For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for (or, 'instead of') many, х lutron (G3083) anti (G473) polloon (G4183)]: q.d., 'In the kingdom about to be set up this principle shall have no place. All my servants shall there be equal; and the only "greatness" known to it shall be the greatness of humility and devotedness to the service of others. He that goes down the deepest in these services of self-denying humility shall rise the highest and hold the "chiefest" place in that kingdom; even as the Son of man, whose abasement and self-sacrifice for others, transcending all, gives Him of right a place above all! As "the Word in the beginning with God," He was ministered unto; and as the risen Redeemer in our nature He now is ministered unto, "angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him" (1 Peter 3:22); but not for this came He here. The Served of all came to be the Servant of all; and His last act was the grandest Service ever beheld by the universe of God - "HE GAVE HIS LIFE A RANSOM FOR MANY!" "Many" is here to be taken, not in contrast with few or with all, but in opposition to one-the one Son of man for the many sinners.
Remarks:
(1) When we read of Jesus, on His last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, going before the Twelve, with a courage which amazed and terrified them, it were well that we searched into the hidden springs of this, so far as we have Scriptural light to guide us. Turning then to that glorious Messianic prediction, in Isaiah 50:1-11, we find Him saying, "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to Him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning; He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned (or 'as an instructed person'). The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed," etc. (Mark 9:4-7). Here He speaks as if He went each successive morning to His Father, to receive His instructions for the work of each day; so that when He either spake a word in season to a weary soul, or showed unflinching courage in encountering opposition, or, as here, marched to the rude mockeries and cruel sufferings which awaited Him, with His "face set like a flint, knowing that He should not be ashamed," it was not mere impassive God-head that did it, but the Son of man, keenly sensitive to shame and suffering, and only rising above them through the power of an all-subduing devotion to the great end of His mission into the world, and this, too, fed by daily communion with His Father in heaven. Thus is He to His people the perfect Model of self-devotion to the work given them to do.
(2) How hard it is for even the plainest truths to penetrate through prejudice, we see once and again in these disciples of the Lord Jesus. The third Evangelist seems unable to say strongly enough how entirely hidden from them at that time was the sense of those exceeding plain statements in which our Lord now, for the third time, announced what lay before Him. And though this added prodigious, and, to the simple-hearted, irresistible weight to their subsequent testimony in behalf of a suffering, dying, and rising Messiah-now so incomprehensible to them-it teaches to us a lesson, of which we have as much need as they, to guard against allowing prepossessions and prejudices to thicken around us and shut out from our mind the clearest truth.
(3) When the indignation of the ten was kindled against James and John for their offensive petition, how admirable was the wisdom of their Lord which then interposed, checking the hot quarrel which doubtless would have broken out at that moment, by calling them all equally around Him and opening to them calmly the relation in which they were to stand, and the spirit they were to cherish to each other in the future work of His kingdom, holding forth Himself as the sublime Model both for their feeling and for their acting!
(4) The sacrificial and vicarious nature of Christ's death is here expressed by Himself (Mark 10:45) as plainly as the manner of His death is foretold a few verses before. And to say that this was merely in accommodation to Jewish ideas, is to dishonour the teaching of our Lord, and degrade Judaism to a level with the rites of Paganism.