Who Does He Think He Is?
When He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room, not even near the door; and He was speaking the word to them. And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men. Being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying. And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?” (mark 2:1–7; emphasis added)
Who Does He Think He Is?
Jesus’s mission had two primary aspects. He declared one of those aspects when He said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (luke 19:10). His was a rescue mission to the lost and dying human race.
The second part of Jesus’s mission appears in Hebrews, when the writer said that Christ is “the exact representation of His [God the Father’s] nature” (hebrews 1:3). In Jesus the Son we see the heart of God the Father.
Did Jesus accomplish that mission? When John the Baptist saw Jesus at the start of His ministry, He said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (john 1:29). John the Baptist was letting the world know who Jesus was.
Three years later, in an upstairs room the night before He was crucified, Jesus’s disciple Philip asked Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (john 14:8). The Lord told Philip, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father…” (v. 9). The public ministry of Jesus was framed at its beginning and its conclusion by this mission—to make God the Father known to His creation.
So Jesus came to this earth, in part, to reveal the heart of the Father to us. How does that affect what we see in Mark 2? How did Jesus explain the Father to us by the things He said and did?
When we observe a person who seems to be full of self-importance, it’s not uncommon to hear someone challenge them by saying, “Who do you think you are?” or, perhaps, “What gives you the right to do that?” Our assumption is that the individual in question seems to have an inflated view of themselves and that this wrong view needs correcting.
This presumption of an inaccurate self-view is at the heart of the first of the “why” questions we encounter in Mark 2. As they watched and listened to what transpired, the religious leaders of the day indignantly wondered just who Jesus thought He was. Consider the scene:
Jesus was preaching and teaching in a jam-packed home in Capernaum when suddenly the roof opened up over the heads of the crowd. Blue sky appeared where the ceiling had recently been, and a pallet carrying a paralyzed man descended into the house. Jesus responded to the faith of these men who had taken extreme measures to get their friend to Him by saying, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (v. 5).
Imagine that you are one of the man’s four friends. You have literally done the heavy lifting, dismantling the roof of someone else’s private residence. You have presented your friend to Jesus, obviously expecting the Lord to heal him. The words, “Your sins are forgiven,” are not likely what you expected—or wanted—to hear.
But, the ramifications of Jesus’s words go much further than the friends’ understandable disappointment. This statement prompts the scribes (experts in religious law, often called lawyers in the Gospels) to ask a huge question that gets to the point of Jesus’s identity:
“Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?” (v. 7).
Clearly they feel Jesus is unqualified to do what He has just done—offer forgiveness for sin. These religious teachers studied the Scriptures diligently, and they strongly believed that only God can fully forgive and absolve sins. Essentially, their question is, “Who does He think He is?” If the Teacher is claiming the authority to do what only God can do, He must be guilty of blasphemy because they are convinced that He can’t be God. The claim to be God was a capital crime that brought death by stoning. Who does He think He is, indeed!
Jesus responded to their question by doing something visible to validate His ability to do something invisible.
No mere human should be able to forgive sins, but neither should a mere human be able to heal a paralyzed man with a spoken word. Jesus points out this fact by stressing the obvious. The claim to absolve sins is something that can’t be empirically proven or validated. It is much easier to “say” that the man’s sins are forgiven. It is vastly more difficult to say “get up and walk” with the expectation that a paralyzed man will suddenly and miraculously be healed. Either it will happen or it won’t. Either Jesus has the authority He claims, or He doesn’t.
So Jesus demonstrates His authority to do the one (forgive) by doing the other (heal). The Teacher invites the paralyzed man to get up and walk—and he does! This visible evidence is proof of the invisible claim that Jesus, like His Father, forgives sins.
Jesus came forgiving us in order to reveal the heart of a Father who forgives fully and freely—and Jesus tangibly exhibited that forgiving heart by giving Himself on the cross. For all of us, this is good news. Who among us has never struggled under the weight of our failings, wrongs, and sins?
Guilt and shame are such powerful realities in our world that real forgiveness can seem impossible. In the face of that tremendous obstacle, we find a God who desires to forgive us—to break the chains of our guilt and to set us free from the shame and slavery of our failings.
The rescue that Jesus provided through His death and resurrection makes this forgiveness possible, and the forgiveness He offered this paralyzed man was an in anticipation of the ultimate rescuing work Jesus had come to accomplish on the cross.
Who Does He Think He Is?
