GOSPEL MEDITATION # 219
Mark 12:35-37
Whose Son is Christ?
- Find a quiet place, alone and apart from distractions.
- Be comfortably alert, still and at peace.
- Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer
- Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
- Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
- Reread it. From memory, determine the central points.
- The setting–Wednesday of the Last Week. Jesus is teaching at the temple.
- For a long period, perhaps from the beginning, Israel had supposed the Messiah to be a man, the son of David, a human being only.
- Indeed, the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah and from the clan of David, the great king, who had lived one thousand years before. (see Matthew 1:2-6 and Luke 3:23-34)
- Many had announced their Messiahship, raised up small armies, and attempted to overthrow Rome. All failed.
- At that point, despite the failures, the people yet looked for a human, political/military deliverer.
- Now, with Jesus’ time running out, He makes a strong attempt to make it clear that the Messiah was also divine.
- Psalm 110 and verse 1 is where David himself made it clear that “my Lord”, as revealed by “the Lord” who is no one less than Yahweh–the covenant name of God—(see Exodus 3:13-15) must be God as well.
- The problem would be then, and throughout subsequent history, that the nature of Jesus would be misunderstood.
- The Body of Christ, the Church, gradually realized who Jesus must be, very God of very God and very man of very man, or in other words, both God and man at once.
- This is, to us, unreasonable and thus can only be understood by special revelation from God directly.