The Vision (6.12.26): The Authority of Christ

 

Image: "Knockout" Rose, North Garden, Virginia, June 2026.

Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Mark 1:21-34.

“for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22).

“for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him” (Mark 1:27).

Even secular unbelieving historians agree that the Lord Jesus Christ was a man who possessed a personal power, warmth, and winsomeness that affected those who encountered him, heard him, and observed his ministry. He drew men to himself in the way that a magnet draws metal. He was a man who demanded followers.

That personal, “magnetic” personality is noted in our passage today at several points. The term that is used to distinguish the uniqueness of Christ is “authority [Greek: exousia].”

In Mark 1, Christ conducts his threefold ministry: preaching, teaching, and healing (cf. Matt 4:23; 9:35). First, he was preaching in Galilee the gospel of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15). Second, he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1:21: “and [he] taught”). Third, he was healing. He healed (exorcised) a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue (Mark 1:23-26). He healed Simon’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31). He healed many who gathered in the evening at his door (Mark 1:32-34: “And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many devils,” v. 34). 

His unique authority shines through. Mark the Evangelist describes the response of those who heard him in the synagogue, “And they were astonished at his doctrine [didache]: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22).

Mark also unveils the amazed questioning pondered by those who saw him exorcise the man with the unclean spirit: “What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him” (Mark 1:27).

Behold the authority of Christ.

He preached Himself.

He taught with authority as God in the flesh. He did not teach about God; he taught as God. In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, he will say: You have heard it said…, but I say unto you….

He healed the souls and bodies of men, showing his authority over both the unseen spiritual and the visible natural worlds.

He will lay down his life on the cross and take it up again the third day as his greatest sign or miracle.

The final question: How will we respond to Christ? Will we recognize his authority? Will we bend the knee of our hearts before his throne?

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

 

Beza's Motto

 

From X Post:

The motto of Protestant father Theodore Beza (1519-1605):

Plus à me frapper on s'amuse, tant plus de marteaux on y use ("The more one amuses oneself striking me, the more hammers one wears out on it").

https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/theodore-de-beze-1519-1605-2/

JTR

The Vision (6.5.26): Come Ye After Me

 

Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Mark 1:16-20.

“And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men” (Mark 1:17).

Christ’s public ministry began with his preaching (see Mark 1:15). It continued with his calling men to come after him and become his disciples or followers.

In Mark 1:16-20 we have the account of our Lord calling two sets of brothers to be among his first disciples: Simon (Peter) and Andrew (vv. 16-18), then James and John (vv. 19-20). Two sets of brothers by nature became brothers in Christ.

So often our picture of the disciples come from medieval artists that depict the Lord Jesus and the disciples as frail, pale, and sickly.  They hardly seem to have had strength enough to pick up a heavy net! But the picture here in Mark 1 is of strong, sun-darkened, solid, working men.  Simon and Andrew were busy at their trade, casting a net into the sea, “for” Mark says, “for they were fishers” (v. 16).

The occupation of fisherman must have been a common livelihood in this area.  Many have noted that when the Lord Jesus went looking for followers, he did not go to the royal court, or to the religious schools, but to the shipyard.  He chose sturdy, common, ordinary men.  The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry observed:

The instruments Christ chose to employ in setting up his kingdom, were the weak and foolish things of the world; not called from the great Sanhedrin, or the schools of the [rabbis], but picked up from among the [tarps] by the seaside, that the excellency of the power might be wholly of God, and not at all of them.

Do you get it?  Why did Jesus choose men like these?  Because if he had chosen princes and scholars we might have been tempted to give them glory.  In this way, to God alone through Christ alone be all the glory.

Note the language used by Christ. He does not say to these men, “I see within you the inner fishers of men.”  His hopes for them did not rest on any inherent potential that they held within themselves.  When we see an exquisite vase that has been beautifully shaped and crafted and decorated by a master artisan, we do not say, “Wow, that was some great clay!”  The focus is not on the raw material but on the artist.

