Verses 1-50
Chapter 9
9:1 "Whoever is
ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation,
of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory
of his Father with the holy angels." And he used to say to them, "This
is the truth I tell you--there are some of those who are standing here
who will not taste of death until they shall see the Kingdom of God
coming with power."
One thing leaps out from this passage--the confidence of Jesus.
He has just been speaking of his death; he has no doubt that the Cross
stands ahead of him; but nonetheless he is absolutely sure that in the
end there will be triumph.
The first part of the passage states a simple truth. When the
King comes into his Kingdom he will be loyal to those who have been
loyal to him. No man can expect to dodge all the trouble of some great
undertaking and then reap all the benefit of it. No man can expect to
refuse service in some campaign and then share in the decorations when
it is brought to a successful conclusion. Jesus is saying, "In a
difficult and hostile world Christianity is up against it these days. If
a man is ashamed under such conditions to show that he is a Christian,
if he is afraid to show what side he is on, he cannot expect to gain a
place of honour when the Kingdom comes."
The last part of this passage has caused much serious thought.
Jesus says that many who are standing there will not die until they see
the Kingdom coming with power. What worries some people is that they
take this as a reference to the Second Coming; but if it is, Jesus was
mistaken, because he did not return in power and glory in the lifetime
of those who were there.
But this is not a reference to the Second Coming at all.
Consider the situation. At the moment Jesus had only once been outside
Palestine, and on that occasion he was just over the border in Tyre and
Sidon. Only a very few men in a very small country had ever heard of
him. Palestine was only about 120 miles from north to south and about 40
miles from east to west; her total population was 4,000,000 or thereby.
To speak in terms of world conquest when he had scarcely ever been
outside such a small country was strange. To make matters worse, even in
that small country, he had so provoked the enmity of the orthodox
leaders and of those in whose hands lay power, that it was quite certain
that he could hope for nothing other than death as a heretic and an
outlaw. In face of a situation like that there must have been many who
felt despairingly that Christianity had no possible future, that in a
short time it would be wiped out completely and eliminated from the
world. Humanly speaking, these pessimists were right.
Now consider what did happen. Scarcely more than thirty years
later, Christianity had swept through Asia Minor; Antioch had become a
great Christian church. It had penetrated to Egypt; the Christians were
strong in Alexandria. It had crossed the sea and come to Rome and swept
through Greece. Christianity had spread like an unstoppable tide
throughout the world. It was astonishingly true that in the lifetime of
many there, against all expectations, Christianity had come with power.
So far from being mistaken, Jesus was absolutely right.
The amazing thing is that Jesus never knew despair. In face of
the dullness of the minds of men, in face of the opposition, in face of
crucifixion and of death, he never doubted his final triumph--because he
never doubted God. He was always certain that what is impossible with
man is completely possible with him.
9:2-8 Six days after,
Jesus took Peter and James and John along with him and brought them up
into a high mountain, all by themselves, alone. And he was transfigured
in their presence. His clothes became radiant, exceedingly white, such
that no fuller on earth could have made them so white. And Elijah and
Moses appeared to them, and they were talking with Jesus. Peter said to
Jesus. "Teacher, it is good for us to be here. So let us make three
booths, one for you, and one for Moses and one for Elijah." He said this
because he did not know what he was saying, for they were awe-struck.
And there came a cloud overshadowing them. And there came a voice from
the cloud, "This is my beloved Son. Hear Him!" And immediately, when
they had looked round, they saw no one any more except Jesus alone with
them.
We are face to face with an incident in the life of Jesus that
is cloaked in mystery. We can only try to understand. Mark says that
this happened six days after the incidents near Caesarea Philippi. Luke
says that it happened eight days afterwards. There is no discrepancy
here. They both mean what we might express by saying, "About a week
afterwards." Both the Eastern and the Western Churches hold their
remembrance of the transfiguration on 6th August. It does not matter
whether or not that is the actual date, but it is a time we do well to
remember.
Tradition says that the transfiguration took place on the top of
Mount Tabor. The Eastern Church actually calls the Festival of the
Transfiguration the Taborion. It may be that the choice is based on the
mention of Mount Tabor in Psalms 89:12,
but it is unfortunate. Tabor is in the south of Galilee and Caesarea
Philippi is away to the north. Tabor is no more than 1,000 feet high,
and, in the time of Jesus, there was a fortress on the top. It is much
more likely that this event took place amidst the eternal snows of Mount
Hermon which is 9,200 feet high and much nearer Caesarea Philippi and
where the solitude would be much more complete.
What happened we cannot tell. We can only bow in reverence as we
try to understand. Mark tells us that the garments of Jesus became
radiant. The word he uses (stilbein, Greek #4744)
is the word used for the glistening gleam of burnished brass or gold or
of polished steel or of the golden glare of the sunlight. When the
incident came to an end a cloud overshadowed them.
In Jewish thought the presence of God is regularly connected
with the cloud. It was in the cloud that Moses met God. It was in the
cloud that God came to the Tabernacle. It was the cloud which rifled the
Temple when it was dedicated after Solomon had built it. And it was the
dream of the Jews that when the Messiah came the cloud of God's
presence would return to the Temple. (Exodus 16:10, Exodus 19:9, Exodus 33:9, 1 Kings 8:10, 2 Maccabees 2:8.) The descent of the cloud is a way of saying that the Messiah had come, and any Jew would understand it like that.
The transfiguration has a double significance.
(i) It did something very precious for Jesus. Jesus had to take
his own decisions. He had taken the decision to go to Jerusalem and that
was the decision to face and accept the Cross. Obviously he had to be
absolutely sure that was right before he could go on. On the mountain
top he received a double approval of his decision.
