us eternal life through Him. I am always just in awe, because even as we try to be the best servants today we fail. We fail to serve our neighbors daily, yet Jesus laid his life down for us to have eternal life through Him. It truly is such a blessing to serve a perfect God. I am so thankful that Jesus paid our ransom for our sins. Which you always hear He paid the “price” which ransom also means price. Although I feel like we should just always say Jesus’s death is a ransom because it truly makes us sit back and feel the heaviness of what Jesus did for us. Paying the price is such a common saying, but when we hear ransom I just feel like we appreciate it even more and it allows us to be the amount of thankful that we should be that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
When I think of a ransom, I instantly think of a debt or payment that needs to be paid in order for someone to be released. When it comes to Jesus, his death was like a ransom for sinners because it served in a sense as a form of payment that ultimately defeated death, and set the captives (believers) free of their bondage from sin. As followers of Jesus we know that when we commit our lives to Jesus Christ, and put their faith in him, that our debt has been paid, through Jesus’s death, and resurrection on the third day. Jesus mercifully paid a debt that no mortal human could have ever paid, so that we can have a relationship with him, and live eternally with him. Jesus’s death can be viewed as a substitution for humanity, as we overcame sin and death for everyone who calls upon his name. “Jesus repeatedly hints that his message of salvation is a universal one that will ultimately go to all people everywhere Strauss.”