What Mark 12:35-37 Actually Means (Jesus Asked a Question Nobody Could Answer)
Michael MaioShare
There is a moment in the Gospel of Mark that almost everybody skips.
It is tucked between a series of confrontations in the temple. The Pharisees have just tried to trap Jesus with a question about taxes. The Sadducees have just tried to trap Him with a question about resurrection. A scribe has just asked Him which commandment is the greatest. For most of chapter 12, Jesus is on defense. Everyone is coming at Him with questions designed to make Him stumble.
And then, quietly, the dynamic flips.
Jesus asks a question of His own. Just one. And nobody can answer it.
Mark 12:35-37. While Jesus was teaching in the temple, He said: "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet."' David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?"
Mark adds one line at the end that should stop you in your tracks: "And the great throng heard him gladly."
The crowd loved it. The scribes had nothing to say. And most modern readers flip right past it because the question sounds like an ancient theological riddle that does not apply to them.
It does. And what Jesus is doing in these three verses is far more explosive than it looks.
What Everyone Believed About the Messiah
To understand why this question was so devastating, you need to understand what first-century Jews believed about the Messiah. Not what you believe. What they believed.
The entire nation was waiting for the Christ. The anointed one. The one God had promised through the prophets for centuries. And they knew exactly what He was supposed to look like.
He was supposed to be the Son of David. A descendant of Israel's greatest king. A warrior. A political leader. A man who would rally the nation, overthrow Rome, and restore Israel to the glory days of David's kingdom. The Messiah was the next David. Bigger, better, stronger. But still a man. Still a king. Still a military deliverer who would fix the political situation and put Israel back on top.
This was not a fringe belief. This was the mainstream expectation. When people called Jesus "Son of David" as He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, they were using a political title. They were saying: you are the one who is going to set us free. You are going to take back the throne.
The scribes taught this. The people believed it. And it was not entirely wrong. The Messiah was a descendant of David. The prophets did promise that. But the popular understanding had taken one true thing and built an entire framework around it that missed the most important part of the picture.
Jesus was about to blow that framework apart with a single question.
The Question That Changed Everything
Here is what Jesus does. He quotes Psalm 110:1, one of the most well-known passages in all of Hebrew Scripture, and He uses it to expose a contradiction that the scribes had never resolved.
Psalm 110:1: "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.'"
Everyone in the temple knew this psalm. David wrote it. And in it, David refers to someone as "my Lord." Not God's Lord. My Lord. David, the king, the greatest ruler in Israel's history, is acknowledging someone as his superior.
Jesus asks the obvious question: if the Messiah is just David's son, David's descendant, David's junior, then why does David call Him "Lord"?
In Jewish culture, a father does not call his son "Lord." A king does not call his descendant "Lord." Authority flows downward, from father to son, from ancestor to descendant. If the Messiah were merely a human king from David's bloodline, David would be the greater, and the Messiah would be his offspring, his inferior in the generational chain.
But David does not treat the Messiah as his inferior. He calls Him Lord. He places Him at the right hand of God. He describes Him as someone to whom God Himself grants authority over every enemy.
So Jesus asks: how does that work? If the Messiah is just David's son, why does David worship Him?
The scribes had no answer. And the reason they had no answer is because the answer would have destroyed everything they thought they knew about who the Messiah was.
The Answer Jesus Was Leading Them To
Jesus does not answer His own question in this passage. He lets it hang. He lets the silence do the work. But the answer is unmistakable if you are willing to see it.
The Messiah is David's son. Yes. He comes from David's line. That part is true.
But the Messiah is also David's Lord. He is not less than David. He is greater than David. Greater than the greatest king Israel ever had. Greater than any human ruler who has ever lived or ever will live. The Messiah is not merely a man born into the right family. He is God Himself, stepping into human history, wearing human flesh, born into David's line by choice, not by limitation.
David's son and David's Lord. Human and divine. Descendant and sovereign. That is who the Messiah actually is.
Jesus was standing in the temple, surrounded by the most educated religious minds in the nation, and He was asking them to look at a psalm they had read a thousand times and finally see what it was actually saying. The Messiah you are waiting for is not just a king. He is the King. Not just a man sent by God. God Himself, sent.
And the man asking the question was the answer to it.
Why the Scribes Couldn't Answer
The scribes could not answer because answering would have meant admitting that their entire framework was too small.
They had been teaching the Messiah for their entire careers. They had studied the prophecies, taught the texts, shaped the public understanding of who the Christ would be. And all of it was built on the assumption that the Messiah was a man. An extraordinary man, a chosen man, a powerful man, but still a man.
Jesus was asking them to consider that the Messiah was something they had never accounted for. Something their categories could not hold. Something that would not fit into the political, military, human-sized box they had been building for centuries.
They could not answer because the truth was too big.