(a) Moses and Elijah met with him. Now Moses was the supreme
law-giver of Israel. To him the nation owed the laws of God. Elijah was
the first and the greatest of the prophets. Always men looked back to
him as the prophet who brought to men the very voice of God. When these
two great figures met with Jesus it meant that the greatest of the
law-givers and the greatest of the prophets said to him, "Go on!" It
meant that they saw in Jesus the consummation of all that they had
dreamed of in the past. It meant that they saw in him all that history
had longed for and hoped for and looked forward to. It is as if at that
moment Jesus was assured that he was on the right way because all
history had been leading up to the Cross.
(b) God spoke with Jesus. As always, Jesus did not consult his
own wishes. He went to God and said, "What wilt thou have me to do?" He
put all his plans and intentions before God. And God said to him, "You
are acting as my own beloved Son should act and must act. Go on!" On the
mountain of the transfiguration Jesus was assured that he had not
chosen the wrong way. He saw, not only the inevitability, but the
essential rightness of the Cross.
(ii) It did something very precious for the disciples.
(a) They had been shattered by Jesus' statement that he was
going to Jerusalem to die. That seemed to them the complete negation of
all that they understood of the Messiah. They were still bewildered and
uncomprehending. Things were happening which not only baffled their
minds but were also breaking their hearts. What they saw on the mountain
of the transfiguration would give them something to hold on to, even
when they could not understand. Cross or no Cross, they had heard God's
voice acknowledge Jesus as his Son.
(b) It made them in a special sense witnesses of the glory of
Christ. A witness has been defined as a man who first sees and then
shows. This time on the mountain had shown them the glory of Christ, and
now they had the story of this glory to hide in their hearts and to
tell to men, not at the moment, but when the time came.
9:9-13 As they were
coming down from the mountain, Jesus enjoined them that they must not
relate to anyone what they had seen, except when the Son of Man should
have risen from the dead. They clung to this word, asking among
themselves, what this phrase about rising from the dead could mean. They
asked Jesus, "Do the experts in the Law not say that Elijah must come
first?" "It is true," he said to them, "Elijah comes first and sets all
things in order. And yet how does it stand written about the Son of Man
that he must suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But, I say
to you, Elijah, too, has come, and they treated him as they wished,
even as it stands written about him."
Naturally the three disciples were thinking hard as they came down the mountain-side.
First, Jesus began with an injunction. They must tell no one of
what they had seen. Jesus knew quite well that their minds were still
haunted by the conception of a Messiah of might and power. If they were
to tell of what had happened on the mountain top, of how the glory of
God had appeared, of how Moses and Elijah had appeared, how that could
be made to chime in with popular expectations! How it could be made to
seem a prelude to the burst of God's avenging power on the nations of
the world! The disciples still had to learn what Messiahship meant.
There was only one thing that could teach them that--the Cross and the
Resurrection to follow. When the Cross had taught them what Messiahship
meant and when the Resurrection had convinced them that Jesus was the
Messiah, then, and then only, they might tell of the glory of the
mountain top for then, and then only, would they see it as it ought to
be seen--as the prelude, not to the unleashing of God's force, but to
the crucifying of God's love.
Still their minds worked on. They could not understand what
Jesus' words about resurrection meant. Their whole attitude shows that
in fact they never understood them. Their whole outlook when the Cross
came was that of men to whom the end had come. We must not blame the
disciples. It was simply that they had been so schooled in a completely
different idea of Messiahship that they could not take in what Jesus had
said.
Then they asked something that was puzzling them. The Jew
believed that before the Messiah came Elijah would come to be his herald
and forerunner. (Malachi 4:5-6.)
They had a rabbinic tradition that Elijah would come three days before
the Messiah. On the first day he would stand on the mountains of Israel,
lamenting the desolation of the land. And then in a voice that would be
heard from one end of the world to the other, he would cry, "Peace
cometh to the world. Peace cometh to the world." On the second day he
would cry, "Good cometh to the world. Good cometh to the world." And on
the third day he would cry "Jeshuah (see Yeshuw'ah - Hebrew #3444)
(salvation) cometh to the world. Jeshuah cometh to the world." He would
restore all things. He would mend the family breaches of the grim last
days. He would settle all doubtful points of ritual and ceremonial. He
would cleanse the nation by bringing back those wrongfully excluded and
driving out those wrongfully included. Elijah had an amazing place in
the thought of Israel. He was conceived of as being continuously active
in heaven and on earth in their interest, and being the herald of the
final consummation.
Inevitably the disciples were wondering "If Jesus is the Messiah
what has happened to Elijah?" Jesus' answer was in terms that any Jew
would understand. "Elijah," he said, "has come and men treated him as
they willed. They took him and they arbitrarily applied their will to
him and forgot God's will." He was referring to the imprisonment and
death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod. Then, by implication,
he drove them back to that thought they would not face and that he was
determined they must face. By implication he demanded, "If they have
done that to the forerunner, what will they do to the Messiah?"
Jesus was overturning all the preconceived notions and ideas of
his disciples. They looked for the emergence of Elijah, the coming of
the Messiah, the irruption of God into time and the shattering victory
of heaven, which they identified with the triumph of Israel. He was
trying to compel them to see that in fact the herald had been cruelly
killed and the Messiah must end on a Cross. They still did not
understand, and their failure to understand was due to the cause which
always makes men fail to understand--they clung to their way and refused
to see God's way. They wished things as they desired them and not as
God had ordered them. the error of their thoughts had blinded them to
the revelation of God's truth.
9:14-18 When they came
to the disciples, they saw a great crowd gathered around them, and the
experts in the law engaged in discussion with them. And as soon as they
saw him the whole crowd were amazed and ran to him and greeted him. He
asked them, "What are you discussing among yourselves?" And one of the
crowd answered him, "Teacher, I brought my son to you because he has a
spirit which makes him dumb. And whenever the spirit seizes him, it
convulses him, and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth, and he is
wasting away. And I asked your disciples to cast it out and they could
not."
