244.  Furthermore, the gospels state explicitly that Jesus predicted his own death from a time at least six months before the end (Matt. xvi. 21), and they indicate that the idea was not new to him when he first communicated it to his disciples (Matt. xvi. 23; Mark ii. 20).  He viewed his approaching death, moreover, as a necessity (Mark viii. 31-33), yet he was no fatalist concerning it.  He could still in Gethsemane plead with his Father, to whom all things are possible, to open to him some other way of accomplishing his work (Mark xiv. 36).  The old Testament picture of the suffering and dying servant of Jehovah (Isa. liii.) was doubtless familiar to Jesus.  Although it was not interpreted Messianically by the scribes, Jesus probably applied it to himself when thinking of his death; yet the predictions of the prophets always provided for a non-fulfilment in case Israel should turn unto the Lord in truth (see Ezek. xxxiii. 10-20).  Moreover, the contradiction which Jesus felt between his ideas and those cherished by the leaders of his people, whether priests or scribes, was so radical that his death might well seem inevitable; yet it was possible that his people might repent, and Jerusalem consent to accept him as God’s anointed.  Neither prophecy, nor the actual conditions of his life, therefore, would give Jesus any fatalistic certainty of his coming death.  In Gethsemane his heart pleaded against it, while his will bowed still to God in perfect loyalty.  It is not for us to explain his prediction of death by appealing to the connection which the apostolic thought established between the death of Christ and the salvation of men, for we are not competent to say that God could not have effected redemption in some other way if the repentance of the Jews had, humanly speaking, removed from Jesus the necessity of death.  All that can be said is that he knew the prophetic picture, knew also the hardness of heart which had taken possession of the Jews, and knew that he must not swerve from his course of obedience to what he saw to be God’s will for him.  Since that obedience brought him into fatal opposition to human prejudice and passion, he saw that he must die, and that such a death was one of the steps in his establishment of God’s kingdom among men.  So he went on his way ready “not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark x. 45).

245.  With his prediction of his death the gospels usually associate a prophecy of his speedy resurrection.  As has been already remarked (sect. 210), it is being generally recognized that if Jesus believed that he was the Messiah, he must have associated with the thought of death that of victory over death, which for all Jewish minds meant a resurrection from the dead.  Jesus certainly taught that his death was part of his Messianic work, it could not therefore be his end.  The prediction of the resurrection is the necessary corollary of his expectation of death; and it may reverently be believed that his knowledge of it was intimately involved with his certainty that it was as Messiah that he was to die.