Nor does the Lord Jesus say, “Come after me and become whatever you want to be.”  He has a very definite end in mind, and he is not leaving this up to these men.  He says he will make them to become fishers of men.

There is great significance in this, is there not?  They had been spending their lives casting out nets to gather in fish and the Lord Jesus says instead, that he will make them cast their nets to gather in the souls of men.  These rough fishermen will later, of course, become apostles.  They will be the foundational heralds of the gospel.  Here the Lord Jesus is giving the church its central apostolic commission.  We are about fishing for the souls of men.  Our fundamental calling as a church is evangelism, endearing the gospel of God to the hardened hearts of men.

In 1773 the Puritan Thomas Boston at the tender age of 22 published a little book titled, “The Art of Man-Fishing” in which he meditated on these words of Christ.  Boston applied these words to the preacher who, through the nets of his public preaching and teaching ministry and his one-on-one private ministry appointments, was constantly striving to see men drawn to a place of settled commitment to Christ.

Note also that the Lord Jesus does not say, Follow Me and I will make you to become social workers, or Red Cross volunteers, or school teachers, or political revolutionaries.  Now there is a place for acts of Christian charity and mercy, for education and Christian citizenship, but our primary calling is evangelism, endearing the gospel of God to the hardened hearts of men.  Let us not drift from this calling.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff

The Vision (5.29.26): The time is fulfilled

 

Image: Modern view of the Sea of Galilee.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Mark 1:9-15.

Mark 1:14  Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

The beginning of our Lord’s public ministry followed his baptism (Mark 1:9-11) and his wilderness temptation (1:12-13).

 It was initiated or triggered by the arrest of John the forerunner: “Now after that John was put in prison….” (v. 14a; cf. 6:14-29). It was an act of manly courage for our Lord to begin his public ministry at this time.

Mark continued, “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching [proclaiming] the gospel of the kingdom of God” (v. 14b).

Christ’s public ministry did not begin with miracles, feeding the masses, opening blinded eyes, raising the dead, or telling parables, but Christ came first as a Preacher.

The apostle Paul would later write, in 1 Corinthians 1:21, “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

The premier practitioner of this means of grace was Christ himself. Christ is the Prototypical Preacher. We merely human and very fallible preachers stumble and stammer and preach imperfectly. Christ is the Perfect Preacher.

What did he proclaim? The gospel [good news] of victory. Mark began by noting this book records, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1).  It will end in Mark 16:15 with the risen Lord telling his disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

In v. 14 Mark the Evangelist describes Christ as preaching “the gospel of the kingdom of God.” This means the rule or reign of God on earth. Christ did not, in his first advent, come to establish a political kingdom. He told Pilate at his trial, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Here is the gaping difference between the Lord Jesus Christ and Muhammad. One conquers by the cross, and the other attempts to conquer by the sword.

In v. 15 we have Christ’s own words recorded by the evangelist. Christ said, “The time is fulfilled.” The word for time here is kairos. It refers to special time, the right moment, and not mere chronological time, chronos.

Christ recognized that in his coming and in his initiation of his public ministry he was fulfilling the plan of God that would lead to the bloody cross and the glorious resurrection, a shameful defeat and a stunning victory.

Christ declared, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” The rule and reign of God is present in Christ Himself. This happens even before the end of history. Christ comes into history and into time, and his kingdom is established, though it is not yet fully realized till he comes again with power and great glory.

He ends with two commands: “repent ye [experience a change of mind and a change of heart] and believe the gospel [the good news which is centered in the person of Christ himself].

There is a debate about the order of these two things in what is called “the order of salvation.” Do I first repent and then believe, or do I believe and then repent? Here, repent comes first in order, but it may well be that they come as contemporaneous events.