This is the kind of thing that Peter had wanted to avoid. On
the mountain top, in the presence of the glory, Peter had said, "This is
a good place for us to be." Then he had wanted to build three booths
for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, and to stay there. Life was so much
better, so much nearer God, there on the mountain top. Why ever come
down again? But it is of the very essence of life that we must come down
from the mountain top. It has been said that in religion there must be
solitude, but not solitariness. The solitude is necessary, for a man
must keep his contact with God; but if a man, in his search for the
essential solitude, shuts himself off from his fellow-men, shuts his
ears to their appeal for help, shuts his heart to the cry of their
tears, that is not religion. The solitude is not meant to make us
solitary. It is meant to make us better able to meet and cope with the
demands of everyday life.
Jesus came down to a delicate situation. A father had brought
his boy to the disciples, and the boy was an epileptic. All the symptoms
were there. The disciples had been quite unable to deal with his case,
and that had given the scribes their chance. The helplessness of the
disciples was a first-rate opportunity to belittle not only them but
their Master. That is what made the situation so delicate, and that is
what makes every human situation so delicate for the Christian. His
conduct, his words, his ability or inability to cope with the demands of
life, are used as a yard-stick, not only to judge him, but to judge
Jesus Christ.
A. Victor Murray, in his book on Christian Education, writes,
"There are those into whose eyes comes a far-away look when they talk
about the church. It is a supernatural society, the body of Christ, his
spotless bride, the custodian of the oracles of God, the blessed company
of the redeemed, and a few more romantic titles, none of which seem to
tally with what the outsider can see for himself in 'St. Agatha's Parish
Church,' or 'High Street Methodists.'" It does not matter how
high-sounding a man's professions may be, it is by his actions that
people judge him, and, in judging him, judge his Master. That was the
situation here.
Then Jesus arrived. When the people saw him, they were
astonished. We are not for one moment to think that the radiance of the
transfiguration still lingered on him. That would have been to undo his
own instructions that it be kept as yet a secret. The crowd had thought
him away up in the lonely slopes of Hermon. They had been so engrossed
in their argument that they had not seen him come, and now, just when
the moment was right, here he was in the midst of them. It was at his
sudden, unexpected but opportune arrival, that they were surprised.
Here we learn two things about Jesus.
(i) He was ready to face the Cross and he was ready to face the
common problem just as either came. It is characteristic of human nature
that we can face the great crisis-moments of life with honour and
dignity, but allow the routine demands of everyday to irritate and annoy
us. We can face the shattering blows of life with a certain heroism,
but allow the petty pinpricks to upset us. Many a man can face a great
disaster or a great loss with calm serenity and yet loses his temper if a
meal is badly cooked or a train late. The amazing thing about Jesus was
that he could serenely face the Cross, and just as calmly deal with the
day-to-day emergencies of life. The reason was that he did not keep God
only for the crisis as so many of us do. He walked the daily paths of
life with him.
(ii) He had come into the world to save the world, and yet he
could give himself in his entirety to the helping of one single person.
It is much easier to preach the gospel of love for mankind than it is to
love individual not-very-lovable sinners. It is easy to be filled with a
sentimental affection for the human race, and just as easy to find it
too much bother to go out of our way to help an individual member of it.
Jesus had the gift, which is the gift of a regal nature, of giving
himself entirely to every person with whom he happened to be.
9:19-24 "O faithless
generation!" Jesus answered. "How long am I to be with you? How long am I
to bear you? Bring him to me!" They brought him to Jesus. When he saw
Jesus, the spirit immediately sent the boy into a convulsion, and he
fell upon the ground, and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. Jesus
asked his father, "How long is it since this happened to him?" He said,
"He has been like this since he was a child. Often it throws him into
the fire and into waters for it is out to destroy him. But, if you can,
let your heart be moved with pity, and help us." Jesus said to him, "You
say, 'If you can.' All things are possible to him who believes."
Immediately the father of the boy cried out, "I do believe. Help my
unbelief."
This passage begins with a cry wrung from the heart of Jesus.
He had been on the mountain top and had faced the tremendous task that
lay ahead of him. He had decided to stake his life on the redemption of
the world. And now he had come back down to find his nearest followers,
his own chosen men, beaten and baffled and helpless and ineffective. The
thing, for the moment, must have daunted even Jesus. He must have had a
sudden realization of what anyone else would have called the
hopelessness of his task. He must at that moment have almost despaired
of the attempt to change human nature and to make men of the world into
men of God.
How did he meet the moment of despair? "Bring the boy to me," he
said. When we cannot deal with the ultimate situation, the thing to do
is to deal with the situation which at the moment confronts us. It was
as if Jesus said, "I do not know how I am ever to change these disciples
of mine, but I can at this moment help this boy. Let me get on with the
present task, and not despair of the future."
Again and again that is the way to avoid despair. If we sit and
think about the state of the world, we may well become very depressed;
then let us get to action in our small corner of the world. We may
sometimes despair of the church; then let us get to action in our own
small part of the church. Jesus did not sit appalled and paralysed at
the slowness of men's minds; he dealt with the immediate situation. As
Kingsley had it,
"Do the work that's nearest,
Though it's dull at whiles,
Helping when we meet them
Lame dogs over stiles."
The surest way to avoid pessimism and despair is to take what
immediate action we can--and there is always something to be done.
To the father of the boy Jesus stated the conditions of a
miracle. "To him who believes," said Jesus, "all things are possible."
It was as if Jesus said, "The cure of your boy depends, not on me, but
on you." This is not a specially theological truth; it is universal. To
approach anything in the spirit of hopelessness is to make it hopeless;
to approach anything in the spirit of faith is to make it a possibility.
Cavour once said that what a statesman needed above all was "a sense of
the possible." Most of us are cursed with a sense of the impossible,
and that is precisely why miracles do not happen.
