Bible Commentaries
Mark 2

Verses 1-28

1-12 Compare Matthew 9:1-8; Luke 5:17-26.

4 Eastern houses have flat roofs with battlements, easily accessible from the ground, and a place of resort, especially in the evening. The roof usually was covered with quite a thickness of earth, laid on wooden supports. All this could readily be replaced. The point in this story seems to lie in the contrast between the physical weakness of the paralytic and the efficacy of faith. A strong man might not have been able to force his way into the Lord's presence, but the faith of his friends is sufficient to bring him to a most favorable audience with Him. In response to this, the Lord seems to ignore the feebleness of his physical frame, and proposes a blessing in correspondence with their faith. Hitherto He had proven His power over demons and disease; now He first proclaims the pardon of sins. The scribes are quick to note this advance. They had not grasped the significance of His power over the spirits or over the ills of humanity, and did not see that they necessarily involved the operation of God's spirit, or they would have been prepared for the next step, the pardon of sins. It is not enough to bind Satan and remove ill health to establish the millennium. Sin must also be quelled. So long as sin separates man from God, the kingdom of God cannot come.

7 See Isaiah 43:25.

10 Therefore, the Lord announces His authority as the Son of Mankind, to pardon sins. Sin paralyzes. The best sign that He can offer of His power to pardon it is to remove the physical paralysis, which the scribes can see with their physical eyes, and thus, if possible, open their spiritual eyes to the pardon of sins. No wonder that all were amazed and glorified God, for they had never perceived anything like this before. Let us note, then, that the pardon of sins followed the faith of the paralytic.

13-17 Compare Matthew 9:9-13; Luke 5:27-32.

14 The previously chosen apostles, Peter and Andrew, James and John, were ordinary fishermen. After the pardon of sins is first proclaimed our Lord goes lower in the social scale, and chooses Levi Alpheus, who is usually named Matthew, a collector of tribute for the

Roman government. Patriotic, respectable citizens would have no connection with him or his kind, so he is forced to be friendly with sinners. It is impossible for us to apprehend the intense dislike of the Jews for those of their own nation who debased themselves by collecting tribute from their fellow countrymen for the Roman power which oppressed them. Besides, under these conditions, no patriotic and self-respecting Jew would do this work, so that, as a class, they were truly contemptible, though their extortionate methods made them well-to-do. Their only motive for engaging in this opprobrious occupation was sordid avarice. The choice of Levi and the subsequent feast is a well-considered effort on the part of our Lord to gradually introduce the great truth that the nation needed a Sacrifice more than a King. To the religious heart His announcement that He came to call sinners, not the just, was incomprehensible. Only the just will have a place in the kingdom, according to the prophets. Sinners will be destroyed in the judgments that precede it. Yet the Lord seemed to teach the opposite. He seeks to open their hearts to see this by comparing sin with disease. He was not needed by the strong. On the part of those who think themselves just there is no conscious desire for the pardon of sins. The kingdom will not come until the whole nation has learned to say (Isaiah 53:6):

All we, as sheep, are straying;

We countenance our own way to a man,

And Jehovah intercedes in Him for the lawlessness of us all.

18-22 Compare Matthew 9:14-17; Luke 5:33-39.

18 The general impression that John's ministry was the same in spirit and method as that of our Lord has no foundation in the Scriptures. It was right for his disciples to hunger. But it was most unfitting for the Lord's disciples to fast while He was with them. John came in the spirit of stern Elijah (Luke 1:17), but the Lord did not come in the spirit of Elijah (Luke 9:54).

21 This is used to press home the difference between John's ministry and that of our Lord. But it may be applied with far more force to the futility of seeking to combine the truth for the present with that for the past. Mark 2:23-3:17

23-28 Compare Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5.

23 In the law it was written, "For you shall come into that which was raised by your associate and pluck snips with your hand, yet you shall not swing a scythe on that which your associate raises" (Deuteronomy 23:25). The disciples were perfectly justified in plucking the grain and eating it. What the Pharisees objected to was that they did this work on the sabbath. They had innumerable traditional by-laws as to what could or could not be done on a sabbath, making it a day of restraint rather than repose. The sabbath is for man's benefit, not man for the benefit of the sabbath. The Son of Mankind is Lord of the sabbath.

25 See 1 Samuel 21:1-6.

25 It is notable how little the letter of the law was observed in the presence of God. The priests in the sanctuary profane the sabbath in their ministrations, yet are faultless (Matthew 12:5). David took the show-bread, fresh from the holy place. All this makes it evident that the law was not meant for those in His presence. It was not meant for the righteous, but sinners. Now the Pharisees are standing in the presence of the Lord of the temple and the Lord of the sabbath. It is they who are at fault with their impudent importation of the law into the precincts of the living Temple of Jehovah.

26 See Leviticus 24:5-9.