'The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; 2. As it
is written in the prophets, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy
face, which shall prepare Thy way before Thee. 3. The voice of one
crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His
paths straight. 4. John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the
baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. 5. And there went out
unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all
baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. 6. And
John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about
his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey; 7. And preached,
saying, There cometh One mightier than I after me, the latchet of
whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. 8. I indeed
have baptized you with water: but He shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost. 9. And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from
Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. And
straightway coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opened, and
the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him: 11. And there came a voice
from heaven, saying, Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased.'--Mark i. 1-11.
The first words of _In Memoriam_ might be taken to describe the theme
of Mark's Gospel. It is the 'strong Son of God' whom he sets forth in
his rapid, impetuous narrative, which is full of fiery energy, and
delights to paint the unresting continuity of Christ's filial service.
His theme is not the King, as in Matthew; nor the Son of Man, as in
Luke; nor the eternal Word manifested in flesh, as in John. Therefore
he neither begins by tracing His kingly lineage, as does the first
evangelist; nor by dwelling on the humanities of wedded life and the
sacredness of the family since He has been born; nor by soaring to the
abysses of the eternal abiding of the Word with God, as the agent of
creation, the medium of life and light; but plunges at once into his
subject, and begins the Gospel with the mission of the Forerunner,
which melts immediately into the appearance of the Son.
I. We may note first, in this passage, the prelude, including verses
1, 2, and 3. We need not discuss the grammatical connection of these
verses, nor the relation of verses 2 and 3 to the following section.
However that be settled, the result, for our present purpose, is the
same. Mark considers that John's mission is the beginning of the
gospel. Here are two noteworthy points,--his use of that well-worn
word, 'the gospel,' and his view of John's place in relation to it.
The gospel is the narrative of the facts of Christ's life and death.
Later usage has taken it to be, rather, the statement of the truths
deducible from these facts, and especially the proclamation of
salvation by the power of Christ's atoning death; but the primitive
application of the word is to the history itself. So Paul uses it in
his formal statement of the gospel which he preached, with the
addition, indeed, of the explanation of the meaning of Christ's death
(1 Cor. xv. 1-6). The very name 'good news' necessarily implies that
the gospel is, primarily, history; but we cannot exclude from the
meaning of the word the statement of the significance of the facts,
without which the facts have no message of blessing. Mark adds the
dogmatic element when he defines the subject of the Gospel as being
'Jesus Christ, the Son of God.' In the remainder of the book the
simple name 'Jesus' is used; but here, in starting, the full, solemn
title is given, which unites the contemplation of Him in His manhood,
in His office as fulfiller of prophecy and crown of revelation, and in
His mysterious, divine nature.
Whether we regard verses 2 and 3 as connected grammatically with the
preceding or the following verses, they equally refer to John, and
define his position in relation to the Gospel. The Revised Version
restores the true reading, 'in Isaiah the prophet,' which some unwise
and timid transcriber has, as he thought, mended into 'the prophets,'
for fear that an error should be found in Scripture. Of course, verse
2 is not Isaiah's, but Malachi's; but verse 3, which is Isaiah's, was
uppermost in Mark's mind, and his quotation of Malachi is, apparently,
an afterthought, and is plainly merely introductory of the other, on
which the stress lies. The remarkable variation in the Malachi
quotation, which occurs in all three Evangelists, shows how completely
they recognised the divinity of our Lord, in their making words which,
in the original, are addressed by Jehovah to Himself, to be addressed
by the Father to the Son. There is a difference in the representation
of the office of the forerunner in the two prophetic passages. In the
former 'he' prepares the way of the coming Lord; in the latter he
calls upon his hearers to prepare it. In fact, John prepared the way,
as we shall see presently, just by calling on men to do so. In Mark's
view, the first stage in the gospel is the mission of John. He might
have gone further back--to the work of prophets of old, or to the
earliest beginnings in time of the self-revelation of God, as the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews does; or he might have ascended
even higher up the stream--to the true 'beginning,' from which the
fourth Evangelist starts. But his distinctly practical genius leads
him to fix his gaze on the historical fact of John's mission, and to
claim for it a unique position, which he proceeds to develop.