The whole attitude of the father of the boy is most
illuminating. Originally he had come seeking for Jesus himself. Since
Jesus was on the mountain top he had had to deal with the disciples and
his experience of them was discouraging. His faith was badly shaken, so
badly shaken that when he came to Jesus all he could say at first was,
"Help me, if you can." then, face to face with Jesus, suddenly his faith
blazed up again. "I believe," he cried. "If there is still some
discouragement in me, still some doubts, take them away and fill me with
an unquestioning faith."
It sometimes happens that people get less than they hoped for
from some church or from some servant of the church. When that happens
they ought to press beyond the church to the Master of the church,
beyond the servant of Christ to Christ himself. The church may at times
disappoint us, and God's servants on earth may disappoint us. But when
we battle our way face to face with Jesus Christ, he never disappoints
us.
9:25-29 When Jesus saw
that the crowd was running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit.
"Spirit of dumbness and deafness," he said, "I order you, come out of
him, and don't go into him again." When it had cried and violently
convulsed him it came out, and he became like a dead man, so that many
said, "He is dead." But Jesus took him by the hand, and raised him up,
and he stood up. When he had gone into the house, and when they were by
themselves, his disciples asked him, "Why were we not able to cast it
out?" "This kind," he said to them, "cannot come out except by prayer."
Jesus must have taken father and son aside. But the crowd,
hearing their cries, came running up, and Jesus acted. There was one
last struggle, a struggle to complete exhaustion, and the boy was cured.
When they were by themselves the disciples asked the cause of
their failure. They were no doubt remembering that Jesus had sent them
out to preach and heal and cast out devils (Mark 3:14-15). Why, then, had they this time so signally failed? Jesus answered quite simply that this kind of cure demanded prayer.
In effect he said to them, "You don't live close enough to God."
They had been equipped with power, but it needed prayer to maintain it.
There is a deep lesson here. God may have given us a gift, but
unless we maintain close contact with him it may wither and die. That is
true of any gift. God may give a man great natural gifts as a preacher,
but unless he maintains contact with God, he may in the end become only
a man of words and not a man of power. God may give a man a gift of
music or of song, but unless he maintains contact with God, he may
become a mere professional, who uses the gift only for gain, which is a
dreary thing. That is not to say a man should not use a gift for gain.
He has a right to capitalize any talent. But it does mean that, even
when he is so using it, he should be finding joy in it because he is
also using it for God. It is told of Jenny Lind, the famous Swedish
soprano, that before every performance she would stand alone in her
dressing-room and pray, "God, help me to sing true to-night."
Unless we maintain this contact with God we lose two things however great our gift may be.
(i) We lose vitality. We lose that living power, that something
plus which makes for greatness. The thing becomes a performance instead
of an offering to God. What should be a vital, living body becomes a
beautiful corpse.
(ii) We lose humility. What should be used for God's glory we
begin to use for our own, and the virtue goes out of it. What should
have been used to set God before men is used to set ourselves before
them, and the breath of loveliness is gone.
Here is a warning thought. The disciples had been equipped with
power direct from Jesus, but they had not nurtured power with prayer,
and power had vanished. Whatever gifts God has given us, we lose them
when we use them for ourselves. We keep them when we enrich them by
continual contact with the God who gave them.
9:30-31 When they left
there, they made their way through Galilee, and Jesus did not wish
anyone to know where he was, for he kept teaching the disciples and
saying to them, "The Son of Man is being delivered into the hands of
men, and they will kill him, and, when he has been killed, after three
days he will rise again." But they did not understand what he said, and
they were afraid to ask him what it meant.
This passage marks a mile-stone. Jesus had now left the north
country where he was safe and was taking the first step towards
Jerusalem and to the Cross which awaited him there. For once he did not
watt the crowds around him. He knew quite clearly that unless he could
write his message on the hearts of his chosen men, he had failed. Any
teacher can leave behind him a series of propositions, but Jesus knew
that that was not enough. He had to leave behind him a band of persons
on whom these propositions were written. He had to make sure, before he
left this world in the body, that there were some who understood,
however dimly, what he had come to say.
This time the tragedy of his warning is even more poignant. If
we compare it with the previous passage in which he foretold his death (Mark 8:31),
we see that one phrase is added, "The Son of Man is being delivered
into the hands of men." There was a traitor in the little band, and
Jesus knew it. He could see the way in which the mind of Judas was
working. Maybe he could see it better than Judas could himself. And when
he said, "The Son of Man is being delivered into the hands of men." he
was not only announcing a fact and giving a warning, he was also making a
last appeal to the man in whose heart was forming the purpose of
betrayal.
Even yet the disciples did not understand. The thing they did
not understand was the bit about rising again. By this time they were
aware of the atmosphere of tragedy, but to the end of the day they never
grasped the certainty of the Resurrection. That was a wonder that was
too great for them, a wonder that they grasped only when it became an
accomplished fact.
When they did not understand, they were afraid to ask any
further questions. They were like men who knew so much that they were
afraid to know more. A man might receive a verdict from his doctor. He
might think the general purport of the verdict bad, but not understand
all the details, and he might be afraid to ask questions, for the simple
reason that he is afraid to know any more. The disciples were like
that.
Sometimes we are amazed that they did not grasp what was so
plainly spoken. The human mind has an amazing faculty for rejecting what
it does not wish to see. Are we so very different? Over and over again
we have heard the Christian message. We know the glory of accepting it
and the tragedy of rejecting it, but many of us are just as far off as
ever we were from giving it our full allegiance and moulding our lives
to fit it. Men still accept the parts of the Christian message which
they like and which suit them, and refuse to understand the rest.
9:32-35 So they came
to Capernaum. When Jesus was in the house he asked them, "What were you
arguing about on the road?" They remained silent. for on the road they
had been arguing with each other who was to be greatest. So Jesus sat
down, and called the Twelve, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to be
first, he must be the last of all, and the servant of all."
