Theological Commentary: Click Here
I’ve spent a
good amount of space in my blogs in Mark talking about the humanity of Jesus’
disciples and how Jesus still invited them into the ministry. In Mark 9, we make a big transition from the
ministry of Jesus to the mission of Jesus.
For the most part, the rest of the stories in the Gospel of Mark will be
about lifting up Christ as He fulfills what the Father sent Him to do.
The first
story in this Gospel shows us this concept immediately. The transfiguration is all about Jesus being
pronounced as God’s Son. God tells us
that He is well-pleased. God tells us to
listen to Him. Jesus tells us that He
will be mistreated and held contemptuously.
In fact, Jesus makes that point clear twice in this chapter. Love Jesus as much as the disciples did, they
needed to understand that Jesus mission was to come, die, and bring us into a
relationship with God that is based on forgiveness.
The next major
thing that we learn about Jesus is that His kingdom is based on servant
leadership. If someone wants to be first
in the kingdom, they must be last in the world.
To be like Jesus means that we live with an eye for what we can do for
others. That doesn’t mean we live like
doormats; Jesus certainly didn’t get pushed around! What it does mean is that we live in a way to
be open and responsible to ways to help God’s love shine into the lives of
others.
A third
thing that we can learn is that being like Jesus means being open to receiving
and mentoring innocence. Jesus takes a
little child and says to His disciples that anyone who receives a little child
in His name receives Him. If we look at
what Jesus has done all throughout the Gospel of Mark is to receive disciples
who had a very childlike faith. Then,
Jesus mentored them. He’s still
mentoring them. He will continue
mentoring them. To be like Jesus means
that we are in the business of looking for people we can mentor until their
faith is mature.
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