Good Friday | The Son Enthroned as the Servant
Enthroned on a Cross?
Good Friday. The day Christ was enthroned as King. The day we discover the type of King He is…
And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
Mark 15:37–39)
It is the Roman centurion—a symbol of power, empire, and violence—who makes the infamous confession: “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
But how can this be? To first-century ears, “Son of God” carried a connotation of majesty, authority, triumph, and power. Psalm 2 speaks of the Son who will “break the nations with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” The jewish imagination was full of imagery of a conquering King, not a crucified man.
Yet Mark’s Gospel has been preparing us for this moment from the beginning. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father declares from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11).
This declaration is loaded with meaning. In it, the Father identifies Jesus both as the Son of Psalm 2, God’s anointed Kin, and as the Servant of Isaiah 42, the anointed Sufferer: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him…” (Isaiah 42:1).
So who is Jesus? The Son or the Servant? The conquering King or the suffering servant?
Mark’s gospel answers this question with the paradoxical reality: In Jesus the Son and the Servant converge.
And nowhere does Jesus' identity become more clear than on Good Friday.
As Mark tells the story of the cross, he echoes the Servant Songs of Isaiah 53 with haunting precision. Jesus is silent before His accusers, rejected and despised, pierced and crushed for our iniquities. He is misunderstood, mocked, slaughtered like a lamb, and buried with the guilty—though He Himself is innocent. He is the suffering Servant.
Yet in this very moment—when Jesus breathes His last—the centurion looks up and confesses: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).
Mark is showing us that the true identity of the Son is revealed most clearly in His suffering. The throne He ascends is a Roman cross. The crown He wears is made of thorns. The Son of God is enthroned as the Servant who suffers.
Paul echoes this reality in Philippians 2:
Though He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant… He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him…
Philippians 2:6–9
According to Paul, the very nature of God is the nature of a servant. The form of God is the form of a servant. To see Jesus as the Son is to see Him as the one who serves. This is the identity of God.
He is the one who overcomes evil with good. Who loves to the end, enters our weakness, suffers alongside us, pays our debt, bears our shame, is whipped, scourged and crucified as ransom for the sin of the world.
As theologian Richard Bauckham puts it:
Only when we understand that God’s characteristic action is to give himself away in love can we understand that the cross is not an exception to God’s being but the supreme expression of it.
Richard Bauckham, God Crucified
He suggests:
The New Testament does not add the humiliation of the cross to the exaltation of divine status, but defines divine identity precisely in the terms of the cross.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel
What is your view of God?
Do you find Him distant, demanding, or disinterested? How do you view His power? Do you see Him as Christ revealed Himself to be on the cross—a God who serves?
He is not a God who needs to be bribed with our goodness. He is the God who gave Himself in our place. He is not a God who demands our service. He is a God who came to serve. He is the Son who suffers. He is the Servant who saves.
So what does this mean? At the cross, Jesus redefines power. His power is made perfect in weakness. It is through His death that He triumphs.
Paul emphasizes the paradoxical power of the cross when he writes:
God made [us] alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
Colossians 2:14–15
The Son conquers by being conquered. The Servant triumphs by laying down His life. The power of Christ is made perfect through weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
On Good Friday, we are reminded that we follow a crucified King. A suffering King who, from the cross, demonstrates the way of His Kingdom:
“If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all”
Mark 9:35
