2/1/15
Chris Breslin
Mark 1:21-28
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” -C.S. Lewis
“Mark uses the term authority for the first time; the word literally means “out of the original stuff.” It comes from the same root as the word author. Mark means that Jesus taught about life with original rather than derived authority. He didn’t just clarify something that they already knew, or simply interpret the Scriptures in the way the teachers of the law did. His listeners sensed somehow that he was explaining the story of their lives as the author, and it left them dumbfounded…The healing shows that Jesus is concerned with and king over the physical world- not just the spiritual. It is not simply a claim of authority (which we have in the calling of the disciples and the authoritative teaching but is the clear proof and exercise of Jesus authority.” -Tim Keller
Resources for Mark 1
King’s Cross by Tim Keller
Anchor Bible Commentary: Mark, Vol 1 by Joel Marcus
The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight
Word Biblical Commentary: Mark, Vol 34A by Robert Guelich
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
How God Became King by N.T. Wright