- In the context of their beliefs and convictions, why was the response of the scribes to Jesus’s claims understandable? Why was it dangerous?
- What is the difference between one of us forgiving someone of wrongdoing and Jesus offering absolution of sins to someone?
- How would you have responded if you had taken a friend to Jesus for healing, but instead heard Jesus give forgiveness?
- Why was the contrast of the visible versus the invisible critical to Jesus’s actions with the paralytic?
Who Does He Think They Are!
And He went out again by the seashore; and all the people were coming to Him, and He was teaching them. As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (mark 2:13–17; emphasis added)
Who Does He Think They Are?
So much of the popular music I grew up with was about finding love in the midst of class struggle. Phrases like, “The wrong side of the tracks,” “the poor side of town,” and “down in the boondocks” all dealt with love trying to overcome the societal barriers that divide us from each other.
It seems that in every culture there is some kind of caste system. You can verify it at any junior high school. The haves versus the have-nots. The good versus the bad. The in versus the out. Us versus them. These value judgments about other human beings are destructive to others and express a warped (and inflated) self-view.
Israel in the first century was no different. Their categories were the “righteous” versus the “sinners.” The law-keepers versus the law-breakers. And the second “why” question of Mark 2 arises out of these perceptions.
In Mark 2:13–17, Jesus calls the tax collector Levi (also named Matthew) to join His band of disciples. This likely created a scandal among his other followers. Tax collectors were hated for two reasons. First, they collaborated with the Roman government that occupied Israel at that time. Second, they became wealthy at the expense of their countrymen by abusing power given to them by Rome.
In the eyes of the religious leaders, it was unthinkable that a genuine prophet would damage his reputation by associating with a tax collector. Jesus’s own disciples, fishermen on that same seashore, were probably not too thrilled about Matthew either. He had no doubt taken plenty of their money over the years.
Selecting Matthew would have been especially hard for one particular disciple—Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were revolutionaries who advocated the violent overthrow of Rome, so associating with a collaborator would have created palpable tension within the group.
Then, increasing the level of community outrage, Jesus goes to Levi’s house to have dinner with the lowest rungs of Jewish society. “Tax collectors and sinners,” they called them. These people were considered the scum of the earth by respectable society. So the question is raised: “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” (v. 16).
Again, this question comes from the scribes, the experts in Jewish religious law. According to them, dining was not just about getting nourishment, it had layers that affected the ceremonial purity of each individual. How the hands were washed, how the food was prepared, how the dishes and pots were cleaned, and, yes, who sat with you at the table would all have profound implications about a person’s purity. And your ceremonial purity directly affected your opportunity to participate in temple or synagogue activities.
These leaders are essentially asking, “Who does He think they are?” How could a so-called prophet be so foolish as to associate closely with those people?
Jesus responds by highlighting the need of the crowd. He makes it clear that their need is His priority. And in doing so, He reveals the heart of God the Father as accepting and inclusive, welcoming into His house all who come to Him. This inclusive approach that God takes in reaching out to us is more than just the power of observation, for God looks at all of reality with a different value system.
In the book of 1 Samuel, we read the story of how the prophet Samuel chose a replacement to succeed King Saul, whom the Lord had rejected. God told Samuel to go to Jesse in Bethlehem and anoint one of his sons as the next king. One by one Jesse brought his sons to Samuel, but none of the first seven sons were God’s choice to be king. It was the eighth son, out in the fields with the sheep, whom God had selected. The Lord told Samuel, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 samuel 16:7).
Jesus looked at the heart, and He saw people who desperately needed Him. His willingness to be the “friend of sinners” was so tangible, so bold that we must see the heart of the Father in it. To think that the holy God who created and rules the universe would make room for any of us in His family speaks clearly
to how He views us. We are fallen, broken creatures; yet we are made in God’s very image (see genesis 1:26–27) and are the objects of His overwhelming, rescuing love. Not because we are healthy, but because we so desperately need Him.
Today, we still live in a world of insiders versus outsiders. We create barriers to protect ourselves and our reputations at the expense of people Jesus died for. When John wrote that God “so loved the world” (3:16), it was not exclusively the world of people we find socially acceptable or morally competent. It was a world of people just like the ones we tend to exclude. Jesus’s deliberate and insistent inclusion of the great unwashed of His generation speaks loudly against the “fortress mentality” maintained by many of our churches and within our own hearts.
Christians often ask, “What would Jesus do?” But that is not quite the right question. What did Jesus do? is the better question. He reached to all, reflecting the heart of His Father and establishing a model for us to follow in our contentious, fractious, polarized generation.
