The Gospel According to St. Mark
9781465559388
315 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Beginning Of The Gospel. “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Even as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face, who shall prepare Thy way; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight; John came, who baptized in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the country of Judæa, and all they of Jerusalem; and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.”—Mark, i. 1-6 (R.V.). The opening of St. Mark’s Gospel is energetic and full of character. St. Matthew traces for Jews the pedigree of their Messiah; St. Luke’s worldwide sympathies linger with the maiden who bore Jesus, and the village of His boyhood; and St. John’s theology proclaims the Divine origin of the Eternal Lord. But St. Mark trusts the public acts of the Mighty Worker to do for the reader what they did for those who first “beheld His glory.” How He came to earth can safely be left untold: what He was will appear by what He wrought. It is enough to record, with matchless vividness, the toils, the energy, the love and wrath, the defeat and triumph of the brief career which changed the world. It will prove itself to be the career of “the Son of God.” In so deciding, he followed the example of the Apostolic teaching. The first vacant place among the Twelve was filled by an eye-witness, competent to tell what Jesus did “from the baptism of John to the day when He was received up,” the very space covered by this Gospel. That “Gospel of peace,” which Cornelius heard from St. Peter (and hearing, received the Holy Ghost) was the same story of Jesus “after the baptism which John preached.” And this is throughout the substance of the primitive teaching. The Apostles act as men who believe that everything necessary to salvation is (implicit or explicit) in the history of those few crowded years. Therefore this is “the gospel.” Men there are who judge otherwise, and whose gospel is not the story of salvation wrought, but the plan of salvation applied, how the Atonement avails for us, how men are converted, and what privileges they then receive. But in truth men are not converted by preaching conversion, any more than citizens are made loyal by demanding loyalty. Show men their prince, and convince them that he is gracious and truly royal, and they will die for him. Show them the Prince of Life, and He, being lifted up, will draw all men unto Him; and thus the truest gospel is that which declares Christ and Him crucified. As all science springs from the phenomena of the external world, so do theology and religion spring from the life of Him who was too adorable to be mortal, and too loving to be disobeyed
