Public Ministry of Jesus

The event

The Baptism of Jesus at the Jordan, where the Father's voice named Him the beloved Son, opened the public ministry that fills the bulk of all four Gospels. After the Temptation in the Wilderness — forty days of hunger in which He answered the devil with Scripture and did not bend — He walked the roads of Galilee, Samaria and Judea for roughly three years, preaching one message above all others: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."

He taught constantly, and He taught in parables — the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Parable of the Prodigal Son — stories that handed the kingdom to anyone humble enough to receive it while leaving the proud no handle to grasp. He preached the Sermon on the Mount, the fullest single summary of kingdom life ever given, and He taught with an authority the scribes plainly did not have.

He also worked signs, and the signs were never showmanship. Water became wine at the Wedding at Cana; He drove the traders from His Father's house at the Early Cleansing of the Temple; a squall on the Sea of Galilee fell silent at His word in the Calming of the Storm; the Feeding of the Five Thousand came out of a boy's lunch; in the fourth watch of the night Jesus Walks on Water toward a terrified boat; and in the Raising of Lazarus He called a four-days-dead friend out of a Bethany tomb into the daylight. Each miracle was a claim about who He is — Lord over creation, over sickness, over demons, over death itself — offered as evidence that the kingdom had genuinely arrived in His person.

Alongside the crowds He gave Himself to twelve ordinary men. The Calling of the First Disciples took them from fishing boats and a tax booth; He kept them with Him everywhere and corrected them patiently; and Peter's Confession at Caesarea Philippi drew out of them the confession the whole ministry had been building toward: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Days later The Transfiguration showed three of them His unveiled glory on the mountain. From that point on He set His face toward Jerusalem, and told them plainly that He must suffer, be killed, and on the third day rise.

Everything He said and did in these years was true and gracious in itself, and it was also preparation. The road that began at the Jordan ran to Jerusalem, and in the last week of it the Gospels slow almost to the hour. He came over the Mount of Olives to the shouts of the crowd in the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, drove the traders out of His Father's house a second time, and sat down opposite that Temple to give The Olivet Discourse on the age to come. In an upper room He gave The Last Supper, taking bread and cup and naming them His body and His blood of the new covenant. Then came Gethsemane and the Arrest of Jesus, where He prayed until He sweat like drops of blood and still said, "Not my will, but yours, be done," and the Trials of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, where a sinless man was condemned by the courts of both God's people and Rome.

The Crucifixion is where the whole ministry had been going from the start. He was nailed to a Roman cross outside the city walls, bore the wrath our sins deserved, cried "It is finished," and gave up His spirit; the Temple curtain tore from top to bottom. The Burial of Jesus laid Him in Joseph of Arimathea's new tomb behind a sealed stone, and on the third day The Resurrection emptied it — not a symbol and not a rumour, but a bodily rising attested by the women, by Peter and John at the tomb, and in the Post-Resurrection Appearances by more than five hundred witnesses over forty days. To those witnesses He entrusted The Great Commission — "make disciples of all nations" — and then, in The Ascension, He was taken up out of their sight to be seated at the right hand of the Father, where He reigns and intercedes for His people still.

The kingdom He preached in Galilee was purchased with His own blood in Jerusalem, and it is His resurrection and ascension that make the preaching of it good news rather than merely good advice.

Dating

Dated here from the baptism (c. AD 27) through the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension (all c. AD 30), following the traditional chronology used throughout this timeline. Because this entry stands in for the events of the ministry years, its span is simply the span of the events it covers — the earliest, the baptism, is c. AD 27 and the latest, the ascension, is c. AD 30, so the range is unchanged. John's Gospel names at least three Passovers during the ministry, which is why "about three years" is the long-standing reading. Scholars who date the crucifixion to AD 33 shift the whole span roughly two years later (c. AD 29-33) without changing the order of events; the Gospels themselves are far more concerned with what happened than with when, and none of them offers a continuous dated itinerary.

Scripture references

• Matthew 3:13-28:20
• Mark 1:9-16:20
• Luke 3:21-24:53
• John 1:29-21:25
• Acts 1:1-11