August 8

The Shadow of the Cross

Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again. — Mark 8:31 BSB

Peter made a bold confession of faith in Jesus as the promised Messiah, but now Jesus tells him what the Messiahship truly involves and how He will fulfill His mission. It wasn’t what the disciples expected. They were looking for a Messiah who would establish an earthly kingdom, but Jesus tells them that His path to the throne would lead through suffering and the cross.

Even though Jesus’ way involved pain and sorrow, it would ultimately end in glory—“after three days, rise again.” So, His mission would not fail. In the book of Acts, the apostle Paul tells believers, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” The hardship is real, but we will go through it, and beyond it lies the kingdom of heaven. The 23rd Psalm says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” but it also promises that the valley is something we pass through, with “the house of the Lord” waiting on the other side. The suffering of Christ may have seemed like failure, but His resurrection brought victory, glory, and eternal joy. He was simply passing through death, as it was the appointed way to His throne.

This calm announcement by Jesus about what awaited Him reminds us of an element of sorrow in Christ’s life from which we are spared. He knew every detail of the suffering He would face, and the shadow of the cross loomed over Him throughout His life. We sometimes say we wish we knew what the future holds, but it is a blessing that we don’t. Knowing the future would only darken our present and make it harder for us to fulfill our daily duties. It is much better that the future is hidden from us.