Chapter # 2 Paragraph # 1 Study # 3
June 4, 2019
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: "Faith" brings about "the forgiveness of sins".
Introduction: With the paragraph before us, Mark presents THE major thesis of the Coming One's "might" and THE major point of most resistance. The introduction of Jesus by John the Baptizer, as recorded by Mark, was focused around the descriptive title "The Coming Mighty One". Mark/John then proceeds to categorize three major realms of "Might":
- 1) Superior mighty accomplishment (His baptism of men is with the Holy Spirit);
- 2) Superior mighty identity (God's voice from heaven declares Him to be "My Beloved Son"); and
- 3) Superior mighty morality (In submission to the Spirit He successfully overcame Satan).
Following his introductory material, Mark then proceeded to establish Jesus' credentials as "The Christ" by two major demonstrations of "might":
- 1) His absolute authority over unclean/demonic spirits; and
- 2) His unrestricted authority over the "diseased" physical world, culminating in the healing of a leper and the healing of a paralytic.
It is within the record of this "healing" of the paralytic that THE issue surfaces: the "healing" of the ruptured relationship between God and men through "Faith" and "Forgiveness". On the human side of this rupture, the necessity is "Faith" in the message, "Repent and God will forgive"; and on the divine side of this rupture, the necessity is "Forgiveness" of "Sin" and "sins".
This evening we are going to see how Mark presents these two sides of the issue.
- I. The "Human" Side of the Issue.
- A. The "human" side of this issue is partially addressed by Mark in recording the crowd's knee-jerk selfishness.
- 1. Even granting the reality of a large number of people with "problems" they want Jesus to address, there is really no excuse for Mark having to say "...not being able to present him [to Him] on account of the crowd...".
- a. The most fundamental characteristics of Jesus in this context are "His ability" (You can cleanse me) and "His character" (if You want to [which is really, "if You have enough compassion"].
- 1) The demonic influence (which actually first surfaced in the Garden of Eden) was not a challenge to His "abilities", but, rather, a challenge to His "compassion".
- 2) It was this second challenge which most irritated Jesus because of the damage it does to a person's ability to "believe".
- b. The biblical admonition given by Paul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Philippians 2:4 is rooted in what the Bible legitimately calls "Love".
- 1) The revealed "major" issue of divine revelation is that God's Life flows through people to produce "Love for God" (as primary) and "Love for one's neighbor" (as secondary) when there are no "sins" to be forgiven.
- 2) Thus, the approach of the "four" carrying an obviously distressed man on a pallet should have caused the crowd to naturally part, and it would have if human beings were not deeply afflicted by knee-jerk selfishness.
- 2. So Mark's record establishes that a part of the "human" side of the problem of the ruptured relationship between created and Creator is "Sin" as knee-jerk selfishness, and "sins" as the automatic pushing of oneself ahead of others.
- B. The human side of this issue is also partially addressed by Mark in recording the "faith of them" as both the "four" and of the "fifth"; the paralytic.
- 1. In respect to this issue of "faith", Mark has already "primed the pump".
- a. This is the first time this noun is used by him as an "involved matter".
- 1) However, the verb has already been used in 1:15 where "believing in the Gospel" is a major element in the "summary" of Jesus' "message" as given by Mark.
- 2) And the requirement of both verb and noun are manifest in all of Mark's words up to this point even though the words "believe" and "faith" are not part of the words of the text for the most part.
- a) Mark put pen to paper to be believed.
- b) Mark presented John as the fulfillment of prophecy to enable faith.
- c) Mark presented the credentials of Jesus to argue for "faith".
- d) Etc.
- b. Mark's records to this point are not words about how "believing" people were.
- 1) There was no "faith" involved the first exorcism (the possessed man was not required to "believe" anything).
- 2) There was little to no "faith" involved in the records until the leper reveals his tragic concept of "faith" in its huge deficiency (he believed something that was right, but he also believed something that was altogether demonic).
- 3) Mark was presenting Jesus as the Powerful Compassionate Mighty One so that "faith" could come into being and, then, become an issue wherein a person received according to whether, or not, they "believed" [the right thing(s)].
- 2. But, this issue of "faith" automatically demands a legitimate understanding of what it means "to believe".
- a. A popular and wrong idea of "faith" is caught up in the misunderstanding of the "prayer of faith" as typically presented by "we are praying, believing..." as a misconstruing of Jesus' words in Mark 11:24 and James' words in James 5:15.
- b. The most fundamental issue of "faith" is the "content" of the thing believed (without "content", "faith" is non-existent even if it is professed).
- c. And, in Mark's text, it is clear that he wants his readers to grasp another critical issue of "faith": it produces overt actions.
- 1) Mark says "Jesus saw their faith".
- 2) Hebrews 11 declares that "faith" is what produced the activities highlighted.
- 3) There are two problems.
- a) Some "beliefs" are about things that cannot be "seen".
- b) Some things "done" are fleshly hypocrisies.
- 4) But, there are occasions where there is no other explanation.
- a) The "four" unroofed the roof precisely because they intended to "present" the paralytic and his condition to Jesus.
- b) Jesus, and everyone else, could see this "faith-driven" determination and wildly "out of the box" behavior.
- d. And, in harmony with Mark's text, it is clear that when legitimate "faith" is exercised God always responds according to what is believed (though, admittedly, sometimes He is a bit less than "immediate").
- 1) Thus, if nothing happens, "faith" did not exist (Mark 9:18-19).
- 2) And, if nothing happens, reworking the terms of the "faith" is simply doubling down on the idiocy (as in "we prayed for healing and his death was his healing").
- II. The "Divine" Side of the Issue.
- A. God acts.
- B. In this text, the "action" is two-fold.
- 1. The paralytic has the most critical problem addressed: the rupture between him and his God.
- 2. Then he gets the lesser problem resolved also.
