The Divinity of Jesus
In the fall, I took on a challenge to read through the gospels starting with the book of Mark. To be honest, Mark has usually been my least favorite of the gospels. It's so short, fast-paced, and seemingly inelegant (to me, at least). I prefer John for its poetic language or Luke for its detail. However, when I reread the book of Mark a few years ago, I started to see this gospel in a different light. Mark reveals Jesus through His actions, and we have to decide who He is – the Son of God, like the Roman centurion claims in Mark 15, or just a man?
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Mark 6:38-52
He asked them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.
When they found out they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he instructed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed and broke the loaves. He kept giving them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate and was satisfied. They picked up twelve baskets full of pieces of bread and fish. Now those who had eaten the loaves were five thousand men.
Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After he said good-bye to them, he went away to the mountain to pray. Well into the night, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on the land. He saw them straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Very early in the morning he came toward them walking on the sea and wanted to pass by them. When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke with them and said, “Have courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. They were completely astounded, because they had not understood about the loaves. Instead, their hearts were hardened.
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Jesus feeding the 5,000 and walking on water falls in the middle of the book of Mark. The miracles of chapters 5 and 7 bookend these two stories in chapter 6. In chapter 5, Jesus frees a man in Gerasenes from demon possession by sending the demons into a herd of pigs, heals a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, and raises Jairus's daughter from the dead. In the rest of chapters 6 and 7, Jesus heals the sick, a Gentile woman's daughter, and a deaf man. At the end of chapter 7, the people say, "'He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak'" (7:37). While the people are correct, it is a bit of an understatement.
Jesus shows authority over demons, all types of illness, death, the abilities to speak and hear, and even nature itself. In performing these various miracles, He exhibits both compassion and authority. One commentary says, “He wanted each miracle to be a revelation of Himself, a sermon in action” (Wiersbe, 107). Over and over again, Jesus is revealing who He is to the people. However, we continually see people misunderstanding who Jesus is. The disciples do not understand about the loaves; the people say Jesus does all things well. They do not see Jesus for who He really is.
When Jesus walks on the water and the disciples are terrified, He tells them, “‘Have courage! It is I’” (Mark 6:50). In this one statement, it seems like Jesus is asking His disciples to look at Him and see Him for who He is. Here is Jesus literally doing the impossible, telling them who He is, and they miss it. The Wiersbe commentary expands on this idea, “As in the forgiveness of sins (2:10) and power over nature (4:39), in walking on the water Jesus does what only God can do. ‘It is I’ (6:50) is identical with God’s self-disclosure to Moses in Exodus 3:14, and may further evince Jesus’s divinity” (107). We see the majority of Jesus’s “I am” statements in the gospel of John, and each one reveals more of Jesus’s divinity. In an argument with the Jews, Jesus says, “‘…before Abraham was born, I am!’” (John 8:58). These identifying statements are how Jesus reveals Himself to us. He is the I Am. He is God.
Will we, like the disciples and the Jews, look at His miracles and miss who He has revealed Himself to be?
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I invite you to journey with me as I explore four passages in the book of Mark. You can find the accompanying Reading & Study Guide under the Study Guide tab or linked here.
Previous Posts:
The Audacity of Jesus, Mark 2:1-12
The Unexpected Jesus, Mark 2:18-22
