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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Matthew 20:28 - 20:28
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A ransom for many (lutron anti pollōn). The Son of man is the outstanding illustration of this principle of self-abnegation in direct contrast to the self-seeking of James and John. The word translated “ransom” is the one commonly employed in the papyri as the price paid for a slave who is then set free by the one who bought him, the purchase money for manumitting slaves. See examples in Moulton and Milligan’s Vocabulary and Deissmann’s Light from the Ancient East, pp. 328f. There is the notion of exchange also in the use of anti. Jesus gave his own life as the price of freedom for the slaves of sin. There are those who refuse to admit that Jesus held this notion of a substitutionary death because the word in the N.T. occurs only here and the corresponding passage in Mar 10:45. But that is an easy way to get rid of passages that contradict one’s theological opinions. Jesus here rises to the full consciousness of the significance of his death for men.