'And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath
Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth He out devils. 23.
And He called them unto Him, and said unto them in parables, How can
Satan cast out Satan? 24. And if a kingdom be divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand. 25. And if a house be divided against
itself, that house cannot stand. 26. And if Satan rise up against
himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. 27. No man
can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he
will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. 28.
Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of
men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: 29. But he
that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness,
but is in danger of eternal damnation: 30. Because they said, He hath
an unclean spirit. 31. There came then His brethren and His mother,
and, standing without, sent unto Him, calling Him. 32. And the
multitude sat about Him, and they said unto Him, Behold, Thy mother
and Thy brethren without seek for Thee. 33. And He answered them,
saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? 34. And He looked round
about on them which sat about Him, and said, Behold My mother and My
brethren! 35. For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My
brother, and My sister, and mother.'--Mark iii. 22-35.
We have in this passage three parts,--the outrageous official
explanation of Christ and His works, the Lord's own solution of His
miracles, and His relatives' well-meant attempt to secure Him, with
His answer to it.
I. The scribes, like Christ's other critics, judged themselves in
judging Him, and bore witness to the truths which they were eager to
deny. Their explanation would be ludicrous, if it were not dreadful.
Mark that it distinctly admits His miracles. It is not fashionable at
present to attach much weight to the fact that none of Christ's
enemies ever doubted these. Of course, the credence of men, in an age
which believed in the possibility of the supernatural, is more easy,
and their testimony less cogent, than that of a jury of
twentieth-century scientific sceptics. But the expectation of miracle
had been dead for centuries when Christ came; and at first, at all
events, no anticipation that He would work them made it easier to
believe that He did.
It would have been a sure way of exploding His pretensions, if the
officials could have shown that His miracles were tricks. Not without
weight is the attestation from the foe that 'this man casteth out
demons.' The preposterous explanation that He cast out demons by
Beelzebub, is the very last resort of hatred so deep that it will
father an absurdity rather than accept the truth. It witnesses to the
inefficiency of explanations of Him which omit the supernatural. The
scribes recognised that here was a man who was in touch with the
unseen. They fell back upon 'by Beelzebub,' and thereby admitted that
humanity, without seeing something more at the back of it, never made
such a man as Jesus.
It is very easy to solve an insoluble problem, if you begin by taking
the insoluble elements out of it. That is how a great many modern
attempts to account for Christianity go to work. Knock out the
miracles, waive Christ's own claims as mistaken reports, declare His
resurrection to be entirely unhistorical, and the remainder will be
easily accounted for, and not worth accounting for. But the whole life
of the Christ of the Gospels is adequately explained by no explanation
which leaves out His coming forth from the Father, and His exercise of
powers above those of humanity and 'nature.'
This explanation is an instance of the credulity of unbelief. It is
more difficult to believe the explanation than the alternative which
it is framed to escape. If like produces like, Christ cannot be
explained by anything but the admission of His divine nature.
Serpents' eggs do not hatch out into doves. The difficulties of faith
are 'gnats' beside the 'camels' which unbelief has to swallow.
II. The true explanation of Christ's power over demoniacs. Jesus has
no difficulty in putting aside the absurd theory that, in destroying
the kingdom of evil, He was a servant of evil and its dark ruler.
Common-sense says, If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against
himself, and his kingdom cannot stand. An old play is entitled, 'The
Devil is an Ass,' but he is not such an ass as to fight against
himself. As the proverb has it, 'Hawks do not pick out hawks' eyes.'
It would carry us too far to deal at length with the declarations of
our Lord here, which throw a dim light into the dark world of
supernatural evil. His words are far too solemn and didactic to be
taken as accommodations to popular prejudice, or as mere metaphor. Is
it not strange that people will believe in spiritual communications,
when they are vouched for by a newspaper editor, more readily than
when Christ asserts their reality? Is it not strange that scientists,
who find difficulty in the importance which Christianity attaches to
man in the plan of the universe, and will not believe that all its
starry orbs were built for him (which Christianity does not allege),
should be incredulous of teachings which reveal a crowd of higher
intelligences?
Jesus not only tests the futile explanation by common-sense, but goes
on to suggest the true one. He accepts the belief that there is a
'prince of the demons.' He regards the souls of men who have not
yielded themselves to God as His 'goods.' He declares that the lord of
the house must be bound before his property can be taken from him. We
cannot stay to enlarge on the solemn view of the condition of
unredeemed men thus given. Let us not put it lightly away. But we must
note how deep into the centre of Christ's work this teaching leads us.
Translated into plain language it just means that Christ by
incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and present work
from the throne, has broken the power of evil in its central hold. He
has crushed the serpent's head, his heel is firmly planted on it, and,
though the reptile may still 'swinge the scaly horror of his folded
tail,' it is but the dying flurries of the creature. He was manifested
'that He might destroy the works of the devil.'
