A Serious Decision (Mark 8:34–37)

Life is a precious gift from God, and we can do three things with that gift. We can waste our lives having a “good time” and one day come to the end only to discover we had not really lived. Or we can spend our lives, living comfortably like our friends and neighbors but lacking purpose and the blessing of God. We live only to please ourselves. We might leave something behind, but we have not sent anything ahead. 

 

Our choice must be to invest our lives, to give everything to the Lord, follow Him in everything, and let Him determine the dividends. This kind of life is called “discipleship.” It is what Jesus meant when He said to the disciples and the crowd, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

 

Luke 9:57–62 presents three potential disciples, two who offered themselves to Jesus and one who was called by Jesus. And all three failed.

 

 Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Then He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

 

The phrase “me first” shows up twice in this narrative (vv. 59, 61), but “me first” should never be on the lips or in the mind of a true disciple. It must be “Jesus first.” Here’s how Jesus describes a disciple in Mark 8:34: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

 

None of the three men involved in this episode really understood discipleship. The first one wanted assured comfort, but disciples must deny themselves. The second man wanted to wait for his father to die, but the son was supposed to take up his cross and die daily! The third man wanted to enjoy a farewell party, something he could look back upon with good memories. But true disciples do not look back; they look ahead and follow Jesus.

 

Our Lord’s message is clear: every believer is not called into “full-time Christian service,” but every believer is called into full-time Christian living, which is discipleship. It is important to notice the tenses of the verbs in Mark 8:34: we deny ourselves once and for all (Rom. 12:1–2); we take up our cross once and for all (Gal. 2:20); we follow Him obediently and never look back.

 

- Warren W. Wiersbe, Truth on Its Head: Unusual Wisdom in the Paradoxes of the Bible, 2016.

When a Sinner Refuses to Listen

Jesus appears to give a four-step procedure that leads to the excommunication of an unrepentant sinner (Matt 18:15–17).
 

Step one: a disciple confronts another disciple who is sinning (obviously, a sin that is known to both of them). If the disciple “listens to him” (a vague response that could mean several things—from a respectful hearing to repentance), he or she has regained that disciple. If the sinner refuses to listen (whatever that means), then proceed to step two: bring in one or two more “witnesses” to rebuke the sinner. If the sinner refuses to listen to them, then move on to step three: take the matter before the church. Finally, if the sinner still refuses to listen to them, go to step four: “Let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector” (v. 17). Following the progression (from individual confrontation to group involvement), it sounds as if Jesus were giving instructions to the church to excommunicate an unrepentant sinner, reading “to you” in this case as a plural pronoun.

 
But for those of us who read Greek, we know that’s not what Jesus was teaching here. The second-person pronoun of step four is singular. Jesus wasn’t giving advice to the church, instructing the assembly to kick out the rebel. Rather, throughout this passage Jesus was giving advice to one individual about another individual. In other words, Jesus didn’t teach the entire church to shun the unrepentant sinner. Rather, he told the concerned disciple to treat the disciple who refused to listen like a “gentile and a tax collector.” But what does that mean?
 
We could answer the question with a question: How did Jesus treat gentiles and tax collectors? Both groups were marginalized as outsiders in Jewish society. Bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth, Jesus treated outsiders like insiders, willing to go to the house of a Roman soldier and heal his slave or to eat with a bunch of tax collectors and “sinners” (8:5–7; 9:10). Despite the Pharisees’ objection, Jesus ate with “sick” sinners because they needed a physician (9:11–12).
 
Indeed, the Pharisees needed to learn a lesson from Hosea. According to the prophet, God wants mercy more than sacrifice (v. 13, quoting Hos 6:6). Therefore, when it comes to notorious sinners who refuse to listen to righteous people, the way of Jesus was to show them mercy. Besides, Jesus’s instruction concerning how to treat sinners who refuse to listen comes immediately after his teaching about recovering lost sheep—those who wander from the fold of God (Matt 18:12–14). In fact, he gave similar instruction to the twelve when he sent them out to recover “the lost sheep of Israel” (10:6). To restore the “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36 NRSV), Jesus sent his disciples to heal the sick—just like the Roman centurion’s slave—and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven “has come near,” going home with those who invite them to their table (10:6–13)—even lost sheep like tax collectors and sinners.
 

- written by Rodney Reeves, from Devotions on the Greek New Testament: 

52 Reflections to Inspire and Instruct