Year 2, Day 150: Mark 3

Response To Conflict

We already know that Jesus had to be careful when going into the towns.  Upon beginning His ministry, Jesus was in almost immediate conflict with the Jewish leaders.  Jesus was largely forced to go out among the crowds and in the desolate places in order to avoid immediate conflict.

It’s possible to wonder why Jesus was avoiding the Jewish leaders.  It couldn’t be because He was afraid of them.  Jesus knew that He had come to die, so conflict was inevitable.  It was part of the plan!  Rather, Jesus needs time for two things to happen.  First, Jesus needs time to train His disciples to carry on God’s plan once He is gone.  The reality is that it takes time to change how people live and think; Jesus needed to buy some time to allow this to happen.  But I believe there is a second reason – a reason that is going to come out loud and strong over the next few chapters.  I believe that Jesus needed to expose the fickleness of the crowd and humanity in general.  Let’s see how this spins out in this chapter.

First we can see Jesus going into a synagogue – something that was very dangerous after the events of chapter 1.  The religious elite were watching Jesus to see what He would do.  Jesus knows that they are watching Him and He intentionally heals a man with a withered hand.  He does it to demonstrate once more that His power is from God.  There is no greater authority than being in the will of God.  This conflict over authority – Human understanding of God’s will versus God’s actual will – has a particular result.  They begin to plot Jesus’ death.  They plot His death because Jesus chooses to conform to God’s will instead of conforming to their interpretation of God’s will.

Response To The Crowds

The next story that we encounter with Jesus is a healing story.  Jesus heads out into the places between towns and the crowds gather around Him.  Everyone who had a disease came to be healed.  They pressed in upon Him just to touch Him.  They pressed in so tightly that Jesus had His disciples have a boat ready so that He could escape out onto the water. 

Notice that the crowds press around Jesus so that they may touch Him.  The crowds exert their will upon Jesus.  They want to be healed.  They want their life to be improved.  It isn’t about coming to Jesus to crucify their life and pick up the agenda of God.  They come to Jesus to impose their will upon Him.

I’m going to skip over the listing of the Twelve and move straight into the last few verses of that section.  When Jesus returns home, notice that the crowds gather around Him again.  The Bible is clear that the crowds gathered with such intensity that the disciples and Jesus could not even eat.  Again we see the crowd desiring to impose its will upon Jesus rather than coming to Jesus to humble themselves before God.

I’m going to put off the teaching of the strong man to the end because it’s really worth saving and it is completely on a different scale than what we are talking now.  So we move to the last story in this chapter. 

Response To Family

Jesus’ mother and brothers come twice to meet with Him because they are convinced that He has lost His mind.  What is significant is that Jesus redefines the family unit with one simple sentence.  What does Jesus say?  The people who are sitting around Him – His disciples and the people who are genuinely seeking spiritual relationship with Him – these are His brothers and sisters.  In the end, this too is a question of authority.  Jesus is living off of a model of spiritual authority.  Jesus’ mother and brothers come to Him on a model of worldly authority.  As with the crowds, Jesus’ family comes to impose their will upon Jesus rather than humble themselves to God’s will.

Therefore, we can understand that being under God’s authority necessarily implies humbling ourselves to God’s agenda.  It means that we take things seriously like prayer, scripture, our need for Christian fellowship, and our desire to serve God.  When we come to God with our own agenda and ask Him to make our agenda possible, we end up being nothing more than the crowds or Jesus’ own biological family at this point in the story.

Response To Spiritual Warfare

Now, let’s return to the parable that Jesus gives about the strongman.  Notice that by definition the religious leaders claim that Jesus is in a position of being in league with Satan.  This description implies that Jesus is the subordinate while Satan is the dominant force.  When we look at other portions of scripture (for example: John 12:31, John 14:30, and John 16:11) we understand that this perspective is intended.  Satan is the ruler of this world – although don’t hear me saying that God’s power is less than Satan’s power.  Satan is the ruler of this world; God is the ruler of the whole universe!  However, it is important for us to understand the perspective of the world as the domain of Satan to grip what is truly being said in this parable.

Thus, the beginning to understanding this response from Jesus is to identify the strongman as Satan.  Jesus, then, is the one who is breaking into the strongman’s lair.  Jesus is painting Himself as the thief who is coming into this world in order to bind up Satan and plunder whatever He can.

We can see this passage as even more of a challenge from the perspective of the authority of Jesus Christ.  In this light, the point that Jesus is making is that He is coming with His own authority and claiming what He can.  He is not receiving authority from this world.  Rather, He is coming with His own authority with God’s power and setting up His Kingdom after having plundered what He can out of the kingdom of this world.

If anything, this should speak to us about how you can’t be in both at the same time.  Either you are with Christ, or against Him.  Either you are with the world, or against it.  Either you work under the authority of God, or you live by your own authority – which is just a mask for living under the authority of the strongman.

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