No trace of indignation can be detected in Christ's answer to the
hideous charge. But His patient heart overflows in pity for the
reckless slanderers, and He warns them that they are coming near the
edge of a precipice. Their malicious blindness is hurrying them
towards a sin which hath never forgiveness. Blasphemy is, in form,
injurious speaking, and in essence, it is scorn or malignant
antagonism. The Holy Spirit is the divine agent in revealing God's
heart and will. To blaspheme Him is 'the external symptom of a heart
so radically and finally set against God that no power which God can
consistently use will ever save it.' 'The sin, therefore, can only be
the culmination of a long course of self-hardening and depraving.' It
is unforgivable, because the soul which can recognise God's revelation
of Himself in all His goodness and moral perfection, and be stirred
only to hatred thereby, has reached a dreadful climax of hardness, and
has ceased to be capable of being influenced by His beseeching. It has
passed beyond the possibility of penitence and acceptance of
forgiveness. The sin is unforgiven, because the sinner is fixed in
impenitence, and his stiffened will cannot bow to receive pardon.
The true reason why that sin has never forgiveness is suggested by the
accurate rendering, 'Is guilty of an eternal sin' (R.V.). Since the
sin is eternal, the forgiveness is impossible. Practically hardened
and permanent unbelief, conjoined with malicious hatred of the only
means of forgiveness, is the unforgivable sin. Much torture of heart
would have been saved if it had been observed that the Scripture
expression is not _sin_, but _blasphemy_. Fear that it has been
committed is proof positive that it has not; for, if it have been,
there will be no relenting in enmity, nor any wish for deliverance.
But let not the terrible picture of the depths of impenitence to which
a soul may fall, obscure the blessed universality of the declaration
from Christ's lips which preludes it, and declares that all sin but
the sin of not desiring pardon is pardoned. No matter how deep the
stain, no matter how inveterate the habit, whosoever will can come and
be sure of pardon.
III. The attempt of Christ's relatives to withdraw Him from publicity,
and His reply to it. Verse 21 tells us that His kindred sent out to
lay hold on Him; for they thought Him beside Himself. He was to be
shielded from the crowd of followers, and from the plots of scribes,
by being kept at home and treated as a harmless lunatic. Think of
Jesus defended from the imputation of being in league with Beelzebub
by the excuse that He was mad! This visit of His mother and brethren
must be connected with their plan to lay hold on Him, in order to
apprehend rightly Christ's answer. If they did not mean to use
violence, why should they have tried to get Him away from the crowd of
followers, by a message, when they could have reached Him as easily as
it did? He knew the snare laid for Him, and puts it aside without
shaming its contrivers. With a wonderful blending of dignity and
tenderness, He turns from kinsmen who were not akin, to draw closer to
Himself, and pour His love over, those who do the will of God.
The test of relationship with Jesus is obedience to His Father. Christ
is not laying down the means of becoming His kinsmen, but the tokens
that we are such. He is sometimes misunderstood as saying, 'Do God's
will without My help, and ye will become My kindred.' What He really
says is, 'If ye are My kindred, you will do God's will; and if you do,
you will show that you are such.' So the statement that we become His
kindred by faith does not conflict with this great saying. The two
take hold of the Christian life at different points: the one deals
with the means of its origination, the other with the tokens of its
reality. Faith is the root of obedience, obedience is the blossom of
faith. Jesus does not stand like a stranger till we have hammered out
obedience to His Father, and then reward us by welcoming us as His
brethren, but He answers our faith by giving us a life kindred with,
because derived from, His own, and then we can obey.
It is active submission to God's will, not orthodox creed or devout
emotion, which shows that we are His blood relations. By such
obedience, we draw His love more and more to us. Though it is not the
means of attaining to kinship with Him, it _is_ the condition of
receiving love-tokens from Him, and of increasing affinity with Him.
That relationship includes and surpasses all earthly ones. Each
obedient man is, as it were, all three,--mother, sister, and brother.
Of course the enumeration had reference to the members of the waiting
group, but the remarkable expression has deep truth in it. Christ's
relation to the soul covers all various sweetnesses of earthly bonds,
and is spoken of in terms of many of them. He is the bridegroom, the
brother, the companion, and friend. All the scattered fragrances of
these are united and surpassed in the transcendent and ineffable union
of the soul with Jesus. Every lonely heart may find in Him what it
most needs, and perhaps is bleeding away its life for the loss or want
of. To many a weeping mother He has said, pointing to Himself, 'Woman,
behold thy son'; to many an orphan He has whispered, revealing His own
love, 'Son, behold thy mother.'
All earthly bonds are honoured most when they are woven into crowns
for His head; all human love is then sweetest when it is as a tiny
mirror in which the great Sun is reflected. Christ is husband,
brother, sister, friend, lover, mother, and more than all which these
sacred names designate,--even Saviour and life. If His blood is in our
veins, and His spirit is the spirit of our lives, we shall do the will
of His and our Father in heaven.