Jesus In Action: Gospel of Mark

     So, I read through and studied the Gospel of Mark for the first time and I'd like to clarify something. In my entry about Matthew in regards as to the themes of what each book covered I was a little mistaken on the theme of Mark of Jesus being a teacher. While that's not far off It conveys more of a sense of Jesus in action through miracles to display His divinity. Mark has a faster pace than the rest of the gospels and is the shortest of the four. His target audience were Roman Christians and they, who unlike Matthews audience, used a more common language. Another thing I learned is that Mark was not one of the 12 original disciples, but rather a possible friend of Jesus(Mark 14:51), he also joined the apostle Paul on his first missionary trip.

     The Gospel of Mark is pretty great and one of the reasons, as I mentioned above, is because of the target audience. Not to downplay their education level, the text is written how a popular novel would read, but Mark fulfilled his mission and didn't need to be super eloquent. One example of the style of writing is actually quite humorous and takes place during the Transfiguration of Christ in Mark 9:3 "His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.", the last half of the sentence crack me up and I expected to next read "For real?" then "Yup", but that wasn't the case. Another reason Mark was a great read is because it continued emphasize the confrontations that Jesus had with the pharisees regarding their "Holier than thou" attitude. Again I think to myself, if there are four books in the New Testament making a point to record Jesus taking this topic head on than it must be pretty relevant, even to us today. To me it's like this, judgement is like closing the door and when we judge non-believers we are effectively closing the door on them and shutting out the love of Christ. While yes, non-believers can harden their hearts towards God, our judgement is helping that matter. The main point of this gospel however seems to be that Christians should be active in ministry like Jesus was when He founded it. How can we serve the Kindgom if we are stagnant?

     Moving along, I should have brought this up when I covered Matthew, about something I wasn't aware of, which again was mentioned in Mark. Just before Jesus was crucified He was offered wine that was laced with a drug to reduce the pain of suffering(Mark 15:23). He didn't take it. As a Christian I can appreciate what that means. If you're not a Christian, but you are on the fence about becoming one, or open to the idea of accepting Christ, just think about the idea of what it meant for him to refuse it. Consider that He was so willing to die for you that He didn't do it half way, that He was willing to suffer the full amount of weight that history's sin and future sin would do to him. This is not to make you feel any guilt, but to demonstrate the bottomless love that Christ/God has for you. He's all in!