And honestly? That is the same reason a lot of people still cannot answer it today. Not because the evidence is not there. Because accepting the evidence means your framework has to change. It means the Jesus you have been comfortable with, the good teacher, the wise philosopher, the moral example, is not big enough. He is either David's Lord or He is nothing at all.
John 14:6 makes the same claim from a different angle. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." John 3:16 makes it from another. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son." The entire Gospel is one sustained argument that Jesus is not what you expected, and what He actually is exceeds anything you were prepared for.
Mark 12:35-37 is the moment He makes that argument from the Old Testament itself, using the scribes' own Scripture to show them what they had been missing.
What Psalm 110 Reveals About Jesus
Psalm 110 is the most quoted Old Testament passage in the entire New Testament. That is not a coincidence. The early church understood what Jesus was pointing to, and they never stopped pointing to it.
"Sit at my right hand." That phrase means authority. The right hand of God is not a location. It is a position. It means supreme, unrivaled, unchallenged authority over everything. God is telling the Messiah: sit here, at the seat of ultimate power, and I will handle your enemies.
The scribes expected a Messiah who would fight. Who would raise an army, march on Rome, and take the throne by force. Psalm 110 describes a Messiah who sits down. Not because He is passive. Because the battle is already won. His enemies are being made His footstool not by military strategy but by divine decree.
That is a completely different kind of king. A king who does not need to prove His power because His power was never in question. A king whose authority does not come from winning battles but from being God.
The scribes could not see it because they were looking for a sword. God sent a servant. They were looking for a conqueror. God sent a savior. They were looking for someone who would overthrow Rome. God sent someone who would overthrow death.
And He did it not from a throne, but from a cross.
Why This Passage Matters for You Right Now
You might be thinking: this is interesting, but what does an ancient debate between Jesus and some scribes have to do with my life?
Everything.
Because the same mistake the scribes made is the one most people still make. They build a version of Jesus that fits their expectations, and then they worship that version instead of the real one.
Some people build a Jesus who is only gentle. A soft-spoken, non-confrontational teacher who never challenges anyone and just wants everyone to get along. That Jesus would never ask a question designed to expose the most respected theologians in the nation. But the real Jesus did.
Some people build a Jesus who is only powerful. A cosmic ruler who is too big and too holy to care about your specific, ordinary, messy life. That Jesus would never wash His disciples' feet or invite the weary to come to Him. But the real Jesus did.
Some people build a Jesus who is a good moral teacher but nothing more. A wise human being who had helpful things to say about love and kindness. That Jesus would not claim to be David's Lord, seated at the right hand of God with authority over every power in existence. But the real Jesus did.
Mark 12:35-37 is a corrective. It says: the Messiah is bigger than your category. Whatever box you have built for Him, He does not fit in it. And the discomfort you feel when the box breaks is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that something is finally right.
The Crowd Heard Him Gladly
Mark ends this section with a detail that is easy to miss but deeply important: "And the great throng heard him gladly."
The crowd loved this. Not because they fully understood the theological implications. But because Jesus had just done something they had been waiting to see for years. He silenced the scribes. The same scribes who piled burdens on people. The same scribes who used their knowledge to gain power rather than to serve. The same scribes who made ordinary people feel like they could never be good enough to reach God.
Jesus took the scribes' own Scripture and turned it on them. He showed that their expertise had missed the most important thing. And the crowd, the regular people, the ones who had been made to feel small by the religious establishment, heard that and something in them leapt.
That is what truth does. It does not always make you comfortable. But when it exposes a lie you have been living under, the feeling is not discomfort. It is relief.
If you have ever felt like your understanding of Jesus is too small, like the version of Him you were taught does not match the one you encounter in Scripture, Mark 12:35-37 is your invitation to go bigger. Not bigger in the sense of vague or abstract. Bigger in the sense of more real, more authoritative, more alive, more present, more Lord than you had accounted for.
Read Psalm 110. Then read Mark 12. Then start reading the rest of the Bible with fresh eyes and watch how many times the Old Testament points forward to someone who is both human and divine, both David's son and David's Lord, both the suffering servant and the reigning King.
It is all over the place. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
A daily devotional like the 365-Day Devotional ↗ keeps you in these passages every day so they stop being things you heard in a sermon once and start becoming things you carry. And a journal like After Amen ↗ gives you a place to wrestle with the questions these passages raise, because the questions are the point. The scribes stopped asking. Do not make the same mistake.
Even the Shepherd Psalm takes on new depth when you realize the Shepherd is not just a caring guide. He is the Lord of lords, David's Lord, seated at the right hand of the Father. And He still walks with you through the valley.
That is the Messiah. Bigger than you expected. Closer than you imagined. And worth every question you are brave enough to ask.
"David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?" - Mark 12:37