Transcription
So, you talked about the testability of the faith that Jesus offers. So I have a question about the gospels. So, most people agree that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke, and then John. Right. Most scholars today agree with that. That's the standard view. Yes. Why is it that in Mark Jesus doesn't claim to be God? And, uh, by the end, the stories of after his resurrection meeting the disciples, um, we know are later additions. Why does it seem that the later gospels, the latest one being John, tends to have the most claims of God, of Jesus claiming to be God, and has the most extensive after-resurrection story? Uh, and how do you deal with that? Like it seeming like as they wrote more gospels, their claims became more and more miraculous?
So, this is a great question. Here's what I think. I think the earliest account in Mark is the highest christology. I do think the Gospel of Mark makes it very clear that the belief was that Jesus was God. Now, how so? Let me give a few examples. I'll pull it up on my phone. The Gospel of Mark starts; it says, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." And then he quotes Isaiah, and it says, "Before I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord.'" In the Old Testament, the Lord is Yahweh, and one would come and proclaim the coming of Yahweh. Then it talks about John the Baptist, the one preparing and proclaiming the coming of who? Jesus, because who is Jesus? He's the Lord. He's Yahweh. That's actually how Mark starts.
Give you another example. If we, uh, so in verses 16 through, say, 20, Jesus calls his first disciples. He calls the 12. Now, what is he doing? You have the 12 tribes of Israel whom God instituted. Jesus speaks with the authority to reconstitute, so-called, the 12 and call his 12 disciples, who will, in a sense, replace, in so far as it goes, the 12 tribes of Israel. Who has the authority to do that? God does. Jesus is speaking as God.
I'll give you another example. If you turn to Mark, uh, chapter 2, oh, by the way, if you look in still in Mark chapter 1, Jesus heals the leper. Now, other people did miracles, right? Paul did miracles. Elijah did miracles. But Jesus uniquely does miracles from his own authority. He doesn't say, "God, give me the strength." He does it. Why? Because he is speaking as God in human flesh. Turn to Mark chapter 2. Jesus heals the paralytic, and you know this story. The debate is who is—what's easier to say, "Pick up your mat and walk," or "Your sins are forgiven." And what does Jesus—Jesus say? You know the story. He says, "Pick up your mat and walk." Now, he does a miracle. But before that, what did he do? He proclaimed that the man's sins were forgiven. Now, if you throw that mic at me and curse at me, I can forgive sins that you've committed against me. But who can forgive sins committed directly against God? Only God can. Now, I could keep going. I won't. But Jesus, for example, on the Sabbath, he heals on the Sabbath. Isn't able to interpret with the authority of God about that. We see that we see Jesus walking on water, and in the Psalms the water was God's stead. Jesus walks on it as a sign that he is in fact God. Now, I could go on quite literally. I think every chapter in Mark there's some indication that Jesus is divine. But his apostles don't understand it until they look back at it and see what Jesus was claiming and see what Jesus was doing. It all comes to fruition in Mark chapter 14. I'm going to read it right here to make sure I get it right, where it becomes very clear who Jesus is. So, we're still in the Gospel of Mark, which, like you said, is probably the earliest gospel. Jesus is on trial, and they ask him in verse 61, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus said, "I am." You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and come with the clouds of heaven. Now, what did he do? He just quoted Daniel 7, in which there's a divine figure coming on the clouds. Again, a sign of deity. Jesus says, "I am that figure." And what do they do? They tear their clothes because this is a sign of blasphemy.
So, I think Mark presents the deity of Christ differently than John presents the deity of Christ. But from the earliest gospel at the beginning to the end, the claim is that Jesus in fact is the Son of God. He's divine in human flesh, and he's the Messiah. Messiah. Sure. Follow up. All right. Um, hold the mic up close, like ice cream. Just don't lick it. When John—when John writes extensively about after the resurrection and, and um, about Jesus saying things like, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and "I and the Father are one," um, and has stories about Peter and Jesus that aren't in Mark, even though Mark was supposed to be written from someone listening to Peter. Like, why did Mark not include these?
So, you're asking me to speculate why Mark, writing to a Roman audience, didn't include certain things in John. So, I can only speculate the answer to that, right? But I could say Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic gospels. There's a lot of overlap. John is unique. So, some of what John does is he's writing at a different time, from a different perspective, to a different audience. So, he gives us these long speeches and engagements that last multiple chapters, whereas Mark, if you read Mark, he'll say, "Immediately, immediately, immediately," it's trying to give this sense of this fast-moving, short kind of stories of Jesus that climaxes in the death and then the predictions of his resurrection. So, I think it's just a different focus. It's a different audience. Uh, I don't think in any ways what he doesn't include takes away from what Mark does include about who Jesus claimed to be. Thank you. Great questions.