Nothing so well shows how far the disciples were from realizing
the real meaning of Jesus' Messiahship as this does. Repeatedly he had
told them what awaited him in Jerusalem, and yet they were still
thinking of his Kingdom in earthly terms and of themselves as his chief
ministers of state. There is something heart-breaking in the thought of
Jesus going towards a Cross and his disciples arguing about who would be
greatest.
Yet in their heart of hearts they knew they were wrong. When he
asked them what they had been arguing about they had nothing to say. It
was the silence of shame. They had no defence. It is strange how a thing
takes its proper place and acquires its true character when it is set
in the eyes of Jesus. So long as they thought that Jesus was not
listening and that Jesus had not seen, the argument about who should be
greatest seemed fair enough, but when that argument had to be stated in
the presence of Jesus it was seen in all its unworthiness.
If we took everything and set it in the sight of Jesus it would
make all the difference in the world. If of everything we did, we asked,
"Could I go on doing this if Jesus was watching me?"; if of everything
we said, we asked, "Could I go on talking like this if Jesus was
listening to me?" there would be many things which we would be saved
from doing and saying. And the fact of Christian belief is that there is
no "if" about it. All deeds are done, all words are spoken in his
presence. God keep us from the words and deeds which we would be ashamed
that he should hear and see.
Jesus dealt with this very seriously. It says that he sat down
and called the Twelve to him. When a Rabbi was teaching as a Rabbi, as a
master teaches his scholars and disciples, when he was really making a
pronouncement, he sat to teach. Jesus deliberately took up the position
of a Rabbi teaching his pupils before he spoke. And then he told them
that if they sought for greatness in his Kingdom they must find it, not
by being first but by being last, not by being masters but by being
servants of all. It was not that Jesus abolished ambition. Rather he
recreated and sublimated ambition. For the ambition to rule he
substituted the ambition to serve. For the ambition to have things done
for us he substituted the ambition to do things for others.
So far from being an impossibly idealistic view, this is a view
of the soundest common-sense. The really great men, the men who are
remembered as having made a real contribution to life, are the men who
said to themselves, not, "How can I use the state and society to further
my own prestige and my own personal ambitions?" but, "How can I use my
personal gifts and talents to serve the state?"
Stanley Baldwin paid a noble tribute to Lord Curzon when he
died. In it he said, "I want, before I sit down, to say one or two
things that no one but I can say. A Prime Minister sees human nature
bared to the bone, and it was my chance to see him twice when he
suffered great disappointment--the time when I was preferred to him as
Prime Minister, and the time when I had to tell him that he could render
greater service to the country as chairman of the Committee of Imperial
Defence than in the Foreign Office. Each of these occasions was a
profound and bitter disappointment to him, but never for one moment did
he show by word, look, or innuendo, or by any reference to the subject
afterwards, that he was dissatisfied. He bore no grudge, and he pursued
no other course than the one I expected of him, of doing his duty where
it was decided he could best render service." Here was a man whose
greatness lay not in the fact that he reached the highest offices of
state, but in the fact that he was ready to serve his country anywhere.
True selflessness is rare, and when it is found it is
remembered. The Greeks had a story of a Spartan called Paedaretos. Three
hundred men were to be chosen to govern Sparta and Paedaretos was a
candidate. When the list of the successful was announced his name was
not on it. "I am sorry," said one of his friends, "that you were not
elected. The people ought to have known what a wise officer of state you
would have made." "I am glad," said Paedaretos, "that in Sparta there
are three hundred men better than I am." Here was a man who became a
legend because he was prepared to give to others the first place and to
bear no ill will.
Every economic problem would be solved if men lived for what
they could do for others and not for what they could get for themselves.
Every political problem would be solved if the ambition of men was only
to serve the state and not to enhance their own prestige. The divisions
and disputes which tear the church asunder would for the most part
never occur if the only desire of its office-bearers and its members was
to serve it without caring what position they occupied. When Jesus
spoke of the supreme greatness and value of the man whose ambition was
to be a servant, he laid down one of the greatest practical truths in
the world.
9:36-37 Jesus took a
little child and set him in the midst of them. And he took him up in the
crook of his arm and said to them, "Whoever receives one little child
like this in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not
me, but him who sent me."
Jesus is here still dealing with the worthy and the unworthy ambition.
He took a child and set him in the midst. Now a child has no
influence at all; a child cannot advance a man's career nor enhance his
prestige; a child cannot give us things. It is the other way round. A
child needs things; a child must have things done for him. So Jesus
says, "If a man welcomes the poor, ordinary people, the people who have
no influence and no wealth and no power, the people who need things done
for them, he is welcoming me. More than that, he is welcoming God." The
child is typical of the person who needs things, and it is the society
of the person who needs things that we must seek.
There is a warning here. It is easy to cultivate the friendship
of the person who can do things for us, and whose influence can be
useful to us. And it is equally easy to avoid the society of the person
who inconveniently needs our help. It is easy to curry favour with the
influential and the great, and to neglect the simple, humble, ordinary
folk. It is easy at some function to seek the society and the notice of
some distinguished person, and to avoid the poor relation. In effect
Jesus here says that we ought to seek out not those who can do things
for us, but those for whom we can do things, for in this way we are
seeking the society of himself. This is another way of saying, "As you
did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40).
9:38-40 John said to
Jesus, "Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons by the use of your
name, and we tried to stop him because he is not one of our company."
"Don't stop him," said Jesus. "There is no one who can do a work of
power in the strength of my name and lightly speak evil of me. He who is
not against us is for us."
As we have seen over and over again, in the time of Jesus
everyone believed in demons. Everyone believed that both mental and
physical illness was caused by the malign influence of these evil
spirits. Now there was one very common way to exorcise them. If one
could get to know the name of a still more powerful spirit and command
the evil demon in that name to come out of a person, the demon was
supposed to be powerless to resist. It could not stand against the might
of the more powerful name. This is the kind of picture we have here.
