“And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’” — Mark 15:39
Through the Bible: Matthew 27, Mark 15
No one likes feeling like an outsider. Maybe you remember the first time you showed up as an in-law at a family gathering. You didn’t know the history, the stories, or the inside jokes.
Or maybe it was your first visit to a church. Someone pointed you down the hall and said, “It’s right across from where the youth used to meet.” (Yes, that really happened.)
It’s awkward to be the outsider. But sometimes that perspective lets you see things the insiders can’t. I learned that firsthand—hearing that story changed how we trained the greeters at my own church.
Mark’s Gospel is bookended by two outsiders who “got it” better than anyone on the inside.
Only two people in Mark’s Gospel ever call Jesus “the Son of God.”
Both are Gentiles.
One is a man filled with demons on the far side of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 5). When Jesus steps onto Gentile soil, the unclean spirits in the Gerasene man cry out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” The other is a Roman soldier standing at the foot of the cross, staring up at a dying Jew. When he sees the way Jesus breathes His last, he says, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
The first time Mark records those words, they come from the depths of hell. The second time, from the lips of a hardened soldier who has seen death a hundred times but never like this. Two outsiders—one possessed, one pagan—got it right when everyone else missed it.
That’s no accident. Mark wrote his Gospel for Gentiles. He explained Jewish customs and translated Aramaic phrases for readers who wouldn’t know them. His pages are filled with foreigners and outcasts—the Syrophoenician woman whose faith crossed boundaries, the Gerasene evangelist who carried good news back to the Decapolis, the Roman executioner who made the final confession.
While the religious leaders mocked and the disciples scattered, the outsiders saw the truth. They recognized in Jesus a power unlike any other. They saw authority that didn’t need swords or legions. They saw divinity revealed not in conquest but in surrender.
Mark’s Gospel opens with a narrator declaring, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” It ends with a soldier repeating the same words. Between those two confessions stretches a whole story of misunderstanding and mercy.
Maybe that’s the point. The people who think they’re closest to God can still miss Him when He’s right in front of them. And the people who think they’re furthest away might be the first to see Him clearly.
Lord, open our eyes to see You as You are— not through the lenses of privilege or religion, but with the wonder of those who finally see the Son of God.
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