Who Does He Think They Are?
- When have you experienced a kind of caste system? On which end of the social spectrum were you categorized? What was that like?
- Jesus placed value on people throughout His ministry. What are some ways that He expressed that value?
- In what ways did the classification of people evidence the convictions of the religious leaders? What religious attitudes did that reflect?
- How might we see that same dividing of people taking place in our churches? How might we work to overcome it?
Why Is He Feasting and Not Fasting?
John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and they came and said to Him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” (mark 2:18–22; emphasis added)
Why Is He Feasting and Not Fasting?
When you see an advertisement splashed with the word “new,” what is the ad agency trying to tell you? Do you ever find that those “new” products aren’t all that new after all? It’s easy to be skeptical about such things.
But when the movie Vantage Point was released in 2008, it offered a truly new approach to plotline. The same story was told repeatedly, but from eight different perspectives. With each retelling, new pieces of information were uncovered. Each time you felt like you knew what had really happened—until the next perspective exposed a flaw in that assumption. Only in the end, with all the strands of perspective woven together, was the truth revealed. It was a different kind of film and genuinely lived up to the definition of new.
The problem with something truly new is that it confuses us. We struggle to understand the dramatic change taking place. This is the kind of problem that creates the third “why” question of Mark 2.
This time, the question comes from the crowd, not from the religious leaders (mark 2:18–22). The people don’t appear to be testing or attacking Jesus, but rather are genuinely confused. They witness two radically different models of how to be in relationship with God. John’s followers and the Pharisee’s disciples fasted. In contrast, Jesus and His disciples feasted.
This question follows on the heels of an accusation against Jesus: He is associating with “those people.” He is partying with the great unwashed. “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” (v. 16). The next question drives even deeper. Why is He eating at all? The people ask: “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” (v. 18).
Though elsewhere Jesus acknowledges fasting as appropriate in its time and place, His response here paints a series of pictures of the reality that they clearly do not see. Something new is going on that deserves to be celebrated! This thing is as new as a new family celebrated in a wedding. It is as new as a garment that needs no repair. It is as new as fresh wine in a never-before-used wineskin.
In each case, there is something taking place that the people don’t grasp. Through Jesus, God the Father is in the process of making everything new. That reality is played out throughout the New Testament. Individual hearts are made new (2 corinthians 5:17). Relationships rooted in His love are being made new (john 13:34). One day, everything in the created realm will be made new (revelation 21:1–4).
No wonder our God says, “Behold, I am making all things new” (revelation 21:5). The point is that Jesus is feasting because this new thing that God is doing deserves to celebrated. In fact, the Father Himself celebrates it. Luke 15 gives us three stories of lost things that are found. In a sense, they are made new, and are a picture of God’s lost creatures (us) being “found.” Jesus affirms, “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (luke 15:10).
Who is in the presence of the angels? Is not the Father there? Is He not celebrating the lost being found and the old being made new?
Jesus feasted with His disciples in celebration of the grand new thing the Father was doing—and He was reveling in it! This is a marvelous thought, that our God not only makes everything new, He celebrates the new things He is doing in us and for us. We should celebrate as well.
“New” can be disorienting and confusing, but when God does a new thing, especially in the lives of the people He loves, we can and must join in the celebration.
Why Is He Feasting Instead of Fasting?
- Does experiencing something new excite you? Confuse you? Unsettle you? Why?
- In the examples of new things that Jesus uses, which do you find most accessible? Why?
- In the examples of new things that Jesus uses, which do you find most difficult? Why?
- How does God’s celebration of new things match up with His work in making things new?
Why Is He Breaking the Sabbath?
And it happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain. The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?” Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (mark 2:23–28; emphasis added)
Why Is He Breaking the Sabbath? (Mark 2:24)
What do we mean when we say we are “baiting” someone? It means that we are intentionally trying to draw them into a bit of tension, perhaps even conflict. We see “baiting” in sporting events when an athlete tries to goad an opponent into taking a swing at them. We see it in politics when one side of the aisle intentionally tries to draw the other side out, and uncover a view or opinion that will not play well in the media or with the public.
When we see someone baiting another person, it can seem shrewd to us. Yet, what if Jesus was baiting someone? How would we view that? I suggest that it is just such a situation that brings us the final of the four “why” questions of Mark 2.