John had seen a man using the all-powerful name of Jesus to defeat the
demons and he had tried to stop him, because he was not one of the
intimate band of the disciples. But Jesus declared that no man could do a
mighty work in his name and be altogether his enemy. Then Jesus laid
down the great principle that "he who is not against us is for us."
Here is a lesson in tolerance, and it is a lesson that nearly everyone needs to learn.
(i) Every man has a right to his own thoughts. Every man has a
right to think things out and to think them through until he comes to
his own conclusions and his own beliefs. And that is a right we should
respect. We are often too apt to condemn what we do not understand.
William Penn once said, "Neither despise nor oppose what thou dost not
understand." Kingsley Williams in The New Testament in Plain English,
translates a phrase in Jd 10 like this--"Those who speak abusively of
everything they do not understand."
There are two things we must remember.
(a) There is far more than one way to God. "God," as Tennyson
has it, "fulfils himself in many ways." Cervantes once said, "Many are
the roads by which God carries his own to heaven." The world is round,
and two people can get to precisely the same destination by starting out
in precisely opposite directions. All roads, if we pursue them long
enough and far enough, lead to God. It is a fearful thing for any man or
any church to think that he or it has a monopoly of salvation.
(b) It is necessary to remember that truth is always bigger than
any man's grasp of it. No man can possibly grasp all truth. The basis
of tolerance is not a lazy acceptance of anything. It is not the feeling
that there cannot be assurance anywhere. The basis of tolerance is
simply the realization of the magnitude of the orb of truth. John Morley
wrote, "Toleration means reverence for all the possibilities of truth,
it means acknowledgment that she dwells in divers mansions, and wears
vesture of many colours, and speaks in strange tongues. It means frank
respect for freedom of indwelling conscience against mechanical forms,
official conventions, social force. It means the charity that is greater
than faith or hope." Intolerance is a sign both of arrogance and
ignorance, for it is a sign that a man believes that there is no truth
beyond the truth he sees.
(ii) Not only must we concede to every man the right to do his
own thinking, we must also concede the right to a man to do his own
speaking. Of all democratic rights the dearest is that of liberty of
speech. There are, of course, limits. If a man is inculcating doctrines
calculated to destroy morality and to remove the foundations from all
civilized and Christian society, he must be combatted. But the way to
combat him is certainly not to eliminate him by force but to prove him
wrong. Once Voltaire laid down the conception of freedom of speech in a
vivid sentence. "I hate what you say," he said, "but I would die for
your right to say it."
(iii) We must remember that any doctrine or belief must finally
be judged by the kind of people it produces. Dr. Chalmers once put the
matter in a nutshell. "Who cares," he demanded, "about any Church but as
an instrument of Christian good?" The question must always ultimately
be, not, "How is a Church governed?" but, "What kind of people does a
Church produce?"
There is an old eastern fable. A man possessed a ring set with a
wonderful opal. Whoever wore the ring became so sweet and true in
character that all men loved him. The ring was a charm. Always it was
passed down from father to son, and always it did its work. As time went
on, it came to a father who had three sons whom he loved with an equal
love. What was he to do when the time came to pass on the ring? The
father got other two rings made precisely the same so that none could
tell the difference. On his death-bed he called each of his sons in,
spoke some words of love and to each, without telling the others, gave a
ring. When the three sons discovered that each had a ring, a great
dispute arose as to which was the true ring that could do so much for
its owner. The case was taken to a wise judge. He examined the rings and
then he spoke. "I cannot tell which is the magic ring," he said, "but
you yourselves can prove it." "We?" asked the sons in astonishment.
"Yes," said the judge, "for if the true ring gives sweetness to the
character of the man who wears it, then I and all the other people in
the city will know the man who possesses the true ring by the goodness
of his life. So, go your ways, and be kind, be truthful, be brave, be
just in your dealings, and he who does these things will be the owner of
the true ring."
The matter was to be proved by life. No man can entirely condemn
beliefs which make a man good. If we remember that, we may be less
intolerant.
(iv) We may hate a man's beliefs, but we must never hate the
man. We may wish to eliminate what he teaches, but we must never wish to
eliminate him.
"He drew a circle that shut me out--
Rebel, heretic, thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win--
We drew a circle that took him in."
9:41-42 Whoever gives
you a cup of water to drink on the ground that you belong to Christ, I
tell you truly he will not lose his reward. And whoever puts a
stumbling-block in the path of one of these little ones who believe in
me, it is better for him that a great millstone hang about his neck and
he be cast into the sea.
The teaching of this passage is simple, unmistakable and salutary.
(i) It declares that any kindness shown, any help given, to the
people of Christ will not lose its reward. The reason for helping is
that the person in need belongs to Jesus. Every man in need has a claim
upon us because he is dear to Christ. Had Jesus still been here in the
flesh he would have helped that man in the most practical way and the
duty of help has devolved on us. It is to be noted how simple the help
is. The gift is a cup of cold water. We are not asked to do great things
for others, things beyond our power. We are asked to give the simple
things that any man can give.
A missionary tells a lovely story. She had been telling a class
of African primary children about giving a cup of cold water in the name
of Jesus. She was sitting on the veranda of her house. Into the village
square came a company of native bearers. They had heavy packs. They
were tired and thirsty, and they sat down to rest. Now they were men of
another tribe, and had they asked the ordinary non-Christian native for
water they would have been told to go and find it for themselves,
because of the barrier between the tribes. But as the men sat wearily
there, and as the missionary watched, from the school emerged a little
line of tiny African girls. On their heads they had pitchers of water.
Shyly and fearfully they approached the tired bearers, knelt and offered
their pitchers of water. In surprise the bearers took them and drank
and handed them back, and the girls took to their heels and ran to the
missionary. "We have given a thirsty man a drink," they said, "in the
name of Jesus." The little children took the story and the duty
literally.
Would that more would do so! It is the simple kindnesses that
are needed. As Mahomet said long ago, "Putting a lost man on the right
road, giving a thirsty man a drink of water, smiling in your brother's
face--that, too, is charity."
