Re:Verse passage – Mark 1:9-15 (day six)
After his baptism, Jesus perfectly submitted to the Spirit’s leading, spending 40 days in the desert with the wild animals, facing Satan’s temptation, and being ministered to by angels. Mark doesn’t provide details of his resistance of the devil’s schemes and faithfulness to his Father, but what he accomplishes in two verses is no the less profound.
In two verses he casts a vision of Jesus’ life as the incarnate Son. In perfect submission he is sent into the world, he demonstrates perfect repentance on our behalf in his baptism, and then enters the wilderness of our brokenness and rebellion against God (for his entire life, not just 40 days). It is there, as the Son of Man, that he lives in perfect righteousness.
He is the new Adam, the new Israel, through whom countless new sons and daughters of God will be reborn.
We don’t have the gospel without the wilderness.