So many of the controversial things Jesus did took place on the Sabbath. It’s difficult to see that pattern as anything less than strategic. Here, Jesus and His followers are going through the fields and picking grain, which qualified as “work” as the Pharisees defined it. The disciples were grinding it in their hands (more work), and eating it. Harvesting enough grain to eat from someone else’s field was permissible under the law, but all of this was taking place on the Sabbath. Strict Mosaic law governed what could and, mostly could not, be done on that day set aside for rest.
The seemingly everpresent Pharisees are watching this take place. Perhaps Jesus does it exactly this way to set up a point of tension with them. In other words, He is baiting them. The Pharisees felt that their number-one mission was to defend the law of Moses and challenge anything that threatened obedience to that law. They believed they had to respond.
The Sabbath guidelines were just one small part of the regulations and rules that had come to dominate their thinking about Torah and its instructions. These Pharisees would have felt absolutely justified in attacking such a blatant violation of Sabbath law. So for the third time in this chapter, representatives of the religious community ask the why question: “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” (v. 24).
How can Jesus think He can supersede the law of Moses? This echoes the first question, “Who does He think He is?” Moses’s law was the binding contract between God and Israel. If Jesus is to be a teacher/rabbi for the Jewish people, how can He ignore something so fundamental to who the Jewish people are? They are God’s chosen people and must live according to His law.
Jesus responds with a story straight out of the Scriptures. He recalls how David and his men, when they were being pursued by Saul, took the bread of Presence from the tabernacle. This bread was to be a holy offering to the Lord, and only the priests could eat it. David and his men were famished from fleeing, and they ate it anyway. Jesus says that they did so without dishonoring God.
This opens the door for the declaration that Jesus and His men are able to do something similar. The Sabbath was intended for the benefit, not the harm, of people. It was meant to help and strengthen, not to dominate or control. It was meant to free, not to enslave. So Jesus faces the accusation of the Pharisees head-on: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (vv. 27–28).
The Bible Knowledge Commentary says, “Jesus used this action which God did not condemn, to show that the Pharisees’ narrow interpretation of the Law blurred God’s intention. The spirit of the Law in respect to human need took priority over its ceremonial regulations.”
The point is that God’s heart is for people and their wholeness, not for ritual. As David said in his great song of repentance:
For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. (psalm 51:16–17)
Jesus affirms that the Father’s priority is not on the ceremonial; His heart is for the hurting and their needs. And, once again, we find a new trajectory that takes us away from the liturgical and legalistic trappings of religion. Jesus draws us out of the system of dos and don’ts and instead allows us to see where our heavenly Father is focused: His generous and loving heart is on people.
Why Is He Breaking the Sabbath?
- Have you ever felt baited into doing something? What was that like?
- What are things in your experience that might parallel Jewish Sabbath laws?
- Why are we often more comfortable with regulations than with relationship?
- Why does the Bible so strongly differentiate between ritual observance and relationship with God? How is that seen here?
And the Question Is …
What was Jesus up to when He walked this planet? On one level, these four “why” questions that took place so early in this gospel record lay the foundation for the rest of Mark’s account of Jesus’s life. Mark, believed by scholars to have been the recorder of Simon Peter’s memoirs of his days with the Christ, presents the thesis that Jesus is the Messiah. He has come to rescue all of us, because God values people over ritual, and He is doing a new thing through Jesus. The remainder of Mark’s gospel becomes an exposition of these crucial concepts.
But that isn’t all. Jesus was intentionally rattling the cages of His generation and destroying their presuppositions in order to paint an accurate portrait of God.
By linking these stories together, we see the heart of our Father God who sent His Son to forgive sins, welcome the outcast, celebrate new life, and point beyond religion. We see the heart of the God who so loved the world that He gave His Son to us.
In these four stories we learn four important things about the Father:
- The Father’s heart is a forgiving heart;
- The Father’s heart is a welcoming heart;
- The Father’s heart is doing new things;
- The Father’s heart values people over ritual.
Jesus came to bear the full force of the consequences of our rebellion against God. He showed us the Father’s heart to a depth that had never been shown before—in overcoming, forgiving, and making us and all things new.
Your earthly father may have been wonderful. Or perhaps he fell far short of your hopes and expectations. Maybe you never even knew your father. Regardless of your situation, Jesus points us to a greater and better Father—His own Father. Jesus came to make a place for us in His Father’s house. He shows us the Father, and helps us to understand Him more fully. From Jesus, we learn that our Father’s heart for us is more than we could have ever imagined.