(ii) But the converse is also true. To help is to win the
eternal reward. To cause a weaker brother to stumble is to win the
eternal punishment. The passage is deliberately stern. The mill-stone
that is mentioned is a great millstone. There were two kinds of mills in
Palestine. There was the hand-mill that the women used in the house.
And there was the mill whose stone was so great that it took an ass to
turn it.
The mill-stone here is literally an ass' mill-stone. To be cast
into the sea with that attached was certainly to have no hope of return.
This was in fact a punishment and a means of execution both in Rome and
in Palestine. Josephus tells us that when certain Galilaeans had made a
successful revolt "they took those of Herod's party and drowned them in
the lake." Suetonius, the Roman historian, tells us of Augustus that,
"Because the tutor and attendants of his son Gaius took advantage of
their master's illness to commit acts of arrogance and greed to his
province, he had them thrown into a river with heavy weights about their
necks."
To sin is terrible but to teach another to sin is infinitely
worse. O. Henry has a story in which he tells of a little girl whose
mother was dead. Her father used to come home from work and sit down and
take off his jacket and open his paper and light his pipe and put his
feet on the mantelpiece. The little girl would come in and ask him to
play with her for a little for she was lonely. He told her he was tired,
to let him be at peace. He told her to go out to the street and play.
She played on the streets. The inevitable happened--she took to the
streets. The years passed on and she died. Her soul arrived in heaven.
Peter saw her and said to Jesus, "Master, here's a girl who was a bad
lot. I suppose we send her straight to hell?" "No," said Jesus gently,
"let her in. Let her in." And then his eyes grew stern, "But look for a
man who refused to play with his little girl and sent her out to the
streets--and send him to hell." God is not hard on the sinner, but he
will be stern to the person who makes it easier for another to sin, and
whose conduct, either thoughtless or deliberate, puts a stumbling-block
in the path of a weaker brother.
9:43-48 If your hand
proves a stumbling-block to you, cut it off. It is better for you to
enter life maimed than to go away to Gehenna with two hands, to the fire
that can never be quenched. And if your foot is a stumbling-block to
you, cut it off. For it is better for you to enter life lame than to be
cast into Gehenna with two feet. And if your eye proves a
stumbling-block to you, cast it away. For it is better for you to enter
into the Kingdom of God with one eye than to be cast into Gehenna with
two eyes, where their worm does not die and the fire is never quenched.
This passage lays down in vivid eastern language the basic
truth that there is one goal in life worth any sacrifice. In physical
matters it may be that a man may have to part with a limb or with some
part of the body to preserve the life of the whole body. The amputation
of some limb or the excision of some part of the body by surgical means
is sometimes the only way to preserve the life of the whole body. In the
spiritual life the same kind of thing can happen.
The Jewish Rabbis had sayings based on the way in which some
parts of the body can lend themselves to sin. "The eye and the heart are
the two brokers of sin." "The eye and the heart are the two handmaids
of sin." "Passions lodge only in him who sees." "Woe to him who goes
after his eyes for the eyes are adulterous." There are certain instincts
in man, and certain parts of man's physical constitution, which
minister to sin. This saying of Jesus is not to be taken literally, but
is a vivid eastern way of saying that there is a goal in life worth any
sacrifice to attain it.
There are in this passage repeated references to Gehenna. Gehenna is spoken of in the New Testament in Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:29-30; Matthew 10:28; Matthew 18:9; Matthew 23:15; Matthew 23:33; Luke 12:5; James 3:6.
The word is regularly translated Hell. It is a word with a history. It
is a form of the word Hinnom. The valley of Hinnom was a ravine outside
Jerusalem. It had an evil past.
It was the valley in which Ahaz, in the old days, had instituted
fire worship and the sacrifice of little children in the fire. "He
burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons
as an offering." (2 Chronicles 28:3). That terrible heathen worship was also followed by Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:6).
The valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, therefore, was the scene of one of
Israel's most terrible lapses into heathen customs. In his reformations
Josiah declared it an unclean place. "He defiled Topheth, which is in
the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his
daughter as an offering to Molech." (2 Kings 23:10).
When the valley had been so declared unclean and had been so
desecrated it was set apart as the place where the refuse of Jerusalem
was burned. The consequence was that it was a foul, unclean place, where
loathsome worms bred on the refuse, and which smoked and smouldered at
all times like some vast incinerator. The actual phrase about the worm
which does not die, and the fire which is not quenched, comes from a
description of the fate of Israel's evil enemies in Isaiah 66:24.
Because of all this Gehenna had become a kind of type or symbol
of Hell, the place where the souls of the wicked would be tortured and
destroyed. It is so used in the Talmud. "The sinner who desists from the
words of the Law will in the end inherit Gehenna." So then Gehenna
stands as the place of punishment, and the word roused in the mind of
every Israelite the grimmest and most terrible pictures.
But what was the goal for which everything must be sacrificed?
It is described in two ways. Twice it is called life, and once it is
called the Kingdom of God. How may we define the Kingdom of God? We may
take our definition from the Lord's Prayer. In that prayer two petitions
are set beside each other. "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth
as it is in heaven." There is no literary device so characteristic of
Jewish style as parallelism. In parallelism two phrases are set side by
side, the one of which either restates the other, or amplifies, explains
and develops it. Any verse of the Psalms will show this device in
action. So, then, we may take it that in the Lord's Prayer the one
petition is an explanation and amplification of the other. When we set
the two together we get the definition that, "The Kingdom of Heaven is a
society upon earth in which God's will is as perfectly done in earth as
it is in heaven."
We may then go on to say quite simply that perfectly to do God's
will is to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. And if we take that
and apply it to the passage we are now studying it will mean that it is
worth any sacrifice and any discipline and any self-denial to do the
will of God and only in doing that will is there real life and ultimate
and completely satisfying peace.
