Chapter # 2 Paragraph # 1 Study # 6
July 16, 2019
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: Mark's presentation concludes with "everyone" recognizing that a shift in "T"heology was taking place.
Introduction: Mark did not waste any time in his record coming to
the point: Jesus of Nazareth, while He was on the earth, possessed the "authority" to "forgive sins". It is a very small step, in the light of the rationalization of the scribes, to
begin to recognize that this "authority"
has to mean that Jesus was/is a unique individual in terms of His possession of an "authority" that really does rest completely in the prerogative of God Who, as the author of Hebrews declares, is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart and before whose eyes all things are naked and clearly seen. Any "forgiveness" extended by any other is useless if God is not in agreement.
Thus, this evening we are going to look at Mark's final comments in this paragraph so that we may be able to see what the reaction of the people signified.
- I. By What Was the Reaction of the People Driven?
- A. What they heard and saw.
- 1. What they "heard" was Jesus' pointed claim that "they" would know that He, as The Son of The Man (Daniel 7:13-14) had "authority on the earth to forgive sins".
- a. "The Son of The Man" thesis folds neatly into Jesus' message as Mark presented it in 1:15.
- 1) Whether the people had any "depth of understanding" of this thesis, or not, it is clear that they were longing for the coming of the Kingdom of God as predicted by the prophets of old (even the thief on the cross was aware that the issue was Jesus coming into His kingdom).
- 2) That "Son of The Man" was prophesied to rule forever over the Kingdom of the Ancient of Days.
- b. This declaration addressed the single most crucial issue of a "Kingdom of God" with sons of Adam participating in it: a definitive suspension of the Justice of God so that the sins committed had no lasting impact going into the Kingdom of Righteousness, Peace, and Joy.
- c. The people heard Jesus say that they would "know" the truth about both Him and this enormously significant "foundation" for such a kingdom.
- 1) It is not insignificant that John recorded in his Gospel that, before John was put in prison, Nicodemus admitted that the Sanhedrin "knew" that Jesus was a legitimate "teacher come from God" (John 3:2 compared with 3:23).
- 2) It is also not insignificant that Mark recorded the "scribes" as going directly against this "knowing" just one chapter later in his record.
- 3) The point: "knowing" is not all there is to this primal issue.
- a) It does no good to "know" from Whom "forgiveness" can be acquired unless forgiveness is desired.
- b) The message has never been "forgiveness comes from knowing"; it has ever been "forgiveness is extended to the repentant".
- d. The point: no one went away from that "house" that day that did not "know" that if one wished to be "forgiven" in view of the Kingdom, he/she had to get it from Jesus (but that did not mean any of them had yielded to that "knowing" as a matter of "faith").
- 2. What they "saw".
- a. They saw a momentary lapse between Jesus' command to the paralytic and his obedience.
- 1) Jesus' "command" was a present tense, active voice, imperative that meant "move into action mode so that what has already happened to you might be "seen".
- 2) The paralytic, Mark tells us, continued to remain upon his pallet: Mark deliberately changed his verb tense from "active" to "passive" so that it should have been translated "he was raised" (the Authorized Version, the ASV, and the NASB all got this wrong), which means that Jesus followed a pattern He established in 1:31 and which Peter later followed in Acts 3:7 and facilitated the man's "obedience".
- b. They then saw the paralytic following through on the rest of Jesus' instructions.
- 1) What they may, or may not, have seen later is his "obedience" to the "go to your own house" command.
- 2) There is a strong implication in the "your own house" part of Jesus' instruction that he was not to be "gathered together as in a synagogue" any longer if that "synagogue" refused to shift its "doctrine" from "Justice" to "Grace".
- B. What they heard and saw is the basis for Mark's description of their reaction.
- II. What Was That Reaction?
- A. A certain level of "stunned ambivalence".
- 1. The word "amazed" means "to be put into a mental state where there is a potent conflict between two opposite realities" [Note 5:42 and 6:51].
- 2. A very telling use of this term is found in the next chapter: Jesus' own family claims that He is "amazed" (3:21), but they mean that He is caught between competing realities and does not really "know" what He is doing.
- 3. In the case of those in Peter's house, as a type of "synagogue" setting, the opposing issues are Jesus' doctrine of "Grace" and the scribal doctrine of "Justice".
- B. A certain level of "T"heological "shift".
- 1. To "glorify" God means to accept something as an element of His character and express it.
- 2. Jesus' words and actions are having a "telling" effect; a fact not lost on the scribes.
- C. An acceptance of a solid foundation for the "shift".
- 1. Their claim that they had never "seen" the thing "thusly done before" (the issue of forgiveness being tied to a Man by irrefutable evidence) was, to them, impressive.
- 2. This was as it should have been according to John 15:24.
