The last person in the Gospel of Mark to make a public confession is a Roman centurion, a Gentile who, having witnessed Jesus’s death on the cross, exclaims in amazement, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39). These two christological statements about Jesus, one by the demon at the very beginning of the Gospel and the other by the centurion at the end, form a frame around the Gospel. Neither the demon or the Roman centurion is a follower of Jesus, yet they are the first and the last to confess Jesus in public.
