It’s one of the stranger asides in
all the Gospels.
In Mark’s first chapter, verses
12–13, after Jesus’s baptism, “The Spirit immediately drove him into the
wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.And
he was with the wild animals . . . .”
Say what? Jesus with the wild
animals? What significance does that carry in this grand opening chapter of
Mark?
No Random Detail
Mark has such limited space to tell
about the history-altering life of the Son of God come as man. Why bother
mentioning that in his forty-day wilderness venture Jesus “was with the wild
animals”?
I doubt we should assume it’s a
random detail. Mark’s narrative is much too carefully crafted to think that.
Then what’s the point?
Back to Adam
The conceptual connection appears
to reach back to the Garden where Adam was with the animals before the Fall.
For Adam, the setting was perfect: a beautiful garden, more pristine than we’ve
ever seen, with tame animals around him — animals over which he exercised a
kind and happy dominion as God’s vice regent, created in God’s image. (Of
course, there came that pesky serpent. But even he was tame enough to engage in
discussion.)
But our father Adam transgressed
his Maker’s regulation about abstaining from a particular tree, and in doing
so, failed to exercise dominion over the creeping thing, and brought us all
with him into sin.
Better Than Adam
The point Mark seems to be hinting
at is that Jesus is a new kind of Adam, the new and ultimate Man. Instead of a
beautiful garden, the ultimate Man faces his temptations in the wilderness, a
wilderness created by Adam’s sin. And instead of kindly presiding over tame
animals, the ultimate Man is surrounded by wild animals. This sinful world into
which Jesus enters to accomplish his mission is less like a pristine garden and
more like Jurassic Park.
Unlike Adam, the surroundings into
which Jesus is put to live out human perfection are marred by sin’s corruption.
Unlike Adam, Jesus faces a wild land and wild animals. While Adam was setup for
success, Jesus must go against the grain.
But despite the conditions for our
new Man being more difficult than they were for the first Man, Jesus succeeds,
for our sake, in passing the test — in the wild land and among the wild
animals. The new Adam does not succumb to the Enemy’s tempting, but stays his
course to die sacrificially for the sin that entered in under the first Adam.
Confirmation in Psalm 91
Psalm 91 connects the tracks
between Mark’s first chapter and the opening chapters of Genesis. In Matthew’s
telling of Jesus’s wilderness temptation, he quotes from Psalm
91:11–12: “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in
all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot
against a stone.” And Mark alludes to the psalm in his mention of “the angels
were ministering to him” at the end ofMark 1:13.
It’s the very next verse in Psalm
91 — verse 13 — that forges the link from the Garden to the coming Messiah’s
majestic dominion over the redeemed creation, wild animals included: “You will
tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will
trample underfoot.” Lions and tigers and bears — the God-man is reigning over
them, with explicit mention of the serpent as well.
Fearless in the New Man
In Jesus, we have an escape from
being born into Adam’s condemned family. With God’s amazing gift of new birth,
we now are able to exercise faith in the new and ultimate Man, be joined to
him, and included in the triumph of his family. In this new Adam, we’re
delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s
beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). One day we’ll reign fully and
finally with him in the new heavens and new earth, where the wolf will dwell
with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat — and a little
child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6).
For now, we live in a world where
dogs bite, zoos need cages, and even the best crocodile hunters die. But while
our fear of wild animals persists (and should), in Jesus we have the promise of
the Better Day to come. Jesus is our champion and pioneer who tramples
underfoot the serpent, and empowers us to stomp with effect as well (Romans
16:20). A day is coming when we too will be with the wild animals and
rightfully able to enjoy the serenity of Jesus.
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