II. So we have, next, the strong servant and fore runner (verses 4-8).
The abruptness with which the curtain is drawn, and the gaunt figure
of the desert-loving ascetic shown us, is very striking. It is like
the way in which Elijah, his prototype, leaps, as it were, full-armed,
into the arena. The parallel passage in Matthew links his appearance
with the events which it has been narrating by the phrase 'in these
days,' and calls him 'the Baptist.' Mark has no such words, but lets
him stand forth in his isolation. The two accounts may profitably be
compared. Their likenesses suggest that they rest on a common basis,
probably of oral tradition, while their differences are, for the most
part, significant. Mark differs in his arrangement of the common
matter, in omissions, and in some variations of expression. Each
account gives a general summary of John's teaching at the beginning;
but Matthew puts emphasis on the Baptist's proclamation that the
kingdom of heaven was at hand, to which nothing in Mark corresponds.
His Gospel does not dwell on the royalty of Jesus, but rather
represents Him as the Servant than as the King. Mark begins with
describing John as baptizing, which only appears later in Matthew's
account. Mark omits all reference to the Sadducees and Pharisees, and
to John's sharp words to them. He has nothing about the axe laid to
the trees, nothing about the children of Abraham, nothing about the
fan in the hand of the great Husbandman. All the theocratic aspect of
the Messiah, as proclaimed by John, is absent; and, as there is no
reference to the fire which destroys, so neither is there to the fire
of the Holy Ghost, in which He baptizes. Mark reports only John's
preaching and baptism of repentance, and his testimony to Christ as
stronger than he, and as baptizing with the Holy Ghost.
So, on the whole, Mark's picture brings out prominently the following
traits in John's personality and mission:--First, his preparation for
Christ by preaching repentance. The truest way to create in men a
longing for Jesus, and to lead to a true apprehension of His unique
gift to mankind, is to evoke the penitent consciousness of sin. The
preacher of guilt and repentance is the herald of the bringer of
pardon and purity. That is true in reference to the relation of
Judaism and Christianity, of John and Jesus, and is as true to-day as
ever it was. The root of maimed conceptions of the work and nature of
Jesus Christ is a defective sense of sin. When men are roused to
believe in judgment, and to realise their own evil, they are ready to
listen to the blessed news of a Saviour from sin and its curse. The
Christ whom John heralds is the Christ that men need; the Christ whom
men receive, without having been out in the wilderness with the stern
preacher of sin and judgment, is but half a Christ--and it is the
vital half that is missing.
Again, Mark brings out John's personal asceticism. He omits much; but
he could not leave out the picture of the grim, lean solitary, who
stalked among soft-robed men, like Elijah come to life again, and held
the crowds by his self-chosen privations no less than by his fierce,
fiery eloquence. His desert life and contempt for ease and luxury
spoke of a strength of character and purpose which fascinated commoner
men, and make the next point the more striking--namely, the utter
humility with which this strong, self-reliant, fiery rebuker of sin,
and despiser of rank and official dignities, flings himself at the
feet of the coming One. He is strong, as his life and the awestruck
crowds testified; how strong must that Other be! He feared not the
face of man, nor owned inferiority to any; but his whole soul melted
into joyful submission, and confessed unworthiness even to unlace the
sandals of that mightier One. His transitional position is also
plainly marked by our Evangelist. He is the end of prophecy, the
beginning of the Gospel, belonging to neither and to both. He is not
merely a prophet, for he is prophesied of as well; and he stands so
near Him whom he foretells, that his prediction is almost fact. He is
not an Evangelist, nor, in the closest sense, a servant of the coming
Christ; for his lowly confession of unworthiness does not imply merely
his humility, but accurately defines the limits of his function. It
was not for him to bear or to loose that Lord's sandals. There were
those who did minister to Him, and the least of those, whose message
to the world was 'Christ has come,' had the honour of closer service
than that greatest among women-born, whose task was to run before the
chariot of the King and tell that He was at hand.
