• The Bible Studies for Life lesson for March 22 focuses on Mark 4:35-41.
“Practice what you preach”
“Don’t just talk the walk; walk the talk.”
Each of these familiar platitudes exhorts teachers to live their lives in congruence with what they teach. In this passage from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus reveals himself to be the perfect teacher by living the life he teaches as he asks his followers to walk with him.
A teacher like no other
Not long after Jesus called Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John to be his disciples, they traveled to Capernaum. As a visiting rabbi (teacher), Jesus was asked to teach in the town’s synagogue. In Luke’s account of this event, he says while Jesus was in the synagogue, he healed a man possessed by a demon (4:33-35). Both Luke’s and Mark’s accounts claim “the people were amazed at (Jesus’) teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law” (Mark 1:21). Quite different from other rabbis who merely quoted others when they taught, Jesus read and explained Scripture with no need to reference anyone else, because he was God, the ultimate authority. In addition, he demonstrated this authority by exorcising the demon. As one who “practiced what he preached,” he set himself apart from the teachers of the law.
Jesus’ reputation as a rabbi spread throughout the region, and others came to him with questions about God’s kingdom. Mark 10:17-22 recounts an incident of a man falling on his knees before Jesus, saying to him “Good teacher … what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ response is puzzling: “Why do you call me good?” he says. “No one is good—except God alone”(v. 18).
Out of context, one could interpret Jesus’ response as a rebuke of the young man’s claim that Jesus is good. However, Jesus actually is asking the young man to think about what he really believes about God. “I am good, and only God is good,” Jesus implies. “Therefore, I am God. Do you, then, acknowledge that I am your God?”
Unfortunately, the young man seems not to be able to grasp the significance of Jesus’ assertion. What he wants is assurance from the best rabbi he knows that he’s doing all the right things to get into God’s kingdom. Jesus, however, does not provide this assurance. Instead, Jesus reminds him he is not good enough to enter heaven on his own merits. His god, evidently, is wealth, because he will not give it up to follow Jesus: “One thing you lack,” Jesus lovingly explains to him. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (v. 21). Crestfallen, the man turns away from the Good Teacher.
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Make your choice
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic … or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
The illogical claim that Jesus was a great teacher but not the Son of God is as common today as in the mid-20th century when C.S. Lewis defended the divinity of Christ and 2,000 years ago when Jesus was accused of blasphemy for claiming to be God. Jesus is the Good Teacher. However, he is good because he is one with the Father (John 10:30) and “can do only what (he) sees his Father doing” (John 5:19). This is what gives Jesus the authority that people searching for direction in their lives crave. Jesus asks us to give up our reliance on our human ability to follow the rules in a futile effort to earn eternal life. Instead, we are to submit ourselves to the loving authority of our rabbi, Jesus, and trust him to both teach us and show us how to live.
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