Mark Chapter 2
This chapter opens with Jesus home in Capernaum. Word gets out that he is there, and crowds gather. Jesus preaches to those gathered. There is an MSB note that says the "word" he preached was likely the good news of the gospel - that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, for the forgiveness of sin. Again, a stark contrast to the system of the Law that they all lived under.
While Jesus is preaching, four men lower a paralytic friend down through the roof. Mark and Luke give us quite a bit of detail on this event. Matthew doesn't even mention it. At any rate, scribes are present. When Jesus sees the man, he tells him that his sins are forgiven, likely in response to the man's faith. MSB note, however, says that in those days people believed sickness and disease was the result of sin in their lives. It was punishment. So the paralytic would have seen the forgiveness as preparatory to healing. With the sin gone, he should get well.
The scribes, internally, believe that Jesus' claim to forgive is blasphemy, since only God forgives sins. Jesus confronts them, knowing their thoughts, and asks what is easier - to say " your sins are forgiven" or to say "be healed". His point is that anybody can say that first, and no man will know otherwise. While it might be blasphemy, it cannot be proven efficacious. SO, to prove that the first was efficacious, Jesus does the second, before their eyes and all those assembled. The paralytic gets up and walks. (The way this scene is presented in "The Chosen" adds much more to the story. It is worth buying those DVDs just for this one scene. That's just my opinion of course.)
Jesus goes out preaching again, and sees Levi in the tax booth, and tells him to follow him. Levi does so.
They go and eat at Levi's house, and many of Levi's friends - in the tax collectors and sinners category - are also there. The Pharisees judge this as a bad move, and question the disciples. Jesus says he came to save sinners, not the righteous. This was sarcasm! The Pharisees were not righteous. But they believed they were. They were the worse sinners, but Jesus was not in one of their homes, but in Levi's home. Jesus knew they were too hardhearted to come to him. He was preaching to those who were inclined to convert, not those determined to discredit him. Do we need to do the same? Or do we lack the insight to tell which is which, and so preach to all? Jesus knew this New Covenant - grace alone, by faith alone - was never going to fly with those who made their living off their religious positions. The Mosaic was about to be thrown completely out - in 70 AD - and it won't come back until the end. We are under a completely different system! The only commonality is that God looks at hearts now just as he did then. But the ritual of Sinai has been stripped off, and rather than bleating sheep and lambs taking away sin temporarily, the perfect lamb has taken it away forever for those who believe.
2025 - 17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." [Mar 2:17 ESV]. I think the above paragraph is a valid way to see this verse. But like the Pharisees, I don't apply it to myself. Don't we resent it when favor is shown to those we consider undeserving? Don't we think the special favor should be shown to us because we are such good people? It's as simple as handicap parking right up front. Don't we resent that there are more spots than are really needed and yet we, who ought to be honored with a close up spot, have to park an extra 10' away?
Jesus is asked why his disciples do not fast. He gives the answer about the bridegroom. Then, immediately after this - in fact it is in the same paragraph in ESV - he tells them about patching old garments with new cloth. It is worded this way in ESV:
21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. [Mar 2:21 ESV]
The disciples of the Pharisees, which is the Mosaic law, are fasting. This is the "old" way. John's disciples are also fasting. John the Baptist, though he baptized which was a bit of an oddity at the time - also fasts according to the Mosaic Law. Even John the Baptist was a part of a system - of a religion really - that was about to go away. John preached the truth of salvation through faith, but he did so within the confines of the Mosaic law. Jesus does the same thing. A chapter before Jesus told the leper he healed to go make his sacrifice to the priest. So even as Jesus walks the earth, the veil of the temple is intact. The Mosaic MUST REMAIN so long as the annual "carry-forward" of the sins of the people, and the consequential delay of execution, is needed. And it was needed until the day that Jesus died. John didn't start baptizing because it was a new "requirement", because the Mosaic Law continued for years after that. The Mosaic was still necessary, still required. But the day was coming when trying to incorporate the new covenant into the old was simply not going to work, could not work. The tearing of that veil was the last undoing of the requirements of the law for delaying God's punishment. That was the last day of God's covenant with Israel as a nation. It was the final divorce decree. And yet...There will be temple sacrifices during the Millennial reign...when Israel as a nation is "reinstated" and the covenant is finally honored on their part. Some sacrifices will continue as memorials, but some are no longer required. Ezekiel speaks at length about this.
Animosity between those who are part of the old towards those who are of the new might be what is in view here. Surely there was persecution later between the Jews and the followers of Christ. But look at this in context
Ahhh....The reason the gospel so radically departed from the Mosaic Law was precisely so that the followers of the old way would not change. They were under God's wrath for their unpaid harlotry (to use OT language), and only a few, a scant remnant, would be saved to carry on the line of Abraham and David to the end times. The rest were being abandoned, as a divorced wife, with no further association. God did this out of justice - as national punishment visited on individuals - because to do less was to be other than God. The covenant is broken, and God no longer blesses Israel under the terms of that covenant. Jesus understands this, and sarcastically tells the Pharisees that he isn't there for them, because they are not sick.
He follows up the patched cloth with the old and new wine skins. Mixing new wine and old skins destroys both. They are mutually exclusive, mutually destructive to each other such that mixing ruins both.
Next section is labelled Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath. About the corn picking on the Sabbath because they were hungry. The Sabbath was extremely important to God. The 70 years in Babylon were 70 because that's how long it took for the profaned, unobserved, un-honored Sabbaths to be restored as they should have been. It took that long for God's Sabbaths to be observed. Jesus says now that he is Lord of the Sabbath. That they are for him. Essentially, he says that he is God. And I think he is also saying that even though David and his men ate the bread of presence, they did so while honoring the Sabbath, while these people don't eat the bread, but still manage to turn the Sabbath into nothing but a day prickly with rules and regulations. Here is another verse where Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man:
28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath." [Mar 2:28 ESV] This is in red in ESV. Jesus is saying again that he is the one in Daniel's vision. Lord of all - even the Sabbath of God. This verse tells what authority the one like a son of man was given:
14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. [Dan 7:14 ESV] When Jesus uses this term, the Pharisees and scribes understand who he is claiming to be. He is in their face about it.
2022 - ALSO, here is Jesus applying the intent of the Law rather than the letter of the Law. They were hungry. The Law of the Sabbath was not put in place to make people prepare food the day before. It was not in place to make people fast on the Sabbath. It was made to honor God as creator of the universes, and to rest, as he rested, on the seventh day. BUT, God must still be honored, remembered, respected on the Sabbath, even if, occasionally, one has to lift a finger in order to go about doing his will.
Perhaps this is finally a shorter version that I can post using Mark 2:25 cf.
Possible FB post.