III. We have the gentle figure of the stronger Son. The introduction
of Jesus is somewhat less abrupt than that of John; but if we remember
whom Mark believed Him to be, the quiet words which tell of His first
appearance are sufficiently remarkable. There is no mention of His
birth or previous years. His deeds will tell who He is. The years
before His baptism were of no moment for Mark's purpose. Nor has he
any report of the precious conversation of Jesus with John, when the
forerunner testified to Christ's purity, which needed no washing nor
repentance, and acknowledged at once his own sinfulness and the Lord's
cleansing power, and when Christ accepted the homage, and, by
implication, claimed the character, purity, and power which John
attributed to Him. The omission may be accounted for on a principle
which seems to run through all this Gospel--of touching lightly or
omitting indications of our Lord's dignity, and dwelling by preference
on His acts of lowliness and service. The baptism is recorded; but the
conversation, which showed that the King of Israel, in submitting to
it, acknowledged no need of it for Himself, but regarded it as
'fulfilling righteousness' is passed by. The sinlessness of Jesus, and
the special meaning of His baptism, are sufficiently shown by the
descending Spirit and the approving voice. These Mark does record; for
they warrant the great name by which, in his first verse, he has
described Jesus as 'the Son of God.'
The brief account of these is marked by the Evangelist's vivid
pictorial faculty, which we shall frequently have to notice as we read
his Gospel. Here he puts us, by a word, in the position of
eye-witnesses of the scene as it is passing, when he describes the
heavens as 'being rent asunder'--a much more forcible and pictorial
word than Matthew's 'opened.' He says nothing of John's share in the
vision. All is intended for the Son. It is Jesus who sees the rending
heavens and the descending dove. The voice which Matthew represents as
speaking _of_ Christ, Mark represents as speaking _to_ Him.
The baptism of Jesus, then, was an epoch in His own consciousness. It
was not merely His designation to John or to others as Messiah, but
for Himself the sense of Sonship and the sunlight of divine
complacency filled His spirit in new measure or manner. Speaking as we
have to do from the outside, and knowing but dimly the mysteries of
His unique personality, we have to speak modestly and little. But we
know that our Lord grew, as to His manhood, in wisdom, and that His
manhood was continually the receiver, from the Father, of the Spirit;
and the reality of His divinity, as dwelling in His manhood from the
beginning of that manhood, is not affected by the belief that when the
dovelike Spirit floated down on His meek head, glistening with the
water of baptism, His manhood then received a new and special
consciousness of His Messianic office and of His Sonship.
Whilst that voice was for His sake, it was for others too; for John
himself tells us (John i.) that the sign had been told him beforehand,
and that it was his sight of the descending dove which heightened his
thoughts and gave a new turn to his testimony, leading him to know and
to show 'that this is the Son of God.' The rent heavens have long
since closed, and that dread voice is silent; but the fact of that
attestation remains on record, that we, too, may hear through the
centuries God speaking of and to His Son, and may lay to heart the
commandment to us, which naturally follows God's witness to Jesus,
'Hear ye Him.'
The symbol of the dove may be regarded as a prophecy of the gentleness
of the Son. Thus early in His course the two qualities were harmonised
in Him, which so seldom are united, and each of which dwelt in Him in
divinest perfection, both as to degree and manner. John's
anticipations of the strong coming One looked for the manifestations
of His strength in judgment and destruction. How strangely his images
of the axe, the fan, the fire, are contrasted with the reality,
emblemed by this dove dropping from heaven, with sunshine on its
breast and peace in its still wings! Through the ages, Christ's
strength has been the strength of gentleness, and His coming has been
like that of Noah's dove, with the olive-branch in its beak, and the
tidings of an abated flood and of a safe home in its return. The
ascetic preacher of repentance was strong to shake and purge men's
hearts by terror; but the stronger Son comes to conquer by meekness,
and reign by the omnipotence of love. The beginning of the gospel was
the anticipation and the proclamation of strength like the eagle's,
swift of flight, and powerful to strike and destroy. The gospel, when
it became a fact, and not a hope, was found in the meek Jesus, with
the dove of God, the gentle Spirit, which is mightier than all,
nestling in His heart, and uttering soft notes of invitation through
His lips.