Week 51—Wednesday Mark 6:35-42
Mark 6:35-42
HE LOVED
We continue “the Concrete Christ.” John sent to Jesus from prison and asked whether he was the one who was to come or do they look for another. Jesus did not argue the question with the disciples of John—he simply and quietly said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, . . . the deaf hear, . . . and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matt. 11:5). His arguments were the facts produced.
He did not discourse on the beauty of love—he loved.
He greatly felt the pressing necessity of the physical needs of the people around him, but he did not merely speak on their behalf, he fed the five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.
He did not speak only in behalf of the Gentiles—he went across the lake and fed the four thousand, made up largely of Gentiles and ate with them as a kind of corporate Communion.
They bring to him a man with a double malady—sick in body and stricken more deeply in his conscience because of sin. Jesus attended first of all to the deeper malady and said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” In answer to the objections of the religious leaders, he said, “Whether is it easier to say . . . Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) ‘. . . take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house’” (Mark 2:9-11, KJV). The outward concrete miracle was the pledge of the inward.
He did not argue the possibility of sinlessness—he presented himself and said, “Which of you convicts me of sin?” (John 8:46).
O Jesus, Lord of all, we thank you that your method was different—you did not declare so much as demonstrate. And the demonstration is more convincing than any declaration could ever be. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall have no maladies rooted in wrong attitudes of mind or emotions.