Origen takes this symbolically. He says that it may be necessary
to excise some heretic or some evil person from the fellowship of the
Church in order to keep the body of the Church pure. But this saying is
meant to be taken very personally. It means that it may be necessary to
excise some habit, to abandon some pleasure, to give up some friendship,
to cut out some thing which has become very dear to us, in order to be
fully obedient to the will of God. This is not a matter with which
anyone can deal for anyone else. It is solely a matter of a man's
individual conscience, and it means that, if there is anything in our
lives which is coming between us and a perfect obedience to the will of
God, however much habit and custom may have made it part of our lives,
it must be rooted out. The rooting out may be as painful as a surgical
operation, it may seem like cutting out part of our own body, but if we
are to know real life, real happiness and real peace it must go. This
may sound bleak and stern, but in reality it is only facing the facts of
life.
9:49-50 Everyone must
be salted with fire, Salt is good, but, if the salt has become saltless,
with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and so live at
peace with each other.
These three verses are amongst the most difficult in the New
Testament. The commentators produce scores of different interpretations.
The interpretation will become easier if we remember something we have
already had cause to note. Often Jesus dropped pithy sayings which stuck
in men's minds because they could not possibly forget them. But often,
although men remembered the saying, they did not remember the occasion
on which it was said. The result is that we often get a series of quite
disconnected sayings of Jesus set together because they stuck in the
writer's mind in that order.
Here is an instance of this. We will not make sense of these two
verses at all unless we recognize that here we have three quite
separate sayings of Jesus which have nothing to do with each other. They
came together in the compiler's mind and stuck there together in this
order because they all contain the word salt. They are a little
collection of sayings of Jesus in which he used salt in various ways as
metaphor or illustration. AD this is to say that we must not try to find
some remote connection between these sayings. We must take them
individually and interpret each as it comes.
(i) Everyone must be salted by fire. According to the Jewish Law
every sacrifice must be salted with salt before it was offered to God
on the altar (Leviticus 2:13). That sacrificial salt was called the salt of the covenant (Numbers 18:19; 2 Chronicles 13:5).
It was the addition of that salt which made the sacrifice acceptable to
God, and which his covenant law laid down as necessary. This saying of
Jesus will then mean, "Before a Christian life becomes acceptable to God
it must be treated with fire just as every sacrifice is treated with
salt." The fire is the salt which makes the life acceptable to God.
What does that mean? In ordinary New Testament language, fire has two connections.
(a) It is connected with purification. It is the fire which
purifies the base metal; the alloy is separated and the metal left pure.
Fire then will mean everything which purifies life, the discipline by
which a man conquers his sin, the experiences of life which purify and
strengthen the sinews of the soul. In that case this will mean, "The
life which is acceptable to God is the life which has been cleansed and
purified by the discipline of Christian obedience and Christian
acceptance of the guiding hand of God."
(b) Fire is connected with destruction. In that case this saying
will have to do with persecution. It will mean that the life which has
undergone the trials and hardships and perils of persecution is the life
which is acceptable to God. The man who has voluntarily faced the
danger of the destruction of his goods and the destruction of his own
life because of his loyalty to Jesus Christ is the man who is dear to
God.
We may take this first saying of Jesus to mean that the life
which is purified by discipline and has faced the danger of persecution
because of its loyalty is the sacrifice which is precious to God.
(ii) Salt is good, but if the salt has become saltless, with
what will you season it? This is an even harder saying to interpret. We
would not say that there are no other possible interpretations, but we
would suggest that it may be understood on the following lines. Salt has
two characteristic virtues. First, it lends flavour to things. An egg
without salt is an insipid thing. Anyone knows how unpleasant many a
dish is when the salt which should have been included is accidentally
omitted in the preparation. Second, salt was the earliest of all
preservatives. To keep a thing from going rotten salt was used. The
Greeks used to say that salt acted like a soul in a dead body. Dead meat
left to itself went bad, but, pickled in salt, it retained its
freshness. The salt seemed to put a kind of life into it. Salt defended
against corruption.
Now the Christian was sent into a heathen society to do
something for it. Heathen society had two characteristics. First, it was
bored and world-weary. The very luxuries and excesses of that ancient
world were a proof that in its bored weariness it was looking for some
thrill in a life from which all thrill had gone. As Matthew Arnold
wrote,
"On that hard pagan world, disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers--
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours."
Into that bored and weary world Christianity came, and it was
the task of the Christian to impart to society a new flavour and a new
thrill as salt does to the dish with which it is used.
Second, that ancient world was corrupt. No one knew that better
than the ancients themselves. Juvenal likened Rome to a filthy sewer.
Purity was gone and chastity was unknown. Into that corrupt world
Christianity came, and it was the task of the Christian to bring an
antiseptic to the poison of life, to bring a cleansing influence into
that corruption. Just as salt defeated the corruption which inevitably
attacked dead meat, so Christianity was to attack the corruption of the
world.
So then in this saying Jesus was challenging the Christian. "The
world," he said, "needs the flavour and the purity that only the
Christian can bring. And if the Christian himself has lost the thrill
and the purity of the Christian life, where will the world ever get
these things?" Unless the Christian, in the power of Christ, defeats
world-weariness and world corruption, these things must flourish
unchecked.
(iii) Have salt in yourselves and live at peace with each other.
Here we must take salt in the sense of purity. The ancients declared
that there was nothing in the world purer than salt because it came from
the two purest things, the sun and the sea. The very glistening
whiteness of salt was a picture of purity. So this will mean, "Have
within yourselves the purifying influence of the Spirit of Christ. Be
purified from selfishness and self-seeking, from bitterness and anger
and grudge-bearing. Be cleansed from irritation and moodiness and
self-centredness, and then, and then only, you will be able to live in
peace with your fellow men." In other words, Jesus is saying that it is
only the life that is cleansed of self and filled with Christ which can
live in real fellowship with men.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)