Thoughts on Mark 10

Today’s reading: Numbers 2; Mark 10

I’m not sure if this is allowed or not, but I have two thoughts this morning…

I do generally try to keep it to one thing per chapter that I focus on with these posts, but two things struck me as I was reading and I couldn’t decide which to write about, so I’ll just try to keep them both short.

Thoughts on the Rich Young Ruler

I really love and am very challenged by Jesus’ interaction with the rich young ruler. If you’re not sure who I am talking about, Mark doesn’t refer to him as that (I think it’s in Matthew or Luke, but I don’t remember offhand), but I am talking about the man who comes to him in the fifth paragraph of Mark 10.

The reason I love and am challenged by this interaction is that I really love to be right. If I am talking to someone and they say something that is just slightly off, my inclination is to stop the conversation so I can correct them. And for a long time, I had a similar view of God. I understood God to be very black and white, very rules oriented, and ready to condemn you for the slightest misstep (this was before I understood that salvation is by grace alone apart from works). This interaction though draws me back to just how compassionate and gracious our God is, and how much more interested in people He is than I am.

When the man comes up to Jesus he asks Him what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus answers, “You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And then the man tees Jesus up to knock it out of the park when he says, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And in my head, I’m thinking, “Oh yeah, here we go, Jesus is about to go all Sermon on the Mount on this guy!” But that’s not what happens.

What I am expecting, and what I would do in Jesus’ shoes (sandals?) would be to dive into the Sermon on the Mount content. “Oh, you think you’ve kept those do you? Have you ever looked at a woman in lust? Because then you’ve committed adultery in your heart…” He might think he has kept the commandments, but he clearly doesn’t understand what the commandments are really saying, and if I were Jesus, I would be ready to lay it all out for him.

But that’s not our Lord. Look what Mark says, “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” This man wasn’t like the others coming up to Jesus, challenging Him and seeking to justify themselves. That part of the Sermon on the Mount wasn’t directed at people who were genuinely seeking the Lord, but at people who thought they had already arrived at salvation by their own righteousness and law-keeping. The reason Jesus so often gets into technicalities is that the Scribes and Pharisees lived in the technicalities, thinking themselves justified by the technicalities, and so Jesus would respond, “You think you are justified by the technicalities, then what about these technicalities that you are violating?”

Unlike the Pharisees that come to fight Jesus to justify themselves, this man comes to Jesus recognizing that he falls short and genuinely seeking to understand what he is lacking for eternal life. This is why Jesus doesn’t dive into the technicalities with him, because he doesn’t need technicalities, he needs Jesus, and Jesus knows what is holding him back in his heart. So rather than argue about what actually constitutes adultery or murder, Jesus, looking at him in love, tells him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Mark tells us that the man went away sorrowful because he had great wealth. We don’t know if he ever responded to that call from Jesus or not, but what we see is Jesus engaging with the man’s heart, not with the technicalities of the man’s understanding of the law and righteousness.

I came to faith in Christ largely because I was intellectually convinced of the reality of the gospel. It was apologetic arguments that convinced me and, initially, there was no emotional or even really any relational component to my faith. I became convinced intellectually that the Bible is the Word of God, that Jesus died on the cross to pay for sins, and that it is by confessing with my mouth and believing with my heart that I was saved, and so I did, and I was. But then I carried that through to others. “If only they understood the arguments. If only they would sit down and consider these aspects of prophecy, and these historical markers, and study these documents, then they too would become Christians!” And so regardless of where someone stood in relation to the Lord, regardless of how they thought about religion, how they processed the world, what their past experiences of Christianity looked like, etc. it was all about the technicalities for me.

But that is not the Jesus we follow. We follow a Jesus that will dig into the technicalities with the person using technicalities to justify himself, but then will completely leave them aside with someone else. We follow a Jesus that looks at the heart and engages with what is holding us back from Him, and then gently draws us near. We follow a Jesus that is truly loving and lives out that love in every interaction He has.

Every time I read this interaction in one of the gospels I am reminded just how good and loving our God is, and I am challenged at just how much I still have to learn and grow in how to love people well. If I want to be like Jesus, I need to learn to engage and love people the way He did, not the way I want to, and I really do want to be like Him in this.

Thoughts on Bartimaeus

I went a lot longer on the rich young ruler than I intended to, so I will try to keep my thoughts on Bartimaeus super short.

Reading about Bartimaeus this morning I am struck by just how easily I am shamed into silence about my faith. Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, hears that Jesus is coming down the road and starts calling out to Him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mark tells us that “many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more…”

If I was Bartimaeus, I don’t know if I would have been bold enough to start yelling out in the first place, but if I was, as soon as people start telling me to shut up, I have a hard time imagining myself doubling down and yelling out even louder. But it is after he ignores the rebukes and keeps yelling for Jesus that Jesus calls him over and heals his blindness. If Bartimaeus had listened to the people around him telling him to be quiet, he would have lived the rest of his life as a blind beggar, but because he refused and clung to his faith that Jesus could, and would, help him, his life was completely changed in a moment as his sight was restored.

If Christianity is true, then it is far too important to be shamed into silence about. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one can get to the Father except through Him, then that is way too important and life transforming to just sit on in silence to avoid being uncomfortable.

I need to be more like Bartimaeus. I need to be more willing to stand on the truth, even (and especially) when the world around me says to shut up about it.

The grace available to all of us in Jesus is way too important a message to be shamed into silence about.