Christ has come. The time is fulfilled. Let us turn from sin in disgust and turn to Christ in faith.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Robert Preus on Seventeenth Century Lutheran Dogmaticians & Textual Variants:

 

From X post:

Here is Robert Preus’s description of how the seventeenth century Lutheran dogmaticians handled textual variants:

"In their defense of the authority of Scripture the dogmaticians were obligated to enter upon an involved discussion on the authenticity of the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture. It was their conviction, as opposed to the Catholics and Socinians, that there had been no general corruption of the Scriptures. Not only the canonical books themselves but also the sentences and words and letters of these books are authentic. They have not been corrupted by Jews or Christians by the errors or negligence or ignorance of copyists, but by divine providence have been preserved intact and incorrupt. There are of course innumerable individual errors in the thousands of codices, just as there are in copies of other books, and these errors may even have been inserted by Jews or heretics, but there has been no general corruption of Scripture. Most of the individual errors in Scripture are variant readings of a technical nature and of little importance, such as omissions, spellings, transpositions and the like, and can be quite easily corrected. Such variations, along with diversities in pointing and accent, cannot be called corruptions. It goes without saying that the dogmaticians argue for the authenticity of only the original Greek and Hebrew texts, not for translations."

-The Inspiration of Scripture: A Study of the Theology of the 17th Century Lutheran Dogmaticians, 134-135.

At least Five Lessons:

1. The Lutheran orthodox were aware of minor textual variants in the transmission of the text of the Bible.

2. They did not see such variants (whether intentional or unintentional) as defeaters for embracing the divine preservation of Scripture without corruption, just as the English orthodox divines would say in WCF 1:8 that the Bible had been by God's singular care and providence "kept pure in all ages."

3. Canon involves not only the books but also the texts (i.e., sentences, words, and letters) of those books. 4. They held to the original Hebrew and Greek texts as authoritative and not ancient versions (Latin, LXX, etc.).

5. The Protestant view was distinct from the RCC and Socinians.

WM 385: REJOINDER to Zachary J. Cole: "Modern" Textual Criticism & the Westminster Divines: PART TWO

 

JTR

WM 384: Bishop J. C. Ryle on the Woman Taken in Adultery (John 7:53-8:11)

 

JTR

The Vision (5.22.26): The Beginning of the Gospel (Mark 1:1)

 

Image: British Museum: Lullington (England) Chi Rho, wall plaster painting, 4th century.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Mark 1:1-8.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1).

It is said that the most important part of any book, including Biblical ones, is the way they begin and end. The opening verse to the Gospel of Mark serves as an overall title.

It starts, “The beginning….” This echoes the start to Genesis, the first book in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” It also echoes the start of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark does not begin with an account of our Lord’s miraculous conception by a virgin and his birth in Bethlehem. This is not to say that Mark is unaware of Christ’s virgin birth (implied in Mark 6:3: “Is this not the carpenter, the son Mary…?”).

He commences, however, by noting that Christ’s coming was the beginning of the Gospel. The word “gospel,” at root, means “good news.” When word came from the battlefield, all hoped the messenger would bring the “gospel (good news)” of victory.

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul described the “gospel” as containing four key facts: (1) Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; (2) Christ was buried; (3) Christ rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures; (4) Christ appeared to his disciples (To Cephas and the twelve and others). This was the core “good news” of his victory.

In the very last chapter of this book, the risen Christ will tell his disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Thus, it begins and ends with reference to the good news.

The title extends in v. 1. This is good news about “Jesus.” This is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua. It means “Jehovah saves.” The name “Jesus” tells us he came as a true man.

He is next given two titles:

First, he is the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, coming from the line of King David.

Second, he is the Son of God. He is from all eternity the only begotten Son of God. This tells us of his true divinity. As John puts it, “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18).

The Father is, from eternity, unbegotten. The Son is eternally begotten. The Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.

A lot is said in this opening verse. It provides us an orthodox doctrine of God, the Trinity. The one God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost from everlasting to everlasting. It also provides an orthodox doctrine of Christ. He is one person with two natures, true man and true God.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle