CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
This chapter is properly the close of His ministry: the acknowledgment of His life since His baptism. It had been one of unbroken service. When He went up the mount He had finished the course of service. It culminates on the mount of transfiguration. There He is offered the glory and refuses it. He comes down to suffer. It is an interesting point in the history of our Lord; everything takes a new turn from the transfiguration.
He had given examples of how He could relieve man from every kind of pressure, and even grant forgiveness of sins. But He has not dealt with God about them yet. He is not yet the Redeemer. He obtained the glory for Himself as the perfectly righteous One. But He had to do a work before He could give it to us. He must effect sacrificial redemption. He must die. He had answered to the mind of God in everything as man. Glory salutes Him! From this point He descends to die, to be the Victim. Peter says, “We.. . were eye-witnesses of his majesty”. But no redemption yet - He is not in the place of substitution. He is as the heifer that had neither wrought nor borne yoke.
[p. 167] If we do not see where He came down from, we do not get the full sense of how we have glory. There was the suffering of the Servant all through; but no judicial or sacrificial suffering till the cross.
The voice puts Him in the place of pre-eminence. Now He brings out resurrection from among the dead. They do not understand Him. It was a new thought to them. It is by resurrection we get the glory. “The glory which thou gavest me I have given them” - that is not His essential glory, but what is given to Him as Man. People do not get deliverance fully until they see how the Lord’s life as a Man entitled Him to glory, yet He will not enter into it without us! When I know that I have a Saviour in the glory I have no fear. Of men there were “none righteous, no, not one”. But here there was One righteous, and glory claimed Him! Until the cross there was a demand from glory and man had fear. Now glory claims us, and we are transformed by it.
It is not correct to say of the Lord, from the cradle to the cross. It is from the cradle to the glory and from the glory to the cross. He obtained the glory for Himself by being perfect in everything according to the mind of God. He obtained glory for us by His death. I can be in the glory now without fear - if I have fear, I am not there! There was no place yet for the disciples in the glory of God, and though Jesus was there, they were afraid. Christ having wrought righteousness, magnified the law and made it honourable, is entitled as a Man to glory, and He says, Now I make you entitled to what I am entitled to Myself, and He comes down to die. Everything takes a new course as He comes down.
Ques Was the transfiguration to show the estimate He was held in or the Father expressing His own delight in Him?
JBS It was both. They saw His glory before [p. 168] they saw His suffering and death. Peter says God calls us “by glory and virtue”. The Lord always gives the provision for it before the pressure comes if you are going on happily with Him. In everything we enter on we ought to ask ourselves, Can I count on the Lord’s support in this? Even for the smallest things, if you can feel He will support me, then you are competent. We must go on in faith. Faith may fail, but if it is there, it will grow again, like Samson’s hair; that is a comfort!
Verse 10. How little we enter into the feelings of the disciples in those days! They pondered and talked it over. The passage about Elias (verse 11) is explanatory to the disciples.
Verse 14. This is a remarkable contrast to Galatians 1: 15, which shows us what God delights to make of a man. Here we see what Satan makes of a man, even from a child. Casting out the devil here is a wonderful bit of service. It is different from other cases, for the spirit is commanded to enter no more into him. It is also an aggravated case. The Lord connects the relief entirely with faith. Faith is the thing now to remove mountains, even as a grain of mustard seed.
Ques Does verse 19 refer to the disciples or to the people?
JBS To the whole nation - it includes the disciples, but it is addressed to the nation: “unbelieving generation, .. . how long shall I bear with you?” We sometimes hear it said how ungrateful people are! What else do you expect? They were ungrateful to Christ! I find that a man without grace is often superior in his ways to a man with grace who is not governed by grace. If a man be not faithful to God, he could not be faithful to anyone. You get in this chapter the two extremes: the honour God will confer upon man and the degradation that Satan will [p. 169] bring a man to. The father says, If thou canst do anything. The Lord turns the word back on him and says, The “If thou canst” is with you, not with Me! and that is the secret of our whole history now: faith.
I may use means, but I do not count on means. Moses did not see one single thing. He endured, seeing Him who is invisible. There is no use in watching providences - there is nothing more difficult to us than to walk simply by faith, because in spite of yourself you are looking for something to turn up. “This kind can go out by nothing but by prayer and fasting”. The real meaning of that is the end of man. Dependence on God and disallowance of the flesh. If I am depending on God, I have no dependence on myself. Some think a good deal of fasting who do not pray. Prayer is dependence on God to keep you from the flesh. Fasting is not only from food - it is self-reduction, giving no rein to the flesh anywhere. It will not do to shut the hall door and open the side door. Self-denial must come into every part of my life even in social, that is to say, family affairs. The Lord says, If I die for the flesh, you must not allow it in any shape - add “to knowledge temperance”. This goes along with the dependence on God. It is not only that I do not minister to the flesh, but I cut off its resources, like Samuel; 1 Samuel 7. There is prayer and fasting - no resource but God, no human energy. To get clear of Satan I must disallow that by which he has a hold on me, and I depend on God. If I had no flesh, Satan could not get at me. It was because there was flesh in Paul that he needed the thorn - self-reduction. But he says, “I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me”.
Verse 31. Now we get His approaching death - the moral character of it. As I go on with Mark I see that He is instructing me in the path of the servant.
[p. 170] Will you go in that path? I am learning what it is to go on really in company with the Lord. A man has to give up the best part of himself rather than be hindered by it.
Verse 32. They did not understand Him and were afraid to ask Him, afraid to know the truth; and in verse 33 is a most unaccountable thing, disputing who should be the greatest at such a moment! It is the flesh again. Seeking eminence is a great snare in the church. Ananias, Sapphira and Simon (see Acts) all sought eminence in different ways.
But the Lord set before them the course by which they should obtain their desire - one who desires the first place must serve. If a man desires to be first, the Lord will bring him down to nothing, in order that he may reach his desire. If a man assumes to be humble, the Lord will make him really so! One remarkable thing in the church is that everyone finds his level - going down is the whole principle. The point here is to show the variety of opposition that will meet you. John would have no toleration - the Lord checks him.
“Whosoever shall offend”, that is, put a stumbling-block in the way. There is a great moral here. It is better to lose, to walk in self-denial, than to have self-gratification here and be lost. Everyone shall be salted with fire - every one shall be tried; but if you give yourself up, you will be a sacrifice. The salting process for the unbeliever is judgment, so in a sense for us all. If we will not accept the discipline, there comes judgment. No one will escape the fire. Every one’s work shall be tried by it. Gold will stand the fire. Salt in christendom has lost its savour. Salt has a preserving character as well as that of communicating - “Have salt in yourselves”. If I have salt in myself, I am correcting the badness in myself, and by it in others. The effect of that is